BRM Reviews the 5/10/2016 Impact (boring)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- meh
Jeff Hardy comes out to talk about Decay attacking him last week. He says that before last week he had no issue with them. He says he “even thought they were cool.” Huh. I guess he must have missed that part where they kidnapped Gail Kim and THREATENED TO MURDER HER.
Decay came out and Abyss started to cut a promo, and with his new facepaint he looks like Joseph Park with goofy paint on his face… which is technically exactly what he is, but Joseph Park was a joke character and the facepaint looks goofy so this whole thing now comes across as goofy instead of dangerous. The “I am beautiful!” catchphrase doesn’t help.
I thought Jeff’s “the only way to decay is when you die, and you’re not dead yet… but you’re about to be because I’m gonna kill you” line was pretty awesome
Decay say they wanted Jeff to join their group, but he loves his creatures too much, thus making him weak. Then Rosemary lets slip that this was actually a contract job. Abyss says that the person who hired them “will reveal himself at the right time.”
That line right there is the worst thing you can ever possibly say in an angle like this. It will never, ever not come off as completely cheesy. It’s much better to have the babyface try to beat the information out of the heel.
Decay starts to surround the ring and Abyss says they will do terrible things to Jeff tonight, at which point Jeff declares “I don’t sell out. I sell in!” WHAT THE F*CK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?! It doesn’t make any sense at all, and even if Jeff was trying to say that he won’t sell out and join Decay, that doesn’t seem to make much sense in this situation considering the turn this segment has taken.
Jeff launches a preemptive strike on Decay but gets taken out by the numbers game (and a low blow by Rosemary in particular). Abyss starts putting the boots to Jeff, while Crazzy Steve… instead of attacking Jeff like a normal person, Steve grabs Jeff’s arm and tries to bite his wrist. WHAT THE F*CK?!
James Storm comes out to make the save, and Decay bail. Storm challenges them to a tag team match, Abyss cut a promo accepting the match. Then Jeff Hardy had to go and open his mouth. He said the following: “Let’s pretend I’m the weatherman. You are in for a Charismatic Storm.” SOOOOOOOOO CORNY!

TNA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Decay(c) (w/Rosemary) vs. Jeff Hardy & James Storm- 5.75/10
This is a tag title match because Storm has a contractually obligated rematch and he is choosing to cash in with Hardy because Bobby Roode has been “run off forever” or whatever stupid explanation they gave last week.
They had a fine match until the finish. Storm and Hardy were about to win but then the lights went out and f*cking Willow appeared on the ramp. This distracted Jeff. Crazzy Steve then blew mist in his eyes and Abyss hit him with the Black Hole Slam for the pin. Willow disappeared. Way to put over your champions there, TNA. They need both cheating and a distraction to beat two guys who have never teamed before.
Also, Willow is almost certainly Matt Hardy. It will interesting to see how they explain how it is that he acquired the magical power to control the lights in the arena.

DREW GALLOWAY PROMO- he is going to call out Lashley.

JEFF HARDY WAS UPSET TTHAT SOMEONE ELSE WAS RUNNING AROUND IN THE WILLOW COSTUME- he showed more anger about this then he did while cutting promos for his big I Quit match with his brother a few weeks ago. He said some incoherent things, threw things backstage, and then vowed to expose the imposter by the end of the night.

MIKE & MARIA HANG OUT WITH BILLY CORGAN AFTER A CONCERT- dumb and annoying.
It’s a lot less impressive to show your wrestlers being chums with a celebrity when that celebrity is an executive in your company. Corgan put over Maria for doing a good job running the Knockouts Division. For some reason, during this, the video was only playing on the middle third of the screen while the out thirds had some stop-motion-ish black and white images or Maria and Corgoan’s completely clothed chests. What the hell was the point of that, other than to make my eyes hurt? It’s not being “artsy” if it serves no purpose!

DREW CALLS OUT LASHLEY- no rating, really bad segment.
What they were trying to get across is that Lashley is a coward. The way they did it was by having Drew call Lashley out so he can give him this big grand speech about how Lashley will never break him. Drew says he wants to have their match tonight but Lashley says that even though he would beat Drew “in record time” he wants to wait until next week to give the fans something they can anticipate (so at least someone in TNA understands booking). Then Drew gets all up in Lashley’s face and says that he wants to fight tonight, dammit!... And Lashley just ignored him and walks away while Drew speechifies some more.
They want to portray Drew as this “fighting champion,” but then, in order to get it across they have him in these segments where all he does is call be people out and cut really intense promos about how much he wants to fight but the fighting rarely happens in those segments. Drew & Lashley did a similar segment to this on Drew’s first show as champion (A MONTH AND A HALF AGO) that actually started with Drew cutting a promo saying that now that he was champion there would be less talking and more fighting. Pointless confrontation segments like this have been an issue for TNA for a year or two now, but this problem has gotten much worse since their move to PopTV. And now that you are doing this with Drew Galloway, a guy you have been building up as being about fighting over talking and who cuts REALLY intense promos, it comes off as REALLY bad because he’ll cut these super intense promos about how he wants to fight and the heel will just walk away and Drew will be left standing there with his thumb up his ass, looking like Captain Melodrama because he cut this big intense promo but never actually did sh*t about it. This segment was a perfect example of that.
It also makes you wonder why it is that Drew is the champion and he has expressed a desire to be a fighting champion… and yet TNA never actually books him in matches!
This is the eighth show since Drew won the title. One of those weeks he wasn’t medically cleared to compete. In three of the remaining seven weeks there was no match scheduled for Drew at the start of the show, and one of those weeks in which there was a match scheduled for him was the week that Tyrus was cashing in his Gauntlet for the Gold title shot, so that really wasn’t even TNA management making that match at all. And this is only getting worse as, if you don’t count the Tyrus match, the last time a match for Drew Galloway was booked before the show went on the air was FIVE WEEKS AGO.

DREW GALLOWAY & ELI DRAKE SEGMENT- good
While Drew is standing impotently in the ring, Eli Drake comes out and cuts an awesome promo telling Drew that if he wants to defend his title so badly tonight, he should put the title on the line against Eli, right here, right now! Imagine how much more ridiculous Drew would have looked if Eli Drake didn’t come out and make this challenge.

TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Drew Galloway(c) vs. Eli Drake- 6/10
Drew won. Lashley showed up after the match and speared him, then posed with the belt. That part was good.

EC III PROMO- pointless. He cuts a promo into the camera in which he tells Mike Bennett that he is about to go out to the ring and call him out to either fight or negotiate. If you’re going to go out to the ring to cut this promo, what the hell is the point of cutting this promo into the camera backstage?

MARIA SUMMONS GAIL & JADE TO HER DRESSING ROOM- she books them in a rematch for the title. Maria says Sienna will be at ringside to “motivate” them. Not sure what that could possibly mean. It’s a title match. Why wouldn’t they be trying to beat the hell out of each other?

EC III & MIKE BENNETT SEGMENT- not so good
Ethan says he is “a man with a vendetta.” Then, the very next thing he says is “Michael Bennett- fetch your wife and come on out here. Let’s talk business.” That’s not how people with vendettas act. So the Bennetts come out and Maria starts talking, and Ethan immediately interrupts her, saying I’m not here to talk to you. I’m here to talk to him.” So why the f*ck did you specifically tell him to bring her out with him?
Ethan takes forever to ask Bennett for a rematch. Bennett says that Ethan’s demons are eating him up inside and that he needs a “road to redemption” to make him feel absolved of his past wrongdoings, so Bennett says he will have Ethan fight all of the demons of his past, and if he can beat them all, only then will Bennett give him a rematch. Ethan agrees to this. Ethan will face his first “demon” to tonight in a cage match, but we’ll have to wait to find out who it is.
Apparently the earlier segment with Mike & Maria hanging out with Corgan was meant to set up Bennett proposing this idea to Corgan, who presumably said that if Ethan is okay with it, he will sign off on it. I get that Ethan really wants the rematch with Bennett so he is willing to jump through some hoops to get it… but if he wants the match, then shouldn’t he just talk to Dixie about it? Isn’t this the kind of match that TNA should be booking on their own?

TNA KNOCKOUTS TITLE MATCH: Jade(c) vs. Gail Kim- 4.75/10
A really good start but then Sienna decided to attack Jade for no reason, even though it was Gail who she had just been yelling at. She then beat Gail up, too.

AL SNOW PROMO- he shows us his training school, the Al Snow wrestling academy and says it is the place to learn wrestling the right way. I love how Al managed to work the hell out of TNA here. They should have been suspicious the moment he said “and then we’ll do a promo where I plug my wrestling school!”
This promo was actually really great, and I thought the Donald Trump line was extremely clever.

AL SNOW vs. MAHABALI SHERA- 3.5/10
They did the old Abdullah the Butcher “hide the foreign object from the referee while making sure the fans all know exactly where it is” spot. That was really cool. Anyway, they’re doing this complete and total early 1980s southern-style match… and then Al Snow lets Shera kick out of his freaking finisher! WTF?
Grado showed up to try to stop Snow from using a foreign object (for about the fifteenth time that match, which makes you wonder where Grado was the other fourteen times Al tried to hit Shera with it). Al wins up being distracted long enough for Shera to recover and hit his finisher for the win.

JEFF HARDY SEARCHES FOR WILLOW- And when he finally finds him, he shouts “YOU SON OF A WITCH!” Yeah… I don’t think there is any way anyone aside from Jeff is taking this angle seriously at this point. He easily beats Willow up as we fade to a commercial.
When we got back from commercial Jeff was still beating Willow up. Then another Willow showed up and Jeff got destroyed with a chair. Then a third one showed up. This is wacky.

SIX SIDES OF STEEL MATCH: Ethan Carter III vs. Rockstar Spud- 6.5/10
Didn’t Bennett say that Ethan was being haunted by the bad things he had done? So how will beating the sh*t out of Spud make Ethan feel better about having mistreated Spud? And as Josh told us during this match, Ethan already apologized to Spud.
The match was good, but not good enough for a cage match. There was absolutely no reason for this to be in a steel cage than to do a gimmick.

A bad show from TNA. The wrestling wasn’t terrible or anything, but the storylines were poor and the show was pretty damn boring with a lot of padding segments. Also, of the five matches on this show, only ONE was booked before the start of the show. That’s just plain silly. It feels like the inmates are running the asylum, and yet we’ve got three different authority figures running around backstage and even just recently did an angle to create one.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Josh Mathews- “At last count Storm’s got seven world tag team title reigns.”
James Storm won his seventh world tag team championship OVER TEN YEARS AGO (he had six in AMW alone, plus one when they did that AMW/Triple X Parejas Increibles deal). He’s got fourteen world tag team title reigns in TNA… and that’s only counting TNA!

2. Josh Mathews- “Tough for us to tell out stories here with all of these nearfalls.”
THEN WHY DON’T JUST CALL THE F*CKING MATCH?! You know, like a REAL announcer would.

Both Josh and Pope also said many stupid things to try to justify the absolutely idiotic opinion that losing cleanly to Mike Bennett is “the best thing that ever happened to EC III.”