BRM Reviews the 8/11/2016 Impact (bad)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- it’s not that anyone said or did anything bad here, because everything that was said and done was good (and Storm’s promo was even pretty great)… but this whole segment just seemed like a big waste of time to me. Lashley and Ethan don’t need to cut promos on each other in the ring tonight. They’re match is at Bound For Glory, which Lashley said was “months away.” Storm and Lashley don’t need to have a brawl. Their feud is ending tonight. Bennett and Moose don’t need to jump EC III before this week’s match and Eddie Edwards doesn’t need to cut his promo asking that the match start now. If they had just started this show off with the Moose & Bennett vs. EC III & Eddie match, they could have saved ten minutes of time to devote one of their two big matches.

Also… where the hell did that referee come from? We had a clear view of the ramp from the moment Eddie’s promo ended. How the hell did the ref get down there without us seeing?

ETHAN CARTER III & EDDIE EDWARDS vs. MICHAEL BENNETT & MOOSE- 6.25/10
This was a match that should have gone a lot more than ten minutes… and about half of that was commercial time. Bennett steals Moose’s pin. He hasn’t even been in the company for a month and they’re already planning on turning him.
Also, I’m calling bullsh*t on Josh Mathews naming Moose’s finisher the “Go To Hell.” That was Kevin Steen’s idea, and Steen wanted to use it for his F-5… which makes sense because it’s a move that starts in a Fireman’s Carry position and then you throw the other guy off of your shoulders (hence my attempt to call Hirooki Goto’s Ushigoroshi the “Goto Sleep”). Moose’s move is a chokebomb. It doesn’t fit the pattern, thus it shouldn’t get the name. Also, they should totally be calling it the “Moose Bomb” because that sounds really awesome.

SANDOW TEASER- props to them for realizing that the piece of music Sandow uses from Handel’s Messiah is in the public domain so they can essentially use his WWE music without WWE being able to do sh*t about it.

BFG VIDEO- f*cking Broken Matt Hardy all over everything

JAMES STORM VIDEO PACKAGE- good, except for the part where Storm said it had been “five years” since his last one-on-one world title match. It’s only been four… which he got right in his live promo earlier, so I was surprised they got it wrong here, and even more surprised that they didn’t edit the factually inaccurate line out. Josh got it wrong, too.

SANDOW DEBUT- his name is now “Aron Rex.” Josh said that “when names like Cody Rhodes and Stu Bennett and Ryan Reeves hit the free agency market, this man’s named looked like a typo; a mistake on a Word document.” WHAT THE F*CK IS HE TRYING TO SAY?!
Also, if I a guy who writes meticulous reviews of wrestling shows on the internet, had to think for about ten seconds before I remembered who “Stu Bennett” was, most casual fans are probably asking “who the f*ck is ‘Stu Bennett?’” So yeah. Big fail for Josh.
He’s beardless. He looks like the long-lost lovechild of Tommy Dreamer and The Great Khali.
His promo was pretty freaking great, but smarks gonna smark so I’m not going to lie to you: I burst out laughing when he said “the paying customer” and pointed to the crowd in the Impact Zone.

GAIL, MARIA AND ALLIE BACKSTAGE- meh
Maria is yelling at Allie for being annoying. Then Gail shows up, and the first thing she asks Maria is if she is going to book her in a five-on-one match this week. SOMEONE AT TNA READ MY REVIEW!
Maria books Gail in a No DQ’s match. It’s against Marti, who jumps Gail from behind, hitting her in the back with her telescoping stick thing. Then she stops beating Gail up and says “see you out there.” Why did she stop beating Gail up?

EDDIE, MOOSE, & BENNETT BACKSTAGE- bad.
Eddie came off like crap here, whining even though he lost clean. This would have been a lot better f the heels had cheated to pin Eddie earlier instead of winning clean. Bennett and Moose were good, though.

NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH: Gail Kim vs. Marti Belle (w/Maria Kanellis Bennett & Allie)- 3.75/10
This was a fun little match until the finish, which involved Allie f*cking up yet again, allowing Gail to win. I assume this is supposed to make us feel sorry for Allie in order to turn her babyface or something, but I don’t feel sorry for her because she is being presented as an incompetent moron. And speaking of Allie’s incompetence… why didn’t Maria have Sienna out here, too? You’d think she would want someone who is actually useful out here to help her.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Marti beats Gail down. Jade makes the save. Allie tries to attack Jade from behind but she gets taken out. Maria books Jade vs. Gail next week. This was all pointless.

MATT HARDY CRAP- the whole purpose of this (aside from giving Matt pointless screen time) was to give a reason for why Reby wouldn’t be at ringside tonight. Normally I would be happy that they took the time to explain this, but… if you’re going to go out of your way to give me an explanation, you had better make sure it’s sound.
If Reby was driving the car and Matt order Vanguard 1 to return to North Carolina to protect Reby and Maxel… why did Vanguard 1 fly off instead of getting back into the car where Reby (and presumably Maxel) was? It seems to be like it could do a much better job of protecting Reby if it is right there with her the whole time. All they had to do to correct this issue would be to cut out Matt’s stupid f*cking monologue, but of course they couldn’t do that because putting Matt’s rambling on television is much more important than making sure that the storyline is sound.

JAMES STORM VIDEO PACKAGE- this was all good stuff. It’s just a shame that they are doing this for a match that no one thinks he has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning.

MATT HARDY PROMO- waste of time.
He said the exact same things he said in the video, so what was the point of cutting this promo?
Also, there appears to have been no punishment whatsoever for Matt assaulting a fan.

MATT & JEFF SEGMENT- bad
Well… at least Jeff gives a sh*t that Matt tried to go all Matanza on someone last week. Or not. He basically ignores Matt’s answer. Instead, he begs Matt to turn babyface so they can be the Hardy Boyz again. Matt says no, and warns Jeff that if Jeff doesn’t do everything he says, he will delete Jeff forever. Didn’t he already do that? Wasn’t that what “The Final Deletion” was all about?

AL SNOW & THE TRIBUNAL PROMO- funny stuff, but completely pointless.

JEFF HARDY/BROTHER NERO (& TECHNICALLY MATT HARDY) vs. THE TRIBUNAL (w/Al Snow)- DUD!
This week’s pointless and stupid Matt Hardy trick was to brainwash a fan at ringside. After Matt grabbed the fan and rubbed their foreheads together, the fan tore up his pro-Jeff sign and started doing a sideways Hitler salute, which is apparently Matt’s thing.
Then Matt bit Al Snow’s finger and attacked Baron Dax, taking his own boot off and hitting Dax with it a bunch of times. Jeff then won the match. Then, to show Matt that he had “passion” he beat Al and the Tribunal up after the match. No security came out to stop Jeff, even when was clear he was going to put Al Snow through a table. Then Jeff put himself through a table and he and Matt laughed together. Jeff declared himself to be “Brother Nero” and Matt declared Jeff to be “broken.” Oh great. Now I’m going to have to put up with TWO of them.

BOBBY LASHLEY, DIXIE CARTER, & BILLY CORGAN BACKSTAGE- pointless waste of time.
Last week, one of their employees assaulted a fan for no reason while another employee was MURDERED by three others. Dixie and Billy seem completely unconcerned about any of this.
Lashley is upset about dumb crap. Then he tells them that when he has all of the titles, he’ll have “all of the power.” Because this is TNA, and despite every bit of evidence to the contrary, they always have to do a storyline where “the titles have power.”

DECAY PROMO- sh*t.

DREW GALLOWAY PROMO- f*cking awesome!
Drew seems to be going a little crazy, claiming that Ethan is out to sabotage his career. He notes that despite all of his impulses, he kept his nose out of the Bound For Glory Playoffs final, so he thinks Ethan owes him one more match, with the world title shot at BFG on the line… and if Ethan has any balls, he’ll accept. Now THIS is a match I want to see.

Next week we are getting a #1 contendership ladder match for the tag titles. In this match will be the Broken Hardy Boyz (fine), Bro-Mans (who haven’t won a match since losing their last title shot), the Helms Dynasty (who haven’t won a single match together), and The Tribunal… yes, the Tribunal, who not only have lost (at least) two straight matches, but one of them was earlier tonight TO MATT AND JEFF! WHAT THE F*CK?! Why did they make me sit through that match if it DIDN’T MATTER AT ALL! Hell… Grado and Shera beat them last week. It would have made perfect sense to put them in this match instead, but no. TNA must go out of its way to make the matches on their show not matter and make me angry for having wasted my time watching them.

Not going to lie: I popped huge for Josh saying that “Lashley could snap Connor McGregor in half.”

TITLES VS. TITLE MATCH: Bobby Lashley(TNA World Heavyweight Title & TNA X-Division Title) vs. James Storm(TNA King of the Mountain Title)- 7.5/10
The first thing they do is to have Storm hit the Last Call and go for the pin as a callback to the match where he beat Angle for the title… but for some unexplained reason they decide to have the referee be out of position so Storm got a visual pinfall. You know… just for the sake of hurting their champion’s credibility. F*cking idiots.
This was a GREAT match, but I don’t think that anyone believed for a second that Lashley was going to lose. Aron Rex came out to the top of the ramp after the match, so I guess he and Lashley are going to have a feud, which once again no one will think he has any chance of winning because Lashley vs. EC III (or Lashley vs. Drew) makes a lot more sense as a BFG main event because of the build.

We still don’t know if Bram is alive or dead.
Another bad show from TNA. They continue to waste time on stupid or pointless sh*t, conduct almost no intelligent follow-up (if any at all) to the outrageous sh*t that goes on on a weekly basis. They usually only give us four matches, and don’t even give those the appropriate time. On a TWO HOUR SHOW.

[KILLdozer]

"Is he alive...or dead?!?!"

[KILLdozer]

Pretty sure that's how you feel.

[Big Red Machine]

Pretty sure that's how you feel.

You are failing to capture my outrage that no one in TNA seems to care about this murder.