TNA Impact! Recap for 11/15/07

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The show opens with Cornette telling Tenay and West to shut up about Booker and Sharmell being at Genesis until they can get them signed. Well, he didn’t mention them by name and defeat the purpose, although that surely would have cracked me up.

Tonight: Abyss, Black Reign, and Rellik in a crazy person three way match! Oh, and Kaz wastes no time in jobbing – I mean, getting his title shot against Kurt Angle.

The show opens with the aforementioned bald World Champion, and he’s got his wife and the tag team champions with him. Apparently Mike Tenay thinks TCB is the coolest acronym ever, as he uses it constantly in reference to Karen Angle finally being successful in her attempt to seduce someone, in this case AJ and Tomko. Angle gets his wife to take a bow and then inducts AJ & Tomko in to the Angle Alliance, which is not as cool as stable name as the Christian Coalition. According to Kurt, they’re not just his friends now, but also his family, which leads to a group hug. Remember when Kurt Angle used to hug people all the time. I miss those days, when he was a goofy, homo-erotic dork who just happened to be able to break your ankle, as opposed to the lumpy ball of anger he’s become.

Anyway, Kevin Nash is out to break up the group hug, which prompts footage of Nash about to Poochiebomb (TM Scott Keith) Sting before Angle belted him from behind in the match from Sunday that looks overbooked even in clip form. Nash thought he and Angle were family. Angle retorts that Nash is old wuss who couldn’t get the job done. Nash isn�t sure if his memory’s slipping in his old age, but he could swear that he had Sting beat. The reaction he gets is pretty underwhelming, but you could make out at least one guy who was really excited. Or drunk. Or maybe Hyatte, although I doubt he’d ever be caught dead in the Impact Zone. And I�m making a very dated reference. But I digress. Angle’s very brave with back up and challenges Nash to bring it instead of singing it. That leads to Nash being overwhelmed pretty quickly, if only because Tomko’s there and he has to sell for somebody bigger than he is. That goes on for a bit until the X-Division runs out to make the save for reasons that escape me and are never explained by anyone.

Christian’s here in a slick car! Tenay wonder if he has any idea that Tomko and AJ have joined up with Angle. Given how lame that main event sounded, I think there’s a good chance he doesn’t. That leads us to the break.

I don’t plan on commenting on commercials regularly, but I do like that Mountain Dew is running a contest where you can create a drink for them on a website. Hey, customers, do our work for us for free!

We’re back with interview girl, and Old Man Nash is talking on his cell phone, showing how old he is; ever heard of a text message, Grandpa Big Sexy? Anyway, whoever he�s one the phone with can get there in twenty minutes.

LAX vs. Hoyt and Rave (or, as their video dubs them, the Rock and Rave Infection. Which is what Hemme gave Hoyt when they first started dating. Hi-yo!) is your opening contest. Hemme’s apparently recovered from being killed by Awesome Kong a couple weeks ago. LAX interrupts her air kissing Hoyt before the bell, if nothing else on principle, and we’re underway. After disposing of Hoyt, Rave and Homicide go for a bit, for your obligatory ROH veteran pairing. They do some basic high energy stuff before Hernandez gets a blind tag and nails his awesome slingshot shoulder block. That never gets old. LAX follows that up with a catapult/backbreaker/slingshot senton combo. Hernandez gets an over the shoulder back breaker for two. ‘Cide’s back in, but Rave hits a pretty stiff looking kick on him to counter a charge, and he tags in Hoyt.
Generic big man offense commences, to the delight of no one but Hemme, and even she seems to be forcing it. He takes forever to hit a leg drop, working in some really rhythm-less dancing, and whiffs big time. That allows ‘Cide to get the tag, and Hernandez cleans house, leading to a double team on Hoyt. ‘Cide then directs Hernandez to go for his insane plancha over the top rope, and he obliges. Gringo Killer, but Hemme tries to interfere, and Homicide does the stupid babyface thing and goes after her, allowing Rave to get the cheap pin off a school boy roll up. LAX reacts to this with their usual measured response, and by that I mean they beat the crap out of Rave in the corner. Hemme gets in their faces, but Latino Nation Guy runs in and hits her with the sock full of coins. I thought they weren’t supposed to have man on woman violence anymore? LAX stand tall after dropping the tiny white woman.

And speaking of violence against women, it’s time for a Team 3D interview! Not content with stealing a belt, 3D have decided to up the ante and kidnap a wrestler. And put a hood on him. And read a list of demands. So, wait, they’re terrorists now? Their demands range from the elimination of the letter X from the English language (those madmen! How will we rate porn?) to 12 cases of ding dongs. They like ding dongs. And Yoohoo! But only the old formula. Ray’s childish glee over that makes even D-Von crack up. It was pretty funny. Anyway, the X-Division has less than hour to meet their demands. What is this, 24?

Back from the break, and Interview Girl is with Christian. She mentions how much he’s sucked lately, and that’s all the talking he’s going to let her do. Admittedly, that was a pretty bad way to start an interview. He goes on to cut an intense promo, the gist of which being that AJ and Tomko have to answer to him tonight. Also, he’s still undefeated.

Roode and Tracy Brooks are out for a mixed tag. I dig Tracy’s shiny tie. Roode’s superfan gets more camera time. Their opponents tonight are Gail Kim and Chris Harris. Tenay’s still giving him hell for being a whiner, which means they’re still going through with that heel turn for him, and I still don’t get it. Wasn’t he going to be their next big babyface for 10 minutes during the summer? Kim and Brooks start and do some solid mat wrestling before Roode makes a pretty rough blind tag in. He makes Tracy take a seat right in front of his superfan, which I guess is easier than wearing an ‘I’m an abusive prick’ sign on his back. He continues his misogynistic tendencies by keeping Kim from tagging. He wants her to try and slap him again. She feints it, and when Roode goes to block she stomps on his foot instead. Ha! That leads to a tag from Harris, and he strings together some offense before Roode tosses him to take us to the break.

We’re back, and Roode gets a spinebuster for two. Tracy’s still sitting in the corner, like she’s in time out or something. Roode follows up with a Hennig-esque necksnap, which makes his offense look like he’s a Greatest Hits of the ’80s Create a Wrestler or something. Harris comes back with his lefty lariat, a backdrop, and the hanging vertical suplex that always looks cool. Roode counters what looks like a catatonic with a ddt for two Crowd chants Bobby to get on Roode�s nerves. Hey, at least they care enough to piss him off. He’s got that. Now he wants the chair from Tracy. She tries to taunt him by hiding it behind her back, but Roode’s all ‘yoink!’ and Harris is all ‘I think I’ll just poke my head between the ropes here and see what’s going on’ and Roode’s all like ‘whack!’ and Gail’s all like ‘Even though this never works I will point out the underhanded tactics to the ref and hope he turns around’ and the refs all like ‘I’m getting paid to check out Gail Kim and ignore whatever’s going on behind me’ and that gets the three count for Canada’s favorite evil capitalist.

Afterward, Roode chases Gail off with the chair, and then goes to town on Harris with it. He tries to Pillmanize Harris’s arm, but Tracey blocks him. She follows that up by standing up to him, shoving him a couple times, much to Roode’s surprise. She follows that up by going after the superfan, to Roode’s delight. Hey, who doesn’t enjoy a good catfight?

Backstage, Jim Cornette chews out DDP Morgan for playing booker while he was gone, then fields irate questions from Hoyt and Rave about the violence against women thing. All of that is interrupted by 3D heading out to the ring, which Cornette reacts to so strongly that we don’t see him again during the segment.

Ray calls out the X-Division, and the Machine Guns and Jay Lethal answer. Sabin cracks mom jokes in response to Ray’s demand for ding dongs; I was hoping that they’d just reference the team from ’80s WCW and Wrestlecrap fame, but you have to take what you can get. See, both their moms are hos, and they’re backstage- – you had to be there. Ray gets series and smacks the hostage around a bit before revealing it’s Havok. Lethal demands his title, and it’s really hard to take him seriously doing Savage’s voice. Ray is glad to give it back, because it doesn’t fit, but he wants everyone to know that there’s a traitor in the X-Division. The faces hesitate, but it’s all misdirection, as the rest of the X-Division run in. Lethal frees Havoc, he goes for his kendo stick, and long story short, he’s the traitor and he lays everyone out with the kendo stick. He just traded in overweight ECW expatriates to follow, really. They could have dragged the whole traitor thing out a bit longer, but hey, at least now Johnny Devine may be able to look like a real person again!

JB’s in the back with Tomko and AJ. AJ apologizes to Christian, acting really gay in the process. AJ asks Tomko if he thinks Christian will forgive him, and Tomko does his usual straight man act and says no. AJ’s promos remain the best thing about this show. How hard is that to believe?

Meanwhile, Hall and Nash are talking!

We’re back with a Judas Mesias promo. He�s still evil incarnate, even if he is injury prone and lacking eyeballs.

Hall and Nash make their way out for their promo. Nash wants to keep things short and sweet, but Hall has to get his catchphrase in, prompting a ‘You still got it’ chant from the Impact Zone crowd. We’ll see how long you guys think that when he wrestles again. Anyway, Nash lets it be known that he, Hall, and a mystery partner will be teaming up at Turning Point against the Angle Alliance.

Trademark over the top TNA video package sets up the crazy person threeway match in the most cryptic way possible.

By the way, Rellik is killer spelled backwards and not, apparently, a thirteen year old’s idea of what sounds cool in an X-Box Live handle. Well, okay, I guess it could be both. In an attempt to go really over the top, Dustin Rhodes has taken to licking his rat, which is sort of like that Onion article about Marilyn Manson going door to door to shock people. Abyss seems merely troubled by comparison.

This started out like a handicap match, but Abyss was able to turn the tide. That led to him going for the double chokeslam that never works. He is able to toss Reign on a charge, but he walks in to a pretty impressive spinebuster from Rellik, who has his Goldberg mannerisms down. We go split screen to Kaz brooding before his big match. Rellik (I feel dumber just typing that) and Reign fight over Abyss’s carcass as we go to commercial.

We come back to more double teaming, but it’s broken up by heel miscommunication. More dissension leads to an Abyss double clothesline and his corner attacks. Chokeslam on Rellik gets two, broken up by Reign. He tries his finish that I’ve never seen, but gets backdropped out of it. New guy eats the Black Hole Slam shortly afterwards to take the pin. Post match, Reign uses his spiky dildo or club or whatever it is to commence the beatdown, which includes an unprotected chair shot to Abyss. You�d think they’d cut that shit out after Benoit�s tests came back. Rhino eventually makes the save, doing a Sabu-esque chair toss in the process. At least Rhodes got his hands in the way of that, which makes my marking out for it feel less hypocritical.

In the back, JB wants to know what ‘we’re’ going to do about Hall and Nash. Angle berates him, and then runs the Outsiders down, fitting a shot at Sean Waltman in there sideways. He puts Kaz over a bit before letting us know he�s not making a name for himself tonight.

Back from commercial and Awesome Kong’s making her entrance. Tonight’s sacrificial lamb? Alexa Jade, last week’s entrancel-ess jobette to Gail Kim. She got a fair amount of offense last week. Tonight? Not so much. As in nothing. Kong finishes her with the sit out powerbomb quickly. Gail Kim is out to tell her to stop staring at that glossy picture of her and do something about it. Not satisfied by Kong�s response, she decides to jump her. I like how the refs tried to stop her but she just ran around them. She does well for herself, in the sense that she lands a bunch of shots without getting her head knocked off, before she has to shove a ref out of the way (I like that the refs now bump for the girls) and Kong hits a stiff shot on her, and follows with the powerbomb for shits and giggles. So that match is happening at the PPV, too.

We’re back to Cornette in the ring, and he announces that they are indeed signing Booker and Sharmell tonight. His music is just like his early WWE theme, complete with the ‘Can you dig tha’t’ line. Booker chant, and he puts over the crowd, which elicits a ‘Thank you, Booker’ chant. Which is kind of needy, now that I think of it. ‘Thank you for bothering to come here!’ They sign, and Booker declares that we’ll be calling him Booker TNA some day. Christian interrupts his sparkling wordplay and, as you might have guessed, acts like a total dick, staking out his territory. Eventually, he tells Booker to get to the back of the title shot line and calls Sharmell something I can’t repeat (literally; Spike censored it). Booker answers that with his fists, Christian bails, and Booker gets his catchphrase in. So he’s got his first feud, although it’s one we saw a fair amount of in WWE with very little in the way of good matches. The goodwill and the fact that Christian’s got some main event experience now should be enough to help things out.

A video package of Kaz�s fight for the right run leads to an interview with JB. All he ever wanted was a shot at the title and he’s going to leave it all in the ring.

Tale of the tape is all the pomp and circumstance we get for the match. What, no super serious JB intro? They fight over a wristlock to start. Kaz wins that, Angle counters with a head scissor, and they fight over that. Back up, and Kaz takes him down with an arm drag. Angle gets some shots in the corner, but hits post on a charge and Kaz stays with the arm. Angle breaks that with an Olympic thumb to the eye and works a headlock. He gets a shoulder block running the ropes but eats a Kaz dropkick for two. Kaz stays on the arm. Angle fights back, but eats a kick combo for two and I think you can guess which body part Kaz works over, but Angle counters with an Olympic Slam over the top to send us to break.

Kaz takes an overhead belly to belly as we return from commercials. Apparently nothing of note happened during the break. Angle nails some European Uppercuts in the corner and hits a suplex for two. Body scissor stretches Kaz on the mat, but he fights up and they eventually do the double clothesline KO spot. They�re up, and Kaz avoids a charge and hits forearms. Angle whip is countered with an HBK-esque flying forearm. Kaz whip gets reversed, but Angle hits turnbuckle on the charge and eats a springboard dropkick for two. Angle tries to sneak the Ankle Lock in as Kaz tries to find his feet, but Kaz kicks him off and gets an inside cradle off the rebound for two. Angle answers that with a nasty German that drops Kaz on his head.

The straps are down, but the Olympic Slam is reversed to an armdrag by Kaz and he hits a dropkick for two. They fight over a Wave of the Future, and Kaz hits it, but it only gets two. Karen-ference leads to a low blow and Olympic Slam, but it only gets two! Angle slams him in front of a turnbuckle and goes up, but eats a kick and Kaz goes up. He goes for the Flux Capacitor (a backflip uranage off the top rope) and hits it! Holy shit! He didn’t flip himself over all the way, but still; good on Angle for taking it, if nothing else. That only gets two, though, and Angle reverses another Wave of the Future attempt to a cool looking pin for the three count. Kaz kicks out right after the three count, which does make it look close and everything, but I’m not sure it had the effect they were going for in getting him over. It was certainly a good match, but I don’t know, I didn’t really get in to all the near falls like I would if I were really going along with the whole underdog story here. From my perspective, it didn’t mint Kaz as a future main eventer or anything, like the Sting/Flair 30 minute title match did all those years ago (the gold standard for this kind of match). Still, it was damn good free TV main event, and that’s really all you can ask for.

Post match, Kaz is making a hand gesture that’s either intimating that he almost beat Angle or that Angle has a tiny penis. Either way, Kurt’s having none of it and gets in his face. That draws out the Outsiders, which causes Karen to gesture wildly that they’re behind Kurt. His reaction to Nash tapping him on the shoulder is priceless. They pinball him around a bit (as Kaz is shuffled off the stage in favor of the real stars again) before Tomko and Styles make the save and that cues the music of – Samoa Joe! Joe cleans house, and he�s the third man! Well, that match sounds better now. Or at least less bad. And that’s your show.

The Inside Pulse
Another solid two hours of wrestling. I’m not entirely sold on the direction of– pretty much anything in the company right now, really, but I am enjoying Impact anyway. Next week brings us the Turkey Bowl, where the loser of a series of three ways will have to wear a turkey suit. That will either be fun or 21st Century Wrestlecrap, and that’s without factoring in any Gobbldeygooker references, although given the fact that the WWE references him now, it’s kind of lost its ironic appeal. Besides, they employed Hector Guerrero last time I checked, and I can’t imagine he’d like that. At any rate, I doubt it will involve anyone climbing a pole to retrieve a raw turkey, and I’m not sure how to feel about that. Hopefully I’ll have that sorted out by next week. Also, hopefully I get this damn thing in before early Friday morning.