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Terrie Neilson of Las Vegas, Nev. (8.0): Best: Opening segment; MCMG vs. LAX; Booker/3D promo. Worst: Kong vs. Kim. Tonight was a solid edition of TNA. The outgoing show did well to show off highlights from Sunday, as well as get things started for Slammiversary. I'm still troubled with Booker nearly doing King Booker over again. He made some sense in the opener as he's been nowhere near the title hunt since arriving (which I thought was odd to start with). Seemed ironic that he's being dissed and left out of the title situation - part of the very reason he and Roode were feuding. It almost makes that entire feud pointless as Booker could have tied the feud to this situation ("After all the battles he and I had, you know what? Roode had a point...") Minus that, the opener was hot and Booker's and Joe's promos were very good. Angle gets a much-needed time out - Thank you, God! - and makes sure he leaves a heel on the way out. Gonna be tough to come back heel if he takes the proper time off (read: at least rest of year if not more) and gets healthy. I can buy the explanation for Abyss's departure. They kept the mystique of Abyss's face being covered. Kim-Kong was all kinds of sloppy and well below their past matches. The massive overbooking around them didn't help. Tough call if Kim's knee is legit injured. Judging by the finish (her using one leg to help vault herself up for Awesome Bomb), she may have bruised her kneecap which is temporary but still no fun). I'm seriously hoping her head or neck wasn't with the horrible rollthrough. Kong almost sat on her at the point her head/neck made mat contact. But I would like to say that it may be time to find a way to get the belt off Kong before it becomes stale. Why even have refs in the main event as no rules are followed? The match was wild but okay. At the end of the night nothing really offensive happened, so I am content for that at least.

Shane McKinley of Danville, Calif. (6.0): Best Match: Gail vs. Kong. Worst Match: Kurt Angle Drama. What I don't get is that the writers and bookers on this show will give a lot of attention to detail on some parts of the show (i.e. Knockouts), but on the flipside lazily execute the rest of the show. They seemingly don't even try and bother with delievering a show that's entirely believable from a fan's standpoint in terms of storylines, character deleveopment, and starting of feuds. As a fan, I want to know why Booker went heel, but even Booker doesn't know, thus I don't care at all for Booker's heel character and don't understand really the reason why he needed to turn heel. Borash comes in and says that "everybody is talking about the Angle Alliance." What? Where did this come from? You can bet your bottom dollar that the average TNA fan wasn't even thinking about the allliance and didn't care much about it. This method of pushing a storyline is weak. I never been a real big fan of "tortured serial killer" wrestling characters. I just can't take it seriously when Rellik (that's killer spelled backwards) talks about eating fingers or when Abyss channels his inner Mankind. Know what would scare me more? If you smiled and sang a children's song. But I like the little booties on your feet! So wuvable! Worst part of the show was the Kurt Angle Drama. If Angle was too injured to compete at the PPV match, then shouldn't he be resting up? I felt that this ridiculous "Angle Drama" should have never been greenlighted to air. Just because Angle is arguably your top star does not mean that he should always be on television. I tune in to see Angle wrestling, not this weak-ass soap opera. What this tells me is that you'll think I'll tune in week after week to see if Karen leaves Kurt and Styles moves back in. Ever heard of a timelimit of storylines? Striking when the iron's hot? You fall back on storylines most of the time just to give wrestlers something to do before the next PPV. And what's with this whole notion of "wait till next week"? Way too much of that tonight. Why not now? That was the biggest problem of the show, in that most of the night didn't suck me in, didn't convince me as real. On the plus side, Impact viewers have their Knockout vs. Kong, Knockouts matches, LAX, and MMG to look forward to each week. Liked the Sting interview. Some good parts, but some gaping holes.

Adam J. Grammas of Westchester, Ill. (5.0): Best: Women's title match. Worst: Machine Guns quick job/no offense for Roxxi. Not a bad follow up to the PPV (although not great), but where was Steiner? Shouldn't he have said something? At least they gave Kaz a chance to speak on it. Obviously Angle is moving into a storyline with Styles (good to see him back at the top as a solo) and Joe moves into a storyline with Booker. It was a hot opener with Joe addressing the whole (most) of the locker room. It was good to see only a few select guys get involved and not a total hard-to-follow schmoz. I noticed Robert Roode step back a bit whenever Booker was near. Good storyline effect, showing they are still leary of each other, despite the heel turn. I knew they'd be doing the marriage thing at some point with So Cal and Lethal and I guess Sonjay will be playing Jake or Flair. The women's title match was great, made even better with the hot live crowd. Too bad the crowd wasn't as on for the Beautiful People vs Roxxi & ODB match later. There were too many missteps between Roxxi and Velvet (Velvet's fault). It's nice to establish the BP as big heels, but it shouldn't have been at Roxxi's expense. She didn't even get more offense in. I don't mind LAX being champs, I think it's a good move, but putting the MCMG out there first was a bad idea, especially going down in five minutes. I would love to see a feud between these two teams - even all babyfaces - with a 20 plus minute match on a PPV. Hopefully they can get back around to that. I'm interested in hearing the next two installments on the Sting story. Main event was good; nice seeing one without Angle in there for a change. And yes, Elvis is a hero. If you don't believe me, ask two "can never do wrong according to the press" music heroes of today, Springsteen and Bono. Just don't ask Chuck D.

I refuse to speak ill of the lovely former Ariel, but "cucaracha," Salinas? Really?
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