The Final Impact
February 13, 2014
By: Josh Boutwell of Wrestleview.com
That was most certainly a newsworthy Impact if I’ve ever seen one. We know officially that the first two matches signed for Lockdown is Joe vs. the winner of Magnus/Gunner and Lethal Lockdown with Team Dixie against Team MVP, and for those that missed the announcement yesterday Lockdown will once again return to the ALL STEEL CAGE format as it should be. Lockdown was always the PPV I looked forward to the most each year personally, I always loved it, and I really hated TNA changing the format to just three cage matches last year so I’m excited about that.
Also, this week MVP announced that Jeff Hardy was coming back at Lockdown and then we saw the Willow ‘O’ Wisp vignette which is definitely interesting. I’m wondering if they will do a thing where Hardy plays both characters kind of like Daniels did as Suicide/Curry Man in the past. I’ve only seen the character from old OMEGA tapes (as well as the OMEGA DVD a few years ago) and his one appearances years ago in ROH under the character, and honestly it didn’t do much for me. You can tell that it is something that Hardy enjoys to do and it’s most certainly unique so I’m intrigued by how they will pull this off. The problem with something like that is that unlike years ago when he could have maybe pulled it off without anyone knowing, internet fans will know 100% right away.
MVP was stellar again tonight speaking but as good as he was Dixie was that much worse. Man, she was painful tonight. MVP also looked solid too in his squash match and I got to say I don’t know what people that saw the show live were talking about. Some of the reports said MVP was “chubby” which damn sure didn’t seem that way to me. He’s definitely bigger than his WWE days but it looks like muscle to me. He looked good in the ring too from the little we got to see.
The Wolves damn sure showed out in their match, we’ve been waiting weeks to see those guys and they didn’t disappoint. Bro-Mans deserve some credit too, those two are about a billion times better than I ever thought they would be as a team. For some odd reason they have a weird chemistry together. Joe was beastly as always. I’m really looking forward to some potential feuds we can see with The Wolves, most notably them against Bad Influence. How great would it be for Roode and Aries to reunite Dirty Heels and do a 3-way feud between them, Bad Influence, and The Wolves?
The Ladder Match was pretty good and EC3 looked the best he’s looked his entire time in TNA. The guys is finally being given a chance to work and show what he can do in a ring and he’s a lot more talented than I expected.
The Abyss segment was once again a reason why we should try our best to stay away from spoilers (though sometimes it’s impossible). The spoilers made it seem like the complete opposite of what happened. Abyss saying he’s going to leave and find “someone that knows me” definitely sounds like he could be referring to James Mitchell which would be incredible. I don’t know how I feel about Abyss talking that much or taking off the mask, but if they give him Mitchell again and let him do most of the talking while Abyss just kills people it could be great. Abyss definitely came off well in his promo but I just don’t want this to turn into a “loveable monster” type of thing.
Alpha Female (Sabin’s huge woman) looks very physically imposing and she’s going to add some more intrigue to the Knockouts. An eventual battle of the amazons between her and Lei’D Tapa could be fun. Where the hell is Beth Phoenix and what is she doing these days, by the way?
Great Main Event between Bully and Anderson, they’ve had several great matches and a really fun program together so that was a nice cap to it though I wouldn’t be mad if they strung it out to do one last match in the Cage just to kind of finish off the gambit of gimmick matches.
If I had to guess for Lockdown the rest of the card will be something like this:
– Joe vs. Magnus (World Title)
– Lethal Lockdown – Team Dixie (EC3, Jesse, Robbie E, and Rockstar Spud) vs. Team MVP (MVP, Richards, Edwards, and Jeff Hardy/Willow Wisp)
– X-Division Xscape with either Aries defending the belt or a contenders match if Aries gets involved with Team MVP involving probably Manik, Kenny King, Sonjay Dutt, Zema Ion, and one or two new X-Division talents.
– Muta & Seiya Sanada vs. Bad Influence
– Gail Kim vs. Madison Rayne (Knockouts Title)
– Sabin & Alpha Female vs. Velvet & a mystery partner
– Anderson vs. Bully
That’s just a really poor, way too early guess without looking at most of the spoilers.
– Segment/Promo of the Night: Abyss/Willow Wisp tease
– Match of the Night: TIE – 6-Man Tag/Casket Match (***)
– Overall Grade: B+
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