By Wade Keller, PWTorch editor

KELLER'S TNA IMPACT TAKE
MARCH 22, 2012
TAPED IN ORLANDO, FLA.
AIRED ON SPIKE TV

-Dixie Carter walked to the ring, thankfully without intro music, as Mike Tenay and Taz talked with a sense of disgust with how Bobby Roode acted on Sunday night. Dixie, her voice shaking and teared up, talked about how Roode has a streak of disrespecting TNA. She said all she has done all week is talk to attorneys and her management counsel. She said she weighed her options, and she has only one option. Sting's music then interrupted. Throughout all of this, I was thinking how relatively few people see the PPVs, and how Impact viewers' imaginations must have been running wild.

-Sting did the long-running babyface reaction, one I grew up watching in the AWA in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which is to intervene when an authority figure is about to suspend a heel for something awful they did and begs the authority figure to let him get revenge and not let the heel off easy.

-Interesting strategy having the commercial break just six minutes into the show, but it makes sense to get a break out of the way early with a cliffhanger to keep people from switching away. They left on the cliffhanger of Sting saying being authority figure isn't working out. It's hard to explain tuning out in the middle of a promo when Sting said something newsworthy, but strategy-wise it might be worth it because it helps them build the audience later with one fewer break.

-When Sting said he had to step down as General Manager of the company, I didn't realize he was G.M. I thought he was just an authority figure without an official title.

-I get the point of having Bully Ray show his anger by attacking a group of wrestlers, but having him single-handedly beat up four X Division wrestlers including the (heel?) title holder in the division just makes them all out to be jobbers who flip around for a few minutes before the big boys show up and take control. Yes, the wrestlers were part of a grueling match and were weakened before he got there, but it's still an image that just undercuts any chance the X Division has of reaching anything close to it's potential drawing power. It's also a "tell" in that it reveals what TNA management still thinks of the X Division.

-The cross-promotional skit with the "Repo Games" show on Spike TV and Mexican America was mildly amusing yet cheesy. The worst part was when the Repo Games host dismissively said to them, "Go do your little wrestling gimmick thing, whatever." I would have made them redo the entire skit if I were directing. That just came across as condescending. That heel tag team is getting a tag title shot later on the show, and they're foils for a reality TV show host and taking part in a comedy skit while in the end being talked down to? Not on my wrestling show, if I were running things. A heel tag team getting a shot at the champs should be built up as intimidating and tough, not a punchline or chumps like this.

-Tenay accused Taz of "completely no-selling" something about the ODB-Eric Young wedding. I'm not sure if Tenay is trying to be "cool" by using insider terms like that or if it just naturally slipped out because he says stuff like that normally.

-Eric Young and ODB play their roles well with more enthusiasm than most. They're not main event characters or even close, but there's something to be said for how "all in" they are. I'm pretty convinced that they're pretty much just like that whether the cameras are on or not.

-Crimson looks like the off-spring of Goldberg and "Diamond" Dallas Page. He looks like DDP and he has the mannerisms and vocal style of Goldberg.

-I'm enjoying the slow build with Joseph Park. I'm not sure what his little pose was at the end of the exchange with Jeff Hardy, though.

-Quotebook - Robert Roode: "For some reason people in America hate Canadians."

-Nice video package on the history of Robert Roode and James Storm in TNA. Storm was probably being very honest when he said if someone told him only two people from the first TNA event would be left ten years later, he wouldn't have put his money on himself. A.J. Styles is the other.

-Storm saying football should be all year and gasoline shouldn't be four dollars a gallon is talking directly to TNA's target market about things they understand and relate to. It was a nice lead-in to saying "a man who hits a woman is not a man at all" in reference to Roode assaulting Dixie Carter on Sunday. I also liked his line, aimed at Roode right after he removed his sunglasses and stared into the camera, "I am going to right all of your wrongs." I almost wish that was the closing line. Instead, he called Roode to the ring and in Roode's place, it appeared John Laurinaitis walked out. Or Laurinaitis's son, I guess. You can't help but laugh at Storm's delivery of the line, "Who in the blue hell are you?"

-Overall very good segment with Storm and that lawyer guy. That's how you promote Storm's good ol' boy everyman tough guy plain talking character.

-Guess what Garett Bischoff's first two wrestling moves were? Yep, a clothesline. Followed by an Ivan Putsky style flying hammerfist. Then he did his face-plant move for a two count on Angle. Of course, Mike Tenay said, "Very impressive burst of offense from Garett Bischoff." Angle was so threatened by Garett that Gunner had to run out and attack him since Angle was having trouble on his own beating him in three minutes allotted. Then TNA's top babyface star, Jeff Hardy, ran out for the save.

-I really wonder if this TV time and booking enthusiasm were dedicated to someone else on the roster or in OVW who is more ready whether TNA would have a new star on its hands.

-I like that they're running vignettes promoting the return of the Motor City Machineguns. I'm not sure Detroit imagery and black and white footage of Alex Shelly getting his gear on coordinates much with what make the MCMG tag team marketable and exciting, though.

-They did an awful job promoting the tag team match between Samoa Joe & Magnus and Mexican America. Nothing other than mentioning it once or twice and then having Mexican America emasculated in a comedy cross-promotional "comedy" but for Spike TV's "Repo Games." It didn't even feel like Joe & Magnus beat anybody when they won. Having the host of "Repo Games," HJosh Jones, carry away Rosita & Sarita didn't even make sense and was just blown off as a laugh-line of sorts by the announcers before the break.

-After the break they showed him carrying Sarita & Rosita saying, "Chill out ladies, you know what the deal is." Uh, no. They don't and we don't. Is he taking them as collateral? Or as sex slaves? Or what? And then the payoff was Sarita and Rosita leaving willingly with him? What a bunch of nonsense and a waste of time.

-A good TV win for Storm over two heels who couldn't get along well enough to take advantage of the two-on-one stops. Storm celebrating at ringside and leading the crowd in clapping to his song is the lasting image of the match, giving Storm more of a connection with the fans at home watching.

-It seems so undignified for Dixie Carter to have a theme song. Imagine if David Stern walked out to present the Western Conference trophy to a theme song. He'd be mocked for taking himself way too seriously and positioning himself as "a draw" and "a star" just like his players. Taking a step further back, it makes Dixie out to be a mark, being played by people in the back who are playing to her ego and the inevitable infatuation people signing the checks, so to speak, end up having with the crowd adulation and the sense that they're "part of the show."

-The show ended with Hogan standing in the ring and Sting encouraging the crowd to chant his name so he'd agree to take over as G.M. of Impact, plus Dixie on the side looking on full of hope. There was no explanation for cutting away when they did. It was jarring and felt cheap. Disappointing tactic to end the show. It's going to leave a bad taste in fans' mouths. It's not that viewers just can't wait to find out what Hogan has to say; it's just the idea that they would end on such a jarring note, not really typical of TNA Impact, that is insulting and annoying to viewers. This was a step back for the show. Too much time spent on Dixie, Hogan, and Sting, giving the impression it was all a bigger deal than the titles and the wrestlers.

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