Because I don’t want to review their $30 PPV, I will instead take a look at a handful of matches that I got by pre-ordering their $60 video game. Because that makes a ton of sense, right?
The part where I briefly talk about the game these discs were bundled with
It was okay. Didn’t hate it as much as Lucard, but he and I have pretty divergent taste in games, from what I’ve read of his work over the years. Playing as the X-Division guys can be fun; you can pull off some pretty cool high spots. I think everyone should play Ultimate X at least once, too.
That said, it has massive design flaws, from the lack of match variety, to the fact that everyone kind of plays like everyone else, to all the interminable tag matches with Eric Young in story mode that are the main reason I haven’t played the stupid thing in a month.
The game can’t compete with the sheer volume of content in the WWE games or the depth of the Fire Pro series. So, that makes it a nice metaphor for TNA’s place in the wrestling food chain right now; not as totally worthless as some people may lead you to believe them to be, but failing to live up to their potential to a massive degree. So, kudos to Midway for accurately representing the license, I guess.
That said, I did get a lot of free wrestling along with this mediocre at best video game, and since I ought to review something TNA related while they have their psuedo-Wrestlemania, this fits the bill. Really, it’s interesting to see what they put on this disc to represent the company for anyone who would pre-order the game who was new to the product.
Exclusive Disc-This has five matches, with backstage interview doll Lauren Brook doing transitions between them. It’s basically a sampler of their biggest gimmick matches: Ultimate X, Elevation X, King of the Mountain, and the Terror Dome Steel Asylum. It’s labeled under its new name in the chapter select screen, but they didn’t try and do a WWE-esque edit of it during the actual match.
Holy crap, backstage interview doll Lauren has a last name!
Ultimate X Match, X-Division Title- AJ Styles vs. Chris Sabin vs. Petey Williams (C)
From Final Resolution 2005. So, wow, that was a long time ago, especially given how much TNA has changed. Some things that stick out on that front:
– Shane Douglas and Scott D’Amore were both still around.
– D’Amore was still Team Canada’s manager and a pretty heavy on-screen presence (pun only slightly intended). Also, Mike Tenay really hated him. Or he could just fake disgust at the sight of him. Well, as much disgust as Mike Tenay can register.
– Sabin had really greasy long hair. He looks like a completely different guy these days.
– Petey also looks like a different guy, but for dramatically different reasons.
The hype video of this reminds me that Sabin was a pretty awesome singles wrestler (I really miss his “tornado DDT one guy and kick everyone else” spot, which he doesn’t do anymore). It also sets up all the storylines and establishes what each of the three guys can do.
In case you don’t know, Ultimate X is like an evolutionary step past the ladder match. In order to win, you have to climb up and retrieve a belt/object. Instead of being hung from the ceiling, however, it’s hung in the center of the ring, attached to four cables. It’s one of TNA’s oldest concept matches, debuting in 2003.
So, the match. The first of many gobsmacking spots is an AJ tope on to both guys, made all the more impressive by the fact that the guard rail was inches from the ring at this point. Not to be outdone, Sabin hits a gravity defying dropkick, leaping in the air while he and AJ are on the top rope and nailing AJ in the chest. D’Amore grabs Sabin on his climb and distracts him long enough for Petey to atomic drop him.
That gets D’Amore tossed, making Tenay quite happy. I mean, he really sounds like he hates D’Amore. I forgot that D’Amore elicited that kind of response due to his evil, rotund Canadian ways. His tantrum gives Sabin and AJ enough time to rest/sell (off camera! This was the X-Division in ’05, and they did have a reputation to uphold) while distracting Petey so he has a reason not to climb.
There are a lot of awesome spots in this thing, and AJ gets all of his signature ones. He hits a Pele out of nowhere (didn’t have a name at this point, apparently) and nails his swank springboard forearm on a dangling Petey. Not at the same time, it was spread out, but it should be obvious by now that I do highlights and not straight recaps.
The only really iffy spot to me is a pretty contrived Doomsday Hurricanrana by Petey on to Sabin off AJ’s shoulders. Sabin one upped Petey in the ‘rana department by nailing one off AJ from the cables. AJ takes an iconic (in that they use it every time there’s a video package for Ultimate X) somersault bump off the cables.
The most interesting spot of the match, to me, was when Petey and AJ were fighting on the scaffolding and Petey dragged his hand through a rung in it, bashing it a couple times. AJ sold the hand the rest of the match. It kept him from climbing the cables and forced him to hit Sabin with a one handed powerbomb (!) and a one handed Style’s Clash (!!!!), as Sabin tried to neutralize the hand with a… hand bar, I guess. It still looked really cool.
The finish comes down to Sabin and Petey fighting over the belt. Neither guy can hit the mat with it, and as they play tug of war over it, AJ springboards in and practically steals it. That was kind of a downer for such an otherwise awesome match, although it looked cool and at least paid off the psychology. AJ would transition the belt to Christopher Daniels soon after this, back in the days before Daniels lost his spot to some Japanese goof who wears a spice on his head.
Rating- This pretty much had everything you can ask of one of these matches. Awesome spots! Selling! Psychology! A hateful Mike Tenay! I can’t quite give it five stars, but it’s as close as any TNA match I’ve seen has come to that yet, other than maybe AJ/Joe from Turning Point 2005. ****3/4
Ultimate X Tag Match- XXX vs. LAX (for a big plastic X)
X! Sorry. Winner gets a TNA Tag Title shot, but this match was really all about making Hernandez look like a stud. Well, that’s what I got out of it when I watched it last year, and a second viewing only reinforces that.
While ‘Cide, Ki, and ‘Lix (hey, I thought he needed a abbreviated name too) all got some nice spots in, Hernandez really struck out as the star of the match. He tossed XXX around with wild abandon, Border Tossing Elix on to all three guys, shrugging off Ki’s kicks, and even ascended the cables to grab the X. So, if we look back on this match as the beginning of Supermex’s run to the top of TNA as a singles star someday, let’s also remember the sell job Low-Ki and Elix did for him. Well, that and Elix’s obligatory insane high spot, as he did a cross body off the top of the scaffold on to Hernandez. That was one of the few things he sold in the match.
Also, I really love how much Don West marks out over Homicide’s mid rope tope con hilo. That always cracks me up, even if ‘Cide high fiving him is a pretty heavy blow to his street cred. Although trying to kill Colt Cabana with Drain-O offsets it, I guess, as far as his reactions to dorky white guys goes.
Rating- Excellent opener, easy **** spot fest, as everybody got to do something cool and seeing Hernandez toss the smaller guys around was pretty fun.
Lauren is impressed. Well, as much as she can be, given that she seems like something out of the uncanny valley. She then throws to–
Elevation X- Rhino vs. AJ Styles
From Destination X in 2007. It’s hard to believe that was only last year, although that was a really long year for me, so your mileage may vary.
The hype package makes Rhino sound like a heel, or at least a murderously angry guy, as he threatens repeatedly to end AJ’s career with his own creation. I have no idea why AJ would create this match, especially when he was feuding with Rhino. Seems like a pretty huge oversight on his part while he was fighting with an angry human projectile. Over not taking his advice, but still; I don’t remember AJ doing anything to warrant Rhino wanting to cripple him.
AJ did establish himself as a cocky, dickhead heel by the time the match starts with his mannerisms and cocky smirk. Not enough to see Rhino drop him off the scaffold and watch his head explode like a watermelon, or whatever that hype package was trying to elicit from me, but he does at least make himself obnoxious enough to be hated.
So, they brawl on the floor for a bit before AJ gets the advantage and heads up the scaffolding. That leads to Rhino being at a distinct disadvantage when he climbs up after him, and AJ being a massive dick in response. He starts making the scaffolding shake! By the way, the fans reactions are either genuine fear for both guys or they were very well coached.
Rhino eventually gets up on the scaffold and has to balance himself on all fours. That goes on for a bit, with AJ taunting him, until AJ spits in his face. That proves to be sufficient motivation for Rhino to go after him, but he slips. AJ works him over, stomping and even leg dropping him. Well, sort of. He sort of fell on his ass and dropkicked him, really.
AJ drops down to get more shots in. When that works against him, he decides to simply swing in to a piece of the scaffolding and hide for a spell. This leads to the crowd participation segment, as they have to let Rhino know where AJ’s hiding. That takes awhile (allowing AJ to find another place to hide in the scaffold) before Rhino finally finds him, and they slug it out some more.
AJ gets the advantage off that and calls for the Styles Clash, but I think we can all guess where that goes. Rhino reverses and pounds away, but AJ jawbreakers him and goes for some powder. That blows up in his face, and he takes a Gore for his trouble, leaving him hanging on for dear life. Rhino gets his revenge for something or another by stomping on his fingers and causing AJ to take a nasty but not terrifying flat back bump to the mat.
The Rating- This easily exceeded my low expectations by using the actual pyschology of Rhino’s fear and the impending injury hanging over every punch inherent in the gimmick to build to the finish. Also, AJ taking basically taking a nap in the scaffolding was pretty funny, so I got comedy and dramatic tension. I thought they did a good job actually getting a compelling match out of such a traditionally dead end gimmick as the Scaffold Match by taking the limitations in to account and making the most of what they could do. *** I find it interesting that this is Rhino’s match now (well, in that he has been in all two of them) when they were giving AJ credit for inventing it.
Wow. That was a straight recap for once. Let’s move to a match that is nearly impossible to recap.
King of the Mountain 2007, TNA World Heavyweight Championship- Chris Harris vs. Christian Cage vs. AJ Styles Vs. Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle
Whew. Glad we could get in on that. Lauren’s delivery and facial expressions make this match sound gory instead of exciting. I don’t know, when she says “This match will have tons of unadulterated violence” it gives me the chills a little.
The backstory goes like this; the belt was vacated after a screwy finish in a three way (Angle made Sting tap out while he was pinning Christian) to facilitate the transition from the NWA World Title belt to the TNA version. Joe, Angle, AJ, and Christian all won qualifying matches. Harris was awarded the last spot on the strength of his matches against James Storm, more or less.
The fact that Storm still has a job there while Harris has burned bridges in TNA and WWE in the course of a year is a staggering bit of irony, especially since they devoted a lot of time in this match to making Harris look like a real threat for the belt.
The match itself: King of the Mountain is an annual match at one of TNA’s biggest PPVs (as much as they have Big PPVs like WWE does), Slammiversary. It is also a match that TNA critics point and laugh at due to its convoluted nature. It’s a reverse ladder match; instead of grabbing the belt from a perch, you have to take it from a ringside functionary and hang it. Except to eligible, you have to pin someone. If you do, they go in a penalty box for two minutes. So, that all sounds very incoherent, like something Russo or Dusty created, or perhaps the both of them trying to top each other. Or maybe Jarrett wanted something that sounded like Calvinball, I don’t know.
That said, I thought this match worked very well. It helped that they had their four best workers (and Chris Harris, who, to be fair, worked his ass off to earn the spot) in there. It was all action, and there was even some strategy involved, as there were a lot of pin break up spots to keep people from being eligible.
There wasn’t much of a coherent story; it was just everybody going for their big spots in an attempt to get a quick pin and be eligible to hang the belt. But it was very entertaining on that level; all killer, no filler. Why, it was like there was total nonstop action in there!
So, it’s pretty hard/pointless to recap this. A lot of stuff happened. Because Kurt Angle was involved, there were a few spot reversal sequences. Samoa Joe didn’t do a whole hell of a lot in there; hell, he never even pinned anyone. He was the first guy to defend the belt successfully in one this year, so I guess it evened out there.
The end saw Harris spear Christian off a ladder, which may or may not have been a reference to Edge. That gave Angle a free pass to hang the belt, since Joe and AJ had both taken insane bumps to take themselves out of the match. The impact of said bumps was lessened by the fact this whole match was just a series of big spots and bumps, but AJ’s is one that the replay constantly in video packages (Joe tossed him off the top of a penalty box on to the announce table).
In the end, Angle gets his big title win in TNA. Then he promptly turns heel on Joe, a position he’s been in ever since. They cut that bit off the disc, though.
Rating- I’ll say **** just because I was never bored. A technical masterpiece or great example of storytelling, it was not, but it was a lot of big, fun, crazy spots, and that’s what this match really ought to be.
Terrordome Steel Asylum- Curry Man vs. Alex Shelley vs. Chris Sabin vs. Sonjay Dutt vs. Jay Lethal vs. Shark Boy vs. Jimmy Rave vs. Kaz vs. Johnny Devine vs. Consequences Creed
Tenay actually referred to the cage as a Steel Asylum, so there’s the origin of that.
The set up here was that an X-Division title shot was on the line for the man who could escape from the tiny hole on top of the cage (which I have taken to calling the Hamster Cage of Death for my own amusement). That said, the hype video was less about building up any sort of issue or storyline (because there wasn’t) than making the cage sound like the most hellish structure ever devised.
It’s like how WWE builds up the Elimination Chamber, except taken to an absurd degree by their professional James Earl Jones impersonator (as TNA tends to do). It was when he said you could hold a great white shark in there that I lost it. Especially because, when you think about it, a cage full of holes would be terrible place to house a shark.
Anyway, all 10 guys get entrances, just to really drive home the point that the X-Division is an endless parade of dorks these days. Well, that’s what I got out of it. Curry Man coming out first, in his goofy/awesome puffy hat really served as sharp contrast to the ominous shark cage video package. Jim Cornette sweetened the pot by giving the winner a spot in the World Title Match at the end of the show that was left vacant by Kurt Angle being too injured to compete even by his standards.
Right there, I know Kaz is going to win. Well, I know now because this happened in May, but I would have strongly assumed that had I watched this match at the time.
Really, though, the winner and finish is fairly unimportant; this match is really about seeing what would happen if you took all of the previous matches, smushed them together, and turned the whole thing up to 11. This is nothing but spots and teases of dangerous falls. It was fairly entertaining, mind you, especially when the camera was on the Guns doing their gorgeous tandem offense.
But this was total! nonstop! action! to an absurd degree. It was just people hitting their finishers and climbing. Which I guess makes sense in the context of the match, and really, what else do you expect from the X-Divison beyond big gaudy spot fests? I mean, hey, Kaz hit a Reverse Flux Capacitor off the cage, so that was pretty great.
The contrived spots (especially the 7 man double tower of doom, which was more absurd than impressive, but still big ups for trying it) dragged this down a bit, though, even in the context of a “no story or selling” spot fest. Well, that and the fact that they repeated the spot that wound up being the finish, with one guy tossing another on the pile of other guys. It was cool the first time, I just think they overdid it.
Rating- This was overkill, especially coming after a similar, better match in King of the Mountain. Still, it never lagged, and there was some cool stuff there, and it certainly isn’t something you’re likely to ever see in WWE or even ROH (if only because they can’t afford a cage that can house a soulless killing machine). So, I’ll go ***1/2 for the effort and the energy.
So, that’s it for the Exclusive Disc. It’s a nice sampler of TNA’s gimmick matches; everything on here’s at least energetic and entertaining. While this is a big case of cherry picking, it’s at least nice to know that even they don’t think enough of the Reverse Battle Royal to put it on an incentive DVD. Of course, if you thought this was truly a representative sample of TNA, then you’d probably be greatly disappointed by their month to month product. If you were some kind of theoretical person who would pre-order a TNA video game without ever having seen any of these matches.
I’d say based on the Ultimate X and KOTM matches (and decent scaffold and deadly shark cage matches), this is worth picking up if you find it on ebay or something, if you really want a sampler of TNA gimmick matches. It wouldn’t be a terrible idea for them to put a two disc set similar to this, I think.
But wait! There’s more. Three matches made it on to the Bonus Disc that was also packed in with the game. Might as well review those, too. They’re labeled as historic matches. You’ll see how dubious that is in at least one case.
First TNA Match Ever- Low Ki, AJ Styles, and Jerry Lynn vs. the Flying Elvises
One thing I always get out of watching the early days of TNA; no matter what you think of Don West now, you have to admit he has improved greatly in six years. Sure, that’s almost entirely because he sounded like someone’s overly excitable uncle who had never seen a wrestling match before in his life and was impressed by everything back then, but hey, that he actually sounds like an announcer now is something in his favor, even if he is still a total dork.
The match is pretty much the template for all X-Division matches to come; no resting, all action, selling and psychology be damned. Tenay was already using the “it’s not about weight limits, it’s about no limits” slogan, so they had a clear direction for the X-Division in mind there. So, at least they had one at some point. Yang finished AJ with Yang Time (corkscrew moonsault) after Ki kicked him in the face, by the way.
Rating- Feels weird rating a lightning quick opener like this at all, but what the hell. **1/2. Can’t wait to see this on WWE’s Rise and Fall of TNA DVD, sometime in 2012!
Ron Killings and Jeff Jerrett (sic) vs. Brian Christopher and Scott Hall
No, seriously, they spelled the founder of the company’s name that way, which is the second biggest sign that this selection of matches was hastily thrown together (the first being that this match is on the DVD at all).
This was labeled as a brawl in the match selection screen. It starts out that way, doing the requisite ECW-esque crowd brawl sequence to start through the Asylum in Nashville. But after that pretty well perfunctory sequence, it turns in to a formula tag match, with Scott Hall playing face in peril.
That was a weird stylistic choice, but it makes sense once he goes to tag in Christopher. Because Christopher turned on him, but still; at least there was a storyline reason for me to watch Scott Hall sell for 10 minutes.
After the turn, Hall holds everyone off for a while before the numbers overwhelm him and he eventually jobs to the Stroke, after a Christopher hip hop drop. Yes, his top rope legdrop was called that, because he was still doing his Too Cool routine. I was kind of embarrassed for both us after watching that. I’m guessing he dropped that particular gimmick after the turn, although I have no idea, since I’ve barely watched any TNA from that era, and I kind of don’t care, since it is Brian Christopher, after all.
At any rate, the only reason I can see this being on the disc at all is because it illustrated the formula for nearly every Jerrett feud for the first four years of TNA; Double J overcomes a baby face challenge through interference, after a theoretically shocking turn by one of the face’s ally.
Other things stuck out: Killings was going by a derivative of his K-Kwick name from his short run in the WWF. Hall was in good shape at this point, and his offense didn’t look bad, although he barely got any. Jerrett and Killings were heels because they were mean to NASCAR and country music fans, so they were really pandering to the southern crowds at this point. In fact, they were hyping up a match between Killings and Hermie Sadler (former Nascar driver and current wrestling promoter who ran some TNA house shows) for the next week. So, I guess it’s nice that that exact kind of stupidity is absent from the current product, even if it has been replaced by ten different kinds of stupidity instead.
Rating- Bog standard free TV main event stuff. Except for the fact that people paid $9.99 for it at this point. **
World X-Cup Tournament Finals- Chris Sabin vs. Juventud Guerrera
Okay, this was pretty damn good. While it’s the equivalent of a very good WCW cruiser match on Nitro or a random PPV, that’s no bad thing; it was the exact kind of thing a lot of people wanted from TNA given WWE’s lack of interest in providing this kind of match, and something they used to produce pretty well for a few years. Well, I know I wanted to see this kind of thing from them, and have been disappointed that they don’t provide it, even when I was actively trying to not be as bemused with them as the rest of the internet seems to be.
This is a better match than a lot of other X-Division bouts because it builds to the finish. It’s not all spots. There is some selling and everything! We even get a nice parity sequence, which I always mark out for. Juvie throws a lot at Sabin, including a Tiger Driver, and the Austin Aries-esque combo of a Juvie Driver and a 450 Splash, but Sabin survives all that and finishes with a Fisherman’s Buster to win the trophy.
Rating- Very good match to close things out with. Not a spot orgy, but after that last disc, that made it refreshing. ***3/4.
There are also two Gauntlet Matches on the game disc proper, but I’m not reviewing those. At this point, I have watched/written about exactly as much TNA as I can stand in one sitting. Really, having watched these matches, I don’t feel obligated to write about the promotion again here, at least until they stop making me feel soul crushing angst.
