A pretty solid episode of Impact this week with some good wrestling and a whole lot of storyline progression.
It should be no surprise at this point that whatever Matt Hardy does is entertaining, although I still feel like I should say just how much I loved him on this weeks Impact. Both Matt’s facial expressions and what he was saying had me laughing and the storyline certainly maintains my interest. As I said last week, the whole broken Matt/ Brother Nero stuff has been so crazy, that I really doubt anyone is suddenly going to think Matt having amnesia is a step too far. The whole storyline has been thoroughly entertaining and I can see why TNA has kept going with it. This whole year, despite having a pretty great show, the only thing that has come close to gathering anywhere near the amount of headlines TNA’s backstage drama has had is the Hardy’s. Both Hardy brothers have had a fantastic ability to reinvent themselves over the years. The best wrestlers always have that ability. Of course we’ve seen the confirmation that a whole show will be situated at the Hardy household at the end of the year. From what I’ve heard that has the potential to be fantastic. As much as the rest of Impact has been great this year, there is little to it that makes it different to other great wrestling we’ve seen elsewhere. The Hardy’s have produced something truly unique.
I liked the idea of the kind of mini tournament for a shot at the World title. On weekly episodes of a wrestling TV show many matches end up meaning little. This results in the audience tuning out for these matches because they generally know who is going to win and know the matches doesn’t really matter. By doing this mini tournament not only did we get some entertaining matches but they all actually meant something are lead to rewards for the winners of the matches. We’ve now got EC3, Trevor Lee, Lashley and Mike Bennett who will fight it out for a shot at Eddie Edwards. Any of these matches would be good to see, however Mike Bennett makes the most sense. I’m sure the two of them will have a good match; we’ve seen them have some pretty good matches a few months back.
The men behind the masks of the DDC were finally revealed and I for one am a fan of the inclusions. Firstly there was Bram. It’s of course a little weird for Bram to just return without explanation as to what Decay did with him. Hopefully we get a little bit of follow up from that in the future. Then there was Eddie Kingston. I’ve known of Kingston for years, without actually getting to see all too much of his work. From what I hear the guy is good and he has a bit of a different look and style compared to a lot of the guys on the roster – which is always a plus. Finally, we had James Storm. I was worried a few months ago with Storm having a storyline set up which seemed like an excuse for him to leave the company. Additionally to that, there were tweets and reports that made it seem like he was really leaving. I’m really relieved to see that he will be sticking around. While Storm’s previous faction in TNA was okay, it didn’t really propel Storm back into the title picture like I’d hoped. Hopefully the DDC is more successful in doing this. The faction has made a lot of enemies in a short space of time and that can be a problem – if they only start to feud with specific ones (E.G the Hardy’s) it makes the other guys they attacked seem stupid for not attempting to get revenge. As always I’ll have to let that all play out on TV before making a judgement.
Eddie Edwards and Eli Drake had a really good match which I was pleased about as it’s nice to see fresh talent in the main event picture. Drake has all the makings to be a future World Champion in my opinion. It’s just all about right time and right place. At the moment its Eddie Edwards time and I think he is doing really well at taking on that role at the moment. One thing I always notice about Edwards is after every match he looks like he is hurting, looks like he has been through a battle. This is obviously an important trait to have, it gives credit to his opponent but actually in my opinion makes Edwards look better because he has managed to win despite having taken on a real tough challenge. I’m holding out that in the New Year we can see an Edwards feud with Davey Richards. I’d say that a series of matches between the two is a series that could really do with the World title in the picture. I’m confident both guys have the ability to have a really top feud and series of match; I’m not so convinced that TNA will allow such a feud to play out to its maximum potential.
I’ve been happy with the quality of Impact for the last year and as much as the show can have some slightly less eventful weeks, it’s never at a level many expected from TNA a few years back. Instead we’ve had a pretty consistently solid product that has the ability to have some great weeks. This week was certainly above average and the end of the year could be a high note for TNA, especially as it seems its issues with Billy Corgan have been resolved.
