With a hectic schedule recently, I’ve been unable to get an Impact review up in the past two weeks, but there was no way I’d be missing reviewing this weeks Impact.
Of course this week Impact was brought to us from the Hardy compound as the wrestling world went crazy for ‘Total Nonstop Deletion’. The whole show was the detention of crazy with tag team apocolypto, the debut of Maxel Hardy and a World title match among other things. Of course the whole show was coming from the same world that all of the things the Hardy’s have done for the better part of the last year. However, when you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, you can of course see that the whole thing has taken a massive step out of what you’d normally expect in the world of wrestling we live in.
To some people that is a complete turn off but obviously for me, it has not been. A lot of people cannot suspend their disbelief to the point they can watch something like Total Nonstop Deletion. Personally having watched wrestling for so long I do not have such a struggle. In fact sometimes when a wrestling company decides to just do something so outrageous that basically says “Hey, we know you’re in on the fact this isn’t real” it’s easier to digest. Rather than when they try and present something as incredibly serious and real but is presented through bad acting and or bad storytelling.
The Hardy’s and all the characters they have surrounding them in their world are excellent. When Decay came into the Hardy’s world, it was a fitting inclusion. A real test was when wrestlers with fairly ordinary personas were dropped into the Hardy compound, such as Eddie Edwards and Lashley. These less extraordinary characters were honestly a pleasure to have on the show, in fact I think that by being on this show, there was an extra element added to the characters of guys such as Edwards and it can only have helped them.
Comedy obviously played a massive part in the entire show, I mean as I said; this type of show really can’t take itself too seriously. You can generally find which products you find funniest if you laugh at them even when you’re alone. I don’t know about others, but I tend to laugh a lot less when watching something alone, so it has to be really funny to get me to laugh out loud while sitting alone. This show had me doing that on quite a few occasions. One was certainly the line about the man with three H’s being proud of Matt and the Hurricane’s abilities to “bury young talent”.
One team that I’ve seen a little of in the past – even though it was little, I was impressed – and was further impressed by on Thursday was the Bravado Brothers. Obviously we didn’t see any actual wrestling for the brothers, although I’ve seen them have some good matches with the Young Bucks in other promotions. However, we did see some good character based performance from the two. I’d actually love to see them used more in the future. Possibly on a one night only show as somewhat of a try-out and then hopefully on a full time basis in the tag division. The tag team division is fairly thin and has been for quite some time, so they could be a very welcome addition.
It will be hard to predict where the Hardy’s and their tag team titles go from here. Going into the New Year you’d assume there will be further development in their feud with the DDC. After that, it is literally almost down to the imagination of Matt Hardy to see where they take us. Clearly they do not need the tag team championships; although it could be argued the titles need them. Truthfully the titles have been handled well for quite some time and recently have only been in the hands of deserving worthy teams. Since the beginning of 2015(Yes 2015, not just 2016) the titles have been held by the Hardy’s, Beer Money, The Wolves, Decay also by Trevor Lee and Brian Myers during the GFW invasion angle. Obviously with the exception of Lee and Myers (Sorry Hawkins, face the facts) every team for the last two years to hold the titles will go down as some of the best in the company’s history. However, sometimes while the champions have been stellar, the challengers have left something to desire. So hopefully TNA can construct some interesting feuds in the division in 2017.
I’ve heard suggestions of TNA making this an annual show etc. Firstly TNA will have to tie down both Hardy’s to new contracts in 2017. If they can’t, they can still do some wacky stuff with the likes of Decay but they really wouldn’t be able to recreate this stuff without the Hardy’s. If they do secure them for longer, I wouldn’t want to see an annually scheduled event. It would make more sense for the show to happen when there is a real reason for it to happen. Although I certainly would repeat it, you’d just have to be careful not to overdo it.
It is at this point I’d like to thank everyone for reading my articles on Impact over the past half a year. Unfortunately as you could probably have been able to tell from the last few weeks where I’ve been unable to post an article, I’ve been incredibly busy. This is due to my studies at University and unfortunately my time is only going to become more stretched going into to 2017, as opposed to becoming less stretched. This stretching of time will only increase as my course continues. Therefore I think it’s best for me to announce that as of 2017 I will be finishing up writing this weekly review article on Impact. This will allow me to continue to write my weekly ‘Ratings War’ article as well as hopefully doing one off features at times where I’ve got more spare time.
I will be writing another article on TNA this year though, I’m unsure if TNA are planning much for either the show on the 2nd or the 29th or if those shows will be simply recaps. Nonetheless, around the turn of the year I will release my final Impact review. In which I will review the year. I will add in any thoughts on the afore mentioned shows if anything of note happens on them.
