BRM Reviews the 8/25/2016 Impact (I'm about ready to give up)

[Big Red Machine]

ETHAN & DREW MEET BY THE POOL ON TOP OF A BUILDING- that’s strange. Usually The Young and the Restless ends once the Impact music begins.
Yeah… so we get stupid music playing while Ethan walks around a pool on top of a tall building. Then Drew shows up. They both think the other one asked him here for some reason or another, but really it was a mysterious third party (who everyone in the world but them has already figured out is going to be Aron Rex). Ethan says that “it looks like the office has decided to stir the pot.” This would be the same office that suspended these two guys for brawling just last month. Their issues have only intensified since then... and they think TNA has decided to trick them into going to the same place at the same time, with no one else around, and free alcohol? Are they stupid? Not only has TNA shown that they don’t want these two brawling, but if they did, they could just book them in a wrestling match (you know… like the one that is tonight’s main event). Why would it be to TNA’s benefit to have them fight by a rooftop pool where there are no cameras around and when doing so would jeopardize tonight’s big main event.

Well… fortunately for TNA, a brawl doesn’t break out. Instead, they are 100% jovial and decide to share a drink together. Don’t they hate each other? And shouldn’t they be concerned that some mysterious agent has lured them both to the same place at the same time under false pretenses?

I do not understand why TNA insists on doing segments like this. Aside from the obvious kayfabe problem of the background music and the question of “how are we getting this video?” (which is a bigger problem than usual because of the way TNA shoots many of their backstage segments, with the cameraman hiding from the people involved, in order to give us an explanation for how we are seeing these private conversations), they are RUINING THEIR OWN MAIN EVENT! I understand that my stringent belief in logic and kayfabe is a minority opinion (unfortunately), but I am certain that 99% of wrestling fans are going to be less interested in seeing this match now that we’ve seen Ethan and Drew share a friendly bottle of whiskey than they were when we thought they hated each other.
I’m not even sure what TNA thinks they get out of doing something like this. Do they think it makes them look high end to film in a separate location and use a drone to film these guys on a roof top? Because showing what is clearly a bottle of Jack Daniels but with the words on the label other than “whiskey” taped over it pretty much counteracted that (and all of that could have been avoided by just not showing a stupid, “artsy” close-up of the battle and glasses).
Do they think it makes them more like Lucha Underground to film pre-taped “this is a clearly a TV show” segments like this? That only works if you stick to that format for the ENTIRE SHOW like LU does. Like the camera problem, this is an area where you need to pick a format and stick to it, as switching back and forth undermines the integrity of the show’s ability to help me suspend my disbelief by pointing out the contradiction.
Do they think it makes their characters more complicated or sophisticated or three-dimensional to have them able to sit down and talk like friends even though they hate each other? Well I’ve got news for you, buddy: This is pro wrestling. Your ultimate goal is to sell me on the matches, so anything that hurts that goal should be avoided at all costs. You can have sophisticated, three-dimensional characters, but the way you show that needs to be done by their reactions to the events of the wrestling show. Drew Gulak and Timothy Thatcher showed themselves to be much more sophisticated characters than pretty much anyone in TNA by their actions last weekend in just the few minutes after their EVOLVE World Title match.
And, of course, we have the fact that shooting something like this costs extra money and also eats up time on your wrestling show that should go to wrestling matches. So yeah… this was terrible.

RECAP VIDEO FOR THE DREW-ETHAN FEUD- Oh look. Here is Drew yelling and screaming at Ethan, and examples of why they should dislike each other and want to fight.

PLUG FOR THE “SUMMIT”- now we’re back to silent images of what we just saw one minute ago while Josh tells us that we will get to see the rest of the footage of what happened when Ethan and Drew had a “summit” where they “sat down to hash out their problems.” GAH! NO! This is professional wrestling! We solve our problems in the ring! We don’t sit down and talk things out before a heated match! I am struggling to think of something that TNA has done that has been more backwards than this. Think of the ground that covers!

“OPEN INVITATION BATTLE ROYALE” FOR A SHOT AT THE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE- 4.25/10
Lashley came out to do commentary, so Pope left because they still don’t like each other. I didn’t like this, simply because Pope should have to stay out there and do his job. I thought that at the very least they were going to use the “open” invitational part of this to have Pope come in and win the match so they could have Lashley beat someone who kind of feels like he is important without actually having him beat an active wrestler, but no. They just did it for the sake of doing it. Or maybe because they could only afford two headsets. That’s also a possibility.
Lashley’s commentary was meh. I got what they were going for with him saying it didn’t matter who won because he would beat them, but it got very repetitive very quickly. Josh’s constant prompting him with “what do you think about Wrestler X, champ?” didn’t help. There really seemed to be no point to his presence there other than to have him there.
The participants in this match were: Bro-Mans, Eli Drake, the Tribunal, Grado, Mahabali Shera, Mike Bennett, Moose, and Eddie Edwards. It’s an “open invitational” battle royale for a shot at the TNA World Heavyweight Title! THE ENTIRE ROSTER should be in this match (possibly except for Drew and Ethan, who have a match for a world title shot later tonight with better odds of victory so they might not want to risk an injury by participating in this match)! I mean… ARON REX! He has made it clear that he wants a world title shot, so why isn’t he out here? If they hadn’t called it an “open invitational” battle royale there would be no issue here, but TNA has to go and give this thing a stupid name, opening all sorts of problems for themselves.
It was a battle royale. It wasn’t very exciting. Everyone involved except for Eddie Moose, and Bennett is just an undercard jamoke, almost all mired in endless, pointless feuds, so none of the eliminations felt like they meant anything until the final one. The final four were Eddie, Moose, Bennett, and Jesse Godderz. They couldn’t even protect Eli Drake- who should still be owed a return match for the King of the Mountain Title- enough to let him be one of the final four. Instead they gave that spot to one half of a comedy tag team. Once it got down to Moose, Eddie, and Bennett, everyone knew the only two possibilities were either Eddie overcoming the odds and winning or Bennett betraying Moose, and we got the latter, with Bennett dumping Moose and Eddie while Moose as struggling to eliminate Eddie.

DREW & ETHAN SUMMIT PREVIEW PART 2- oh dear Lord this is going to be worse than I thought.

TYRUS “FIXER” COMMERCIAL- do these serve any purpose other than to eat up thirty seconds of airtime?

BENNETT & MOOSE ARGUE BACKSTAGE- there is no reason to be breaking these two up already. Maria shooed away the cameraman. I only comment on this because, 1) it’s nice when someone actually notices this guy with this GIANT CAMERA filming them, and 2) it’s nice that they remember that Maria and Bennett are married. They should be seen together a lot more often than they are.

HARDYS & DECAY SEGMENT-
Matt comes out and says they will win the tag titles from Decay now that they have earned a shot by winning last week’s ladder match for the contract for a title shot. Well… he said it in Broken Matt Hardy Language, but this was the gist of it, and for once, it wasn’t too weird.
Then Jeff decided to show up. The fans are now shouting “OBSOLETE!” like Reby usually does. Normally when a babyface goes crazy and turns heel the fans are worried about his mental health and try not to do things to damage it. Jeff Hardy’s fans encourage his madness, and support any position he takes. Are we sure they’re fans and not a cult?
Jeff has used makeup or facepaint or something to do some sort of creepy-looking thing to his eye. Matt tells Jeff that he isn’t needed out here right now so he should go back to the back. Jeff says he wants to “work. Wrestle. Win. For myself… and for the Creatures!” So is he not really broken or what?
Matt then says that he is happy that Jeff wants to do those things, because they are going to set their sights on Decay and delete them or whatever. Then Rosemary showed up on the platform where they have the hard-cams to cut a promo. She says that the Hardys are too worried about what other people think of them, which would have been a perfectly fine charge to level at them BEFORE this “Broken” thing started.
Abyss came out on the ramp and cut a promo saying they would destroy the Hardy legacy and make them “rot in Decay.” Then he forced in his idiotic “beautiful” catchphrase, ruining an otherwise... well… I can’t say it was “good,” but an otherwise acceptable promo. Then Crazzy Steve showed up in the crowd and also said stuff. He was the best promo here by miles.
One of the things Steve said was that “no matter how many ‘premonitions’ you have, you will never see us coming.” Matt replied by saying that Steve was wrong or in one of his incorrectly pronounced “premeeneeeetions,” he saw which one of them tried (will try?) to abduct “King Maxel.” Matt vows that whichever one of them it is, by the end of the night… “I will EAT YOU!” He then repeated this over and over again.
Speaking of Matt Hardy eating people… it has been three weeks since Matt assaulted a fan and BIT HIS FACE hard enough to draw blood. There hasn’t even been any talk of Matt Hardy deserving any sort of punishment. And while we’re on the subject of punishment, it has been two weeks since Decay MURDERED Bram. No punishment for them has been discussed either. Hell… the entire incident hasn’t even been brought up since. Meanwhile, James Storm hit a security guy with a beer bottle, and by golly THAT deserves a suspension!

Matt and Rosemary traded annoying promos, resulting in Matt challenging one member of Decay to face Jeff Hardy tonight. The fans chanted for “all three!” because I guess they like seeing Jeff get his ass kicked. Abyss volunteered by calling Jeff a “broken son of a b*tch,” so Jeff hit him with a baseball slide and a referee ran down to make this match official.

ABYSS (w/Decay) vs. JEFF HARDY/BROTHER NERO (w/Matt Hardy)- DUD!
The match went seven minutes, but more than half of that was during a commercial. What we did see was slow, boring, and overbooked to hell. Abyss got some VERY boring heat (a f*cking head-vise). It had to be this way because if they were doing anything exciting it would have taken attention off of Matt shouting stupid advice to Jeff over the microphone. Jeff makes his comeback and is about to go for the Swanton Bomb when Matt tells him that he can’t hit top rope moves anymore. I still fail to understand why Matt insists on this. Yes, I know he is crazy so his actions don’t have to make sense, but we already knew he was crazy so this doesn’t actually help the angle all, and this makes this angle even more frustrating to me, by bogging Jeff’s matches down with dumb spots like this, as well as making them more boring by taking away Jeff’s most potent weapon.
Instead of the Swanton to Abyss, Jeff goes for a diving crossbody to Steve on the outside but misses (he wasn’t supposed to miss. Steve just failed to catch him) and hits the ground hard. We somehow wound up with Steve, Jeff, and Abyss all in the ring. Steve was in there for a good minute before Hebner spotted him, and it’s not like Rosemary or Matt were distracting Earl, either. Steve tried to hit Jeff with a chain but Jeff stopped it. Babyface Jeff then kicked Abyss in the balls and hit him with the chain, but this was only a two-count. Abyss got the advantage again and the heels tried to cheat again, this time via Steve spraying mist, but Jeff avoided it and Abyss got misted. So basically, Steve is totally incompetent.
Then Matt decided to reveal to the world that in his “premeeneeeetion” it was Crazzy Steve who tried to abduct Maxel, so he grabbed Steve from behind and BIT HIS EAR UNTIL HE BLED. I didn’t need to see that.
Meanwhile, back in the ring, after Abyss kicked out of a Twist of Fate (the second one of the match), Rosemary interfered and misted Jeff, allowing Abyss to pin him with a Black Hole Slam. This match managed to simultaneously be boring and have guys kicking out of way more than they should in a seve- minute match. The overbooking was very frustrating, and I thought that everyone (other than arguably Matt and Rosemary) came out of this match looking worse than they did going in.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Upon further examination, the “blood” on Steve’s ear (and around Matt’s mouth) looks like it’s pretty much the same color as his paint- a fact that was made even more clear when he used it to paint on Jeff’s unconscious forehead. Matt cut a promo telling Decay that “your day of deletion will soon come at my hands.” He then cut a promo on Jeff telling him that his high-risk offense cost him this match (not true) and that Jeff need to accept that he is broken. You know that somewhere in Nashville, Billy Corgan and Dixie Carter and Matt Conway and Dave Lagana are all sitting around and congratulating themselves on these great “characters” they have, all while they drag their show down into the depths of unwatchable dreck via all of this stupid wacky bullsh*t that these “characters” do.

ALLIE, MARIA, SIENNA & BILLY CORGAN BACKSTAGE- bad
Maria yells at Allie because apparently Maria didn’t know that Sienna has a title defense tonight. What? Who booked it? Isn’t Maria in charge of the Knockouts Division? If someone else is booking their matches, then why does her job even exist? And where has this person been for months while Jade and Gail weren’t getting title shots that they deserved?
Turns out that it’s Billy Corgan who made the match. He says that he can’t alter the deal Maria and Gail made, but he can do something about what happened last week. Sienna says that she’s not afraid of anyone. Corgan tells her that it “might be multiple people.” He also told her to “get your little turkey gobbler thing” and get to the ring. This wasn’t quite as bad was what Steph does, (although that’s mostly because Sienna is a heel and Corgan is a babyface), but it was pretty close.

By the way… we’re just about an hour into the show, and we have had a grand total of ONE wrestling match that was set up by management happen tonight, and only two matches overall.

BENNETT & LASHLEY BACKSTAGE- good stuff.

NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH FOR THE TNA KNOCKOUTS TITLE: Sienna(c) vs. Marti Belle vs. Madison Rayne vs. Allie vs. Jade- -3/10 (yes, negative)
WHAT THE F*CK?! So Corgan comes on talking all about how it wasn’t fair that people stuck their noses in last week’s match, so logic would dictate that Billy is going to give Jade a title shot, as she got screwed out of one last week by Sienna’s interference causing her to get DQed, and her whole story has been that she wants the one-on-one rematch she is supposed to get but hasn’t gotten yet. Or possibly even Gail and Jade (Gail did, technically, win last week, so this wouldn’t be altering the deal Gail and Maria made). Instead, we get Sienna defending the belts against Jade… and also three other women who haven’t done SH*T to deserve it!
Anyone know when Madison Rayne’s last televised victory was? Five months ago. Since that time, she has lost two title matches and a #1 contendership match. And now she’s getting another title shot for no reason. For Marti it has only been a mere two months since her last victory, and she has lost a title match between now and then. And Allie… HAS NEVER WON A MATCH EVER. More than that, she has been portrayed as completely incompetent and barely (if at all) trained! So she gets a f*cking title shot?! And if the goal is to try to make Sienna lose the title to punish her for interfering, why stop at five women? Why not put Rosemary and Raquel in the match? And now it’s a No DQ’s match?! WHY?! All this will do is make it completely legal for Maria to interfere!
And look. Here comes Maria now.
You’d think that with the situation with Allie being what it is, we would have gotten at least one spot where Allie lied down and let Sienna cover her (yet another reason why her inclusion in this match makes Corgan look like an idiot), but that never happened once.
The whole match was based around the comedy of Allie being an incompetent f*ck-up… so of course TNA puts the title on her. She won after she accidentally hit Sienna with Marti’s baton thing in a spot that looked terrible, and then Marti hit her with the baton and she fell into the cover on Madison in a spot that looked just plain embarrassing (Marti was then dropkicked by Jade so neither of them could break it up). So the once prestigious Knockouts Title is now being hels by an undeserving incompetent, barely-trained f*ck-up who won it by accident in a comedy match. Right. Because that’s MUCH better than building up to a big match between Gail and Jade or a final showdown between one of those two and Sienna.

ARON REX PROMO- complete and total waste of time. He told us that everyone wants to be champion, that he asked management if he could be the referee for tonight’s Ethan vs. Drew match, and that at the end of the night, one of them would be “bound for glory.” In other words, nothing but stuff we already knew.

ETHAN & DREW PREVIEW #3- yeah… this is going to suck.

ANOTHER TYRUS COMMERCIAL- still a waste of time.

ALLIE PROMO- she’s happy that she won. She plays the character well, but the character is not someone who should ever be champion.

THE DREW-ETHAN SUMMIT- THIS SHOW SUCKS SO F*CKING MUCH!
First they do a shot. Then Ethan says “Alright. So what the hell’s your problem?”
OH MY F*CKING G-D HOW STUPID IS HE?! A f*cking seven year old who has never seen professional wrestling before could figure out from that video package that Drew is pissed because Ethan accidentally cost him the title! The only possible explanations for Ethan to ask this question are that he is either a complete moron, he is so conceited that he hasn’t listened to a word Drew said, or he’s just being a dick on purpose. None of these are good for your top babyface.
Drew has to tell Ethan that he is angry because Ethan cost him the title. He says he knows Ethan didn’t mean it, but he asked him to stop sticking his nose in his business but Ethan did it anyway and he cost him the title. Meanwhile, they are splicing in footage of the various incidents.
Ethan says “the way I look at it, the reason you’re not World Heavyweight Champion is that you lost. Did I get involved? Yes.”
WHAT A F*CKING DOUCHE BAG!
Ethan says that he granted Drew the match. Drew says that this match will be “another level” and that he is going to hit harder and blah blah blah and Ethan says the match will be great because they both want it so much and all of that bullsh*t and they’re all friendly and joking around… and then Drew...

Pushes Ethan into the pool...

And Ethan laughs.

F*CK THIS SH*T! This was such a f*cking waste of time! Not only did no one say anything new, but they both said sh*t that the other guy should already know, so them talking it about felt worse than redundant, and made them both look stupid (and made Ethan look like a massive douche).
So what was the point of this? All it did was KILL THE HEAT FOR THEIR MAIN EVENT. Well… that plus it raised a bunch of questions that will never be answered, like “who invited them?” (and the accompanying “why did they do it?” as well has how TNA got the film, who filmed it, etc. etc.) If they spent anywhere near as much time in their creative meetings trying to book a wrestling show as they do trying to write and film padding segments, maybe this show wouldn’t suck so f*cking much.





“There will be no pool later tonight. There will be no whiskey.”
Thank you for the clarification Josh. You can go f*ck off now.


LASHLEY & MOOSE SEGMENT- Moose is walking in the parking lot when Lashley drives by in his car and invites Moose to dinner with him in a douchy manner. Moose seems to consider the offer. Why is Lashley in his car? Why is he allowed to leave in the middle of the show?

FACT OF LIFE WITH A MILLION PEOPLE IN THE RING- SOOO F*CKING ANNOYING!
The X-Division is in the ring. For some reason Eli has the X-Division Title on his podium. He buries Billy Corgan and TNA Management for being stupid, and demands the King of the Mountain Title back. So they won’t give him that title back, but they’ll send him out here to make an announcement about the title of a division he isn’t even in?
He tries to stir sh*t up. Spud buries Braxton Sutter, who responds by calling him a “crybaby.” Spud says that he isn’t one, and Sutter responds “well then why do you have braces?” and starts laughing. Not only is there absolutely no connection between these two things, but Braxton Sutter, who is supposed to be babyface, is making fun of people with braces. Spud actually starts crying. This is painful to watch. He said that he has braces because of Braxton Sutter. Huh? What is he talking about?
Spud then cut a promo on everyone else that was pretty funny. Zema Ion then cuts a promo reciting the most scripted crap you’ve ever heard, and in a way that was so stiff that made it clear it was scripted… which is astonishing because when left to his own decides, DJZ has usually been pretty good. He calls out Lashley again. Do we really need to do this with the one dude in the division who Lashley already beat?
Eli cuts a promo on them and hits the dummy button, so DJZ says “I dare you to hit that button one more time” which I’m almost certain James Storm said not more than a month ago, showing how little creativity TNA has. Speaking of a lack of creativity, a completely pointless schmoz was then started. Then a series of dives happened, and DJZ wound up with the belts. The talking part of this was annoying as hell and the rest of it was dull, predictable, forced, and pointless. It would have been a lot better to use some time on this show to set up two matches to determine who will face off for the title next week to make the guys in the match actually look like they have earned something instead of just throwing the entire division into one big gimmick match that they’ve now done so many times that it doesn’t mean sh*t anymore.
Oh. And next week’s match will be the first ever “Ultimate X Gauntlet match.” Of course they didn’t bother to explain what the rules would be.

SINGLES MATCH WITH ARON REX AS THE SPECIAL GUEST REFEREE FOR THE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE SHOT AT BOUND FOR GLORY: Drew Galloway vs. Ethan Carter III- 7.5/10

We still have no update as to Bram’s condition. In fact, it wasn’t even mentioned. The dude was apparently murdered on TNA’s TV show, and they haven’t even acknowledged it.

Rex is already screwing up, yelling at them on the outside instead of starting to count them out. If I was going to nit-pick, I would also point out that for many of the counts (including the finish), he was not in a position where he could have possibly seen the pinned wrestler’s shoulders.
The match was pretty great. It was one of those matches that was all big moves and false finishes and I can see people saying they kicked out of finishers too much, but I thought it worked for this match. Ethan won clean.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Galloway snaps and attacks Rex. Absolutely no one came out to help him until one or two officials showed up. Rex vs. Galloway at BFG is nowhere near as a big as Drew vs. Ethan would have been if TNA didn’t rush through everything.

Another bad show from TNA. This show is becoming unbearable. The logic holes are problematic and show a lack of attention to detail, and the sheer amount of padding is often infuriating, but this week it hit a new low with this Drew-Ethan thing that actually killed my interest in the main event, causing TNA’s hottest angle to end with a whimper instead of a bang despite the quality of the main event. I am finally at the point where I am seriously considering just giving up on TNA.

[cero2k]

You and his mother are probably the only people in this world that are worried about Bram

[Big Red Machine]

You and his mother are probably the only people in this world that are worried about Bram

And that's the problem with our society! All of you assholes watch a murder occur right in front of you and don't give a sh*t! SHAME ON YOU! SHAME!