TNA Impact: Final Thoughts
October 21, 2014
By: Josh Boutwell of Wrestleview.com
I cannot describe how infuriating and frustrating it is to me to have to recap a show in which they not only air a full, previously aired on PPV, match from weeks ago but also the same clips from a DVD release (that came out in like 2010 or 2011) that they have shown over the last 2 months probably 20 times at this point. If that isn’t bad enough they air that instead of two, TWO, first run full matches that were supposed to be aired. The absolute stupidity in that is mind numbing and is just a small (SMALL) piece of the many reasons that TNA is in the shape it is right now.
I can understand if they think maybe the matches were just so awful that they needed to air something else in its place but I honestly can’t believe that to be the case. While I can 100% understand a match featuring Crimson could potentially be so terrible that it is considered un-airable but there is no way in hell that even a Crimson match could be worse than a Mahabali Shera match and they aired that in full last week. And I damn sure don’t believe that the Micah-Drake match was worse than that damn Shera match. How flat out damn lazy does TNA have to be to continue to air those Jeff Jarrett clips, even after the damn GFW feud is over, rather than at least air a clip from the 100 other damn DVDs the company has produced. Where is the logic there?
This company has made DVDs about Bobby Roode (Beer Money), Kurt Angle, Abyss, Jeff Hardy, etc. that they can run clips of instead or even on the history of the damn company. It seriously gave me a headache seeing that they aired that crap and not only that but they pretty much ran 4 segments straight of the BFG match and the Jarrett DVD clips.
Moving aside from those annoyances the matches tonight were good and the in-ring product was at least enjoyable to watch.
Aries/Anderson was a really good match and both guys worked hard. That match hasn’t been done to death in the past either so it felt relatively fresh which is a plus side to this tournament. The nearfalls were really good down the stretch too.
I thought Jessie Godderz’s heel promo was pretty solid and they are doing a nice job to move him away from the goofiness of the whole Bro-Mans thing.
Both the X-Division matches were okay while they lasted and had some good spots and some exciting action, but neither was given enough time for them to really get going. Tigre/Mandrews was really just a bunch of spots strung together while Manik/Zema attempted to put together a story in the match with Manik working over the arm of Zema the whole match. I don’t get Mandrews’ gimmick at all and it seems like they just randomly stuck him out there with it, there was no build or reasoning for it. I guess he’s just a hippy guy that likes skateboards and wearing goofy hats sideways now. I mean is isn’t it bad enough that they stuck the guy with one of the worst, laziest ring names in the history of wrestling? I mean does it get any lazier than just combining a guy’s first and last names together? Now he’s a Bart Simpson acting guy on top of that? Manik’s gimmick could actually be interesting if they bothered, at all, to actually do some vignettes and segments on him and this “identity crisis” they keep talking about. That could actually go somewhere, and not in a goofy Abyss/Joseph Park or Corporate Kane/Demon Kane type of way either, but I highly doubt they will ever truly touch on it.
Lashley/EC3 was good but all the interference and screwyness involved in it really hurt. I think it’s pretty safe to say that it will be EC3 and Lashley moving on to the next round at this point.
The wrestling matches that they are giving us right now are pretty solid but if you are not going to do much, if anything at all, storyline wise for months they really need to be putting out some blow away great type matches on here, but doing stupid stuff like airing previously viewed matches and DVD clips doesn’t help matters either.
-Promo/Segment of the Night: Jessie
-Match of the Night: Aries vs. Anderson (***)
-Overall Grade: D