By Wade Keller, PWTorch editor

KELLER'S TNA IMPACT WRESTLING BLOG
JANUARY 19, 2012
TAPED IN ORLANDO, FLA.
AIRED ON SPIKE TV

-Strong performances from everyone involved in that opening segment. You really get a sense of each person there - James Storm, Jeff Hardy, Robert Roode, and Sting - being distinct personalities. Storm and Hardy both made their cases for deserving another title well. Obviously Roode comes across as a totally disingenuous when he says Hardy had two chances in five days and he's greedy for wanting a third, considering how those matches ended. What I thought was the obvious decision for Sting to make was to give both Storm and Hardy a guaranteed title shot in the short-term future, and have them wrestle one another to see who went first. It hardly seems fair, considering both were screwed, to make them face each other and only one of them gets a shot. Otherwise, well done segment that put heat on Roode, put importance on the title itself, and led to Sting making an imperfect but decent decision to resolve the situation.

-The Kaz-Daniels alliance is an interesting mystery. They've done a good job building up Kaz as a stand-up guy in recent months, and he's played the part convincingly, so it seems like Daniels obviously has leverage on him to get him to interfere against A.J. Styles in his match against Gunner. Kaz hung his head afterward like he hated being in that position to do what Daniels said, and he'd didn't clap along after Gunner won. Daniels continues to be a lot of fun as a heel. He's really good at being demonstrative in a sleazy, sneaky heelish way.

-The Crimson & Matt Morgan vs. Samoa Joe & Magnus confrontation backstage felt real, not staged. It wasn't a huge segment, but everyone reacted in a way that felt natural, not put-on.

-If Bully Ray is really undefeated since going singles, then he deserves a title shot. If he's not undefeated (and I don't remember him going undefeated in the Bound for Glory Series last year), then Sting should have called him out for exaggerating. It is refreshing to see an admirable babyface G.M. style leader enforcing law and order (even if he's not always perfect in his decisions). It makes a viewer more likely to feel loyal to the brand itself if they don't feel they're supporting a sleazy G.M. or executive, whether it's Mr. McMahon, Eric Bischoff, or John Laurinaitis.

-I'm still high on Magnus's upside. He's got a natural comfort level on camera, a good demeanor overall in the ring, and obviously the size and overall look to be a top tier star. He's good on the mic, too. This quick loss to Crimson didn't help him climb the roster, nor did it answer any questions about whether he's advanced enough in the ring to start getting a bigger singles push.

-The Garett Bischoff workout video was a little much. It brought me back to Bill Watts's videos promoting his won Erik Watts and those videos of Greg Gagne - another promoter's son - training with Sgt. Slaughter wearing camouflage. It's not so much that there's something wrong with promoting a wrestler that way, but you just have a list of people on the roster who seem to be a little (or a lot) higher on the totem pole of deserving that kind of TV time. It feels like overcompensation to show Garett being such a stud doing the Brock Lesnar rope whipping gym routine and then taking on four opponents at once and then hitting a heavy bag like that sweaty Eric Bischoff workout video when he challenged Vince McMahon back when WCW Nitro began its accelerated decline. What if Magnus got the kind of attention that Garett is getting? I guarantee Magnus isn't any greener in the ring than Garett, and by almost any objective measure is a surer bet to catch on a top star if he got a big push based on what we've seen so far.

-Line of the night was Eric Young calling the catering lady with a spatula "Cyborg" and saying "your secret is safe with me" while standing in front of the Bellator Fighting Championship semi-trailer plugging the Friday Viacom series on MTV2. Young is being used in just the right doses and right situations. I look forward to his segments, and he's easily the funniest person in pro wrestling right now.

-They took 45 minutes to get around to hyping the novelty of a cage match between two women? This is an example of being inefficient and not getting everything they can out of a match. Two women in a cage match could have been the entire hook for the entire show, built up as can't-miss. Instead, it was tossed out there at the end of the second hour without any hype beforehand (although it was the headline on TNA's website, so it's not like they didn't see it as a hook for the show).

-Nothing like three pairs of breast implanted women jumping up and down to celebrate a win. The post-match backstage celebrations are a good touch, and this served as a way to also creatively feature boobs bouncing around.

-Austin Aries got the most TV time he's gotten yet with a pre-break promo backstage to hype his in-ring promo, an in-ring promo, and then an extension of that in-ring promo once Alex Shelley came out. Aries carries himself like a star and he's pro wrestling's best chance to establish a marquee, dominant, long-term centerpiece to the X Division if TNA plays this right and doesn't play typical hot-potato with the belt just for the sake of another meaningless rapid-fire forgotten-tomorrow title change.

-Aries's backstage promo might be the first time a wrestler has drawn that much attention to his junk, though. He pointed right down there, the camera zoomed in, he pulled at his trunks, and then explained that the pink and lavender colors and sequins are just to throw off his opponents. He's going for the "thou doth protest too much" heel heat.

-Aries did a nice job acting like he had cleaned out the X Division and even said he might have to retire or travel elsewhere around the globe to find suitable competition. It was a good pin to set up for Shelley to come out and knock down.

-Shelley's new look is good in the sense that he needed something new to stand out. It fits who he is and gives him more of a punk identity. It was also good that he recapped the last year or so of the injuries he and Machine Gun partner Chris Sabin have battled.

-Alex Shelley had a contender for line of the night when he said: "Since I was about this tall my life has revolved around wrestling. Wrestling wrestling wrestling punk rock, wrestling wrestling wrestling videogames, wrestling wrestling wrestling wrestling wrestling." Fans identify with wrestlers who live for pro wrestling as much as they do.

-Shelley Quoteable: "As far as I'm concerned, you couldn't beat the piss out of a urinal sponge."

-When Shelley complained about Aries beating him with a low-blow last time they wrestle, Aries fired back: "That shouldn't be a problem; there's nothing there to hurt." Good line (not totally original, but still good in the situation), well-delivered.

-I laughed out loud when Young called for a timeout immediately when the bell rang to start his match against Angelina Love. His locking up with the referee twice was pretty funny, too.

-So in a 40 minute stretch we had Aries tugging at the front of his trunks as the camera zoomed in on his crotch, Alex Shelley moving his hand up and down next to his crotch to illustrate where Aries hit him last time they wrestled, and ODB touching Young's crotch after he was given a low blow by Love. Tenay aptly called it "checking for injuries." There's a bit of a fixation this week I can't remember on a pro wrestling show before - or at least not since DX crotch chopped on the same episode as Val Venis has his thing chopped off while McMahon spoke about grapefruits the size of whatever.

-Wait, there's more. Early in the Storm vs. Hardy main event, Storm pulled open the waistband on his trunks and fanned his personal sweaty area for a few seconds. The facial expressions from the women in the crowd were pretty funny.

-The main event, predictably, didn't settle anything in terms of whether Storm or Hardy get the first shot, but it is a logical set-up for Sting to rule that Roode must now defend the title against both Hardy and Storm in a three-way. The action was solid before the interference by Ray and Roode, but more importantly it put Storm in the ring in an even-steven situation with one of the top stars of this generation, Jeff Hardy, and that's maybe the most value Hardy has right now to TNA besides, hopefully, the immediate impact of bringing new fans to the show or holding onto the fans they already have.

-Overall: This was a good episode, forwarding the key World Title picture, featuring entertaining character-building segments, and just enough in-riing wrestling to reach a minimum threshold.

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Wade Keller launched Pro Wrestling Torch as a print newsletter in 1987. The newsletter is still published every week. It's distributed to thousands of wrestling fans internationally via postal mail and digital PDF's online at the VIP website. He has interviewed some of pro wrestling's biggest power brokers over the years in their longest insider interviews ever done, including Steve Austin, The Rock, Hulk Hogan, Jesse Ventura, Eric Bischoff, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Goldberg, Paul Heyman, Jim Cornette, Mick Foley, Vince Russo, Lou Thesz, Verne Gagne, Jerry Lawler, and many many others. He writes every week for the PWTorch Newsletter and also blogs on PWTorch.com. He is also the supervising editor of MMATorch, records the Keller Hotline every day for VIP members reviewing and analyzing the news of the day, and hosts the PWTorch Livecast twice a week. Contact Keller: kellerwade@gmail.com.

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