TNA Impact 10/15/04
Sorry this is so late. There was some…. let’s just call it unpleasantness… with my VCR. I now own a new VCR. I also missed the first five minutes of THIS recap, so let’s jump into the announcement of four new participants in the X-Division Schmozz at Victory Road. Add Sharkboy (seriously, who throws a shark? I mean shoe?) Chad Collyer, Amazing Red and Sonjay Dutt. I *still* say there wouldn’t be that many Playas in the Himalayas, but I suppose that’s kind of Sonjay’s point.
Jason Pocardo vs. Petey Williams, non-title X-Division squash
Pocardo tries to prove me wrong with some forearms and clotheslines. He tries to hit a sunset flip while Petey is on the apron, but a leg drop stops that. Petey sets up the Destroyer, but D’Amore wants the Styles Clash, just to tweak AJ. DUD
Petey then puts on AJ’s hoodie, cuz he’s badd or phat or something. AJ comes out and hits a plancha onto Petey and D’Amore, then gets his leather back. Well alrighty then.
Next: 3LK is looking to make an impact. You let Scruffy know how that works out. But first, commercials!
Eric Stevens, Spyder Nate Webb and John Thadeio vs 3LK
Spyder has a spyder on his singlet, Stevens is the fat one, the other one is Fatu. That’s right, LORD ALFRED HAYES! Konnan is STILL looking for his dawgs. Oh and for those of you that didn’t know (oh YOU DIDN’T KNOW???) B-Jizzle has adapted his New Age Outlaws rap to fit TNA. He references the Mismatched Tag Champs, but it’s CRAZY Mismatched Tag Champs. It’s good to know he reads me. The jobbers jump them en masse, and well, you know. 3LK toss the jobbers around, including the Coors Light Drop (that’s the Whassup only with a leg drop) and at least they kept it quick DUD
Throw it back to the Best Interviewer In The Business and Jericho’s Evil Twin. Shane wants to know what Jarrett and Hardy can do to raise the stakes in their match. Jarrett doesn’t know what Hardy is into, and doesn’t want to know. Amen, brother. Shane says the O-Word, and Jarrett bitches him out for playing stupid. Hall is coming in on Jarrett’s side and Nash is on Hardy’s side, because that makes so much sense an artery in my brain just blew up.
Six Points of Impact is once again so important that Hammond can’t be bothered to show up. 1) Victory Road is a New Beginning 2) The Outsiders are coming 3) What’s up with Piper 4) The X-Division match will be ten different flavors of pancakes, and Stewie LOVES pancakes 5) Russo loves Dusty, Dusty loves Russo, Pepsi loves hot dogs 6) Jarrett vs Hardy
Back to the ring as even Tenay can’t believe how ludicrously Hall and Nash are being booked.
Brian Gamble vs Abyss
BUT WAIT! Raven has seen enough squashes the past few weeks, so he removes Gamble from the equation with a chair. He gets the mic to remind us that Abyss, Hardy and Brown are all competent journeymen, but Raven is a deity. He warns Jarrett that he is going to, and I quote, “get inside your skull, crawl inside your veins, rip out your bone marrow, spit in your lungs, and stick forks in your brains.” Sounds like a New Jack match. Anywho, this gets the biggest pop of the night. Monty comes out to protest and starts clubberin on Raven. Abyss comes in and the three of them start a whompin and a whuppin. Raven hits a superkick on Abyss, Abyss hits the Black Hole Slam on Monty. Raven escapes a chokeslam with a kick, and here comes the idiots to break it up in case something non-squasheriffic were to take place.
Piper reminisces about how the Pit was improv, and how uberjobber Frankie Williams was his first guest. Man, even the Pit was a squash.
Those Crazy Canadians (Young and Rude) vs Those Crazy Mismatched Tag Champs (Daniels and Storm) tag title match
Larry Z is out with Tenay to inform us all interested parties are barred from ringside. Once again, you let Scruffy know how that works out. Storm and Rude start and the trade power stuff. Storm gets his Big Guy Flippy Floppy, including a drop toe hold and flying headscissors. Whew! I need commercials after literally MINUTES of action….
We come back three minutes later into the match with Daniels working a mat armbar on Devine. Apparantly we missed D’Amore coming down and Larry Z stopping him, but that’s MUCH less interesting than commercials. Remind me to do a mini rant at the end of this. Anywho, Young blows out his knee, but it’s only a distraction. Rude comes in and hits a rest hold. Remind me to do a mini rant at the end of this. Daniels starts to power out of the chinlock but a knee puts him on the mat. The heels play the “Lure the stupid face on the apron in” card to ensure further Shenanigans. Young with a headlock. Boy this match sucks. Storm gets a tag but the referee didn’t see it. How many more cliches can the hit in the match, THAT’S the question. Suplex and elbow drop by Rude, then a top rope elbow drop by Young forces Storm to break it up. Rude holds Daniels so Young can hit a running punch on him, and if you don’t know what comes next you are dumber than Homer Simpson. Storm gets the hot tag. Clothesline! Back Body Drop! Powerslam! Standing Rana gets two. Nice combo by the Nucks as Young holds Storm in the White Russian Leg Sweep position and Rude hits a running clothesline to trigger the WRLS. Daniels makes the save. Daniels makes the comeback for the faces and hits the Rock Bottom/BME combo on Rude, with Young breaking up the pin. Daniels sets Rude up for the Catatonic, but Young pushes Daniels into him, allowing Rude to roll up Storm with a handful of tights for the pins and the titles. BUT WAIT! The ref didn’t count three for some reason, and the heels rolled out of the ring thinking they won. Young rolls back in and casually rolls up Daniels for the pin and the titles. *1/2 The first half of the match was absolutely horrible, and the ending was about as screwed up as you can get. They could have very easily reshot the end, but then again they can very easily not have to have two commercial breaks every match, too. The last five minutes showed what these teams can really do, but whatever.
Cut to The Best Interviewer In The Business searching for Hardy. He finds him perched atop a ladder, miming the actions of climbing the ladder, with the presumption that Hardy wants a Ladder Mach with Jarrett at Victory Road. What POSSIBLE reason would Jarrett have for saying yes to this?
End of show.
Ok. I understand that the logistics of producing a televised wrasslin show isn’t as easy as we’d all like to think. That being said, Impact is KILLING the product right now because, frankly, it’s not very good. It’s not because of the squashes, those can be an acceptable part of it. Remember the old World Class Championship Wrestling show back in the heyday of Texas wrestling? That was also one hour, and we’d routinely suffer through 1 or 2 squashes a show. The difference there was they’d put on one REALLY good match at the end to make us forget about the squash. OR they’d go TOTALLY crazy every once in a while and not have ANY squashes. Inconceivable. (I do not think that means what you think it means.)
No, the problem is the commercial breaks. This isn’t RAW, it’s not live. All TNA needs to do is one of two things. First, just not have the damn commercials in the middle of the matches. Position them just before and just after, most of the matches are under ten minutes so this can’t be hard. This is particularly easy because a majority of the ads are FOR TNA anyway. You remember, like back when it was “ECW! Brought to you by…. ECW!” The other option would be to throw to commercial during the restholds, NOT when stuff is actually, you know, happening. TNA has a real shot to be around for awhile, but Impact isn’t helping right now, which is unfortunate.
