BRM Reviews the 9/15/2016 Impact (started off good, but...)

[Big Red Machine]

THE FALL-OUT FROM DELETE OR DECAY- Matt throws the wheelchair-bound Jeff into “the lake of reincarnation” (Jeff is screaming the whole way) and all that is going through my mind is that this is going to make Jeff drown and the story of Broken Matt Hardy will turn into some manner of grand tragedy. Matt dumps Jeff into the water and pulls him out like Damphair did to that guy in the beginning of one of the Game of Thrones books, and Jeff emerges not only fully healed and wearing his gear/bodysuit (which I expected at this point), but also for some reason wearing a light blue necktie, and carrying his ugly-ass Immortal-era personalized version of the TNA World Heavyweight Title. Then he starts cutting your typical HORRIBLE Jeff Hardy promo where he just says words that don’t make sense… and then Matt grabs him from behind and shouts “NEVER! THAT’S NOT THE INCARNATION I NEEDED!” and starts to drown Jeff again and I laughed my ass off. Matt pulled Jeff out as Brother Nero, and was pleased.
Now I’m interested in the magical properties of this lake. If Scott Hall went for a swim in there, would Razor Ramon come out? Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if Mick Foley and Kane had a Venice Street Fight in that lake?

Also, apparently Vanguard 1 is “missing.” If it shut off, shouldn’t it just have fallen down and crashed on Matt’s lawn?

JB INTERVIEWS LASHLEY- They’re trying to sell us that Lashley “ruined Bound For Glory” with his attack on Ethan last week. Are we really supposed to believe that THAT will put Ethan out for over a month? We’ve seen guys take beatings much worse than that and be back next week.
Lashley said that anyone who came out from the back to face him would be subject to “complete destruction and slaughtering,” at which point Grado came out and let the record show that for the first time in recorded history, BRM was happy to see Grado (because it seems certain that this will also be the last time I will ever see Grado).
Lashley laughed at Grado. Then he started talking to him, which left me very confused. Why is Lashley not commencing with the destruction and slaughtering? Grado accused Lashley of being a “coward” and said he would prove himself against Lashley. Let the record also show that for the first time in recorded history, something Grado said managed to make BRM laugh. Quite the show we’ve got here, huh?
Lashley elbowed Grado in the head and then beat the sh*t out of him. That made me laugh even harder.
Lashley started to cut another promo, so Moose came out and they started to brawl. Moose got the best of it. Lashley started to bail so Moose cut a fiery promo on him. Why did ROH not let this guy talk?

GRAND CHAMPIONSHIP RECAP PACKAGE- good.

ARON REX PROMO- good, but it made me realize that this is the second single-elimination eight-man tournament TNA has done in the past two months in which the whole tournament was built around Drew and a guy feuding with Drew.

LASHLEY PROMO- awesome.
We are more than one eighth of the way into Impact and I have had absolutely nothing bad to say about it. This must be some sort of magical dreamland that I don’t want to wake up from, but alas it is currently 2:30 am on Monday morning and I have to be at work later this selfsame Monday morning, so I am going to for once choose the responsible option and not stay up until after 4:00 am watching wrestling. But just in case me going to sleep somehow makes this show become bad, I have saved this moment for posterity and will never go to sleep in the middle of a show again.

IMPACT GRAND CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Aron Rex vs. Trevor Lee- 2.25/10
There is a very important apostrophe missing in their graphic about the rules. What they wrote means that after three rounds there will be a decision made about the judges, not that the judges will make a decision.
I don’t like this gimmick. It’s too much to keep track of, especially when you’re trying to track ill-defined things like “physicality.”

JB INTERVIEWS MARIA KANELLIS-BENNETT- he calls the “the Leader of the Knockouts,” but I’m certain that Dixie stripped Maria of that power and title last week because I remember screaming and yelling about the ridiculous inconsistencies therein. But here is Maria, apparently still in power, and she is moving Gail Kim’s TNA Hall of Fame induction up to tonight, in a segment that will totally, definitely not be transparent set-up for an ambush and/or an attempt to humiliate Gail.
And I guess that Dixie and Corgan are just completely okay with Maria screwing up one of the big draws for fans for BFG weekend?

MATT HARDY LOOKS FOR VANGUARD 1 IN THE WOODS- he finds him stuck and dead in a tree. As I said before, I’m dead sure this is a continuity gaffe. Also, I hated this because of Matt’s overacting. It makes it impossible for me to have any sympathy for him.

MATT BEGS THE EVEN DIETIES FOR HELP- he begs them to install the essence that was deleted from Brother Nero. I assumed this would result in Vanguard 1 having Jeff Hardy’s personality (which is what Matt’s statement seems to imply), but instead Vanguard 1 is just Vanguard 1 again.
At the end of last week’s show, Vanguard 1 was destroyed and Jeff Hardy was gravely injured. Now, barely half an hour into the show, both of those things have been completely fixed. This is not how you book drama! You don’t just hit someone with a tragedy one week and then fix it easily the next week because that kills the heat for any other tragedy you want to book because it has been shown that these “tragedies” are easily reversed and have no long-term effects on our characters. As this point I assume that Matt will just ask the seven deities to return Señor Benjamin safe and sound and that will be that.

GAIL KIM’S TNA HALL OF FAME INDUCTION CEREMONY- aaaaaaaaaaaand we’re back to Impact being Impact again.
Gail is pissed about this for some reason. Why should she care when she goes into the Hall of Fame?
Then Maria shows the video package of Gail’s “highlights” which are, predictably, all Maria kicking Gail’s ass. Then Maria mocks Gail while Gail just stands there and takes it. NOW Gail has reason to be pissed, but she had no reason to be angry before when she first came out. This would have been much better if Gail hadn’t come out until she had had enough of Maria’s bullsh*t and was ready to do something about it. Maria also got Gail a BS present. Allie got Gail a real present, which Maria breaks, once again, while Gail does nothing. Only after this has happened does Gail tell Maria “you’ve lost your mind!”
Gail is coming off SOOOOOOOO lame here. She is every single stereotype of a bland, poorly-written, “PG Era” WWE babyface multiplied a hundredfold.
Oh. Look. Here is Dixie finally coming out here, and yup, she said exactly what I knew- and feared- she was going to say, because I knew it would set me off:
“What part of our conversation last week didn’t you understand?”
I don’t know, Dixie. What part of last week’s conversation did YOU not understand? Last week you told Maria she would no longer be in charge of the Knockouts Division, so WHY DID YOU LET HER SHOW UP THIS WEEK, BOOK A SEGMENT AND THEN COME OUT AND DO HER BULLSH*T SEGMENT ON YOUR SHOW?! It has been well over TEN MINUTES since Maria said she was going to do this, and four minutes since the segment actually started… so where was Dixie before?! What the f*ck do you do all day? Sit around and play Angry Birds on your phone and not pay any attention at all to the show you are theoretically in charge of until some production assistant runs over to you, arms flailing in panic, and says, “DIXIE! DIXIE! HELP! MARIA IS RUINING THE SHOW!?”

I mean… wasn’t there something else that was supposed to be happening right now? Some wrestlers who should have been ready to come out for a match or a promo, or a video package the production guys were supposed to cut to? Or did you just have “ten minutes of dead air” set on your format for after the Matt Hardy video? This show would be a lot more enjoyable if they put more time into basic internal logic instead up with coming up with a Silly Rules Championship.

Dixie reiterates that Maria is “no longer the leader of the Knockouts” and has “zero decision-making authority at this time.” The problem here is that the only people who seem to know this are Dixie Carter and the viewer. The announcers went along with it, Gail went along with it, the production crew went along with it, and even Borash went along with it (even referring to Maria as “the Leader of the Knockouts”). What does that say about Dixie if she makes a proclamation on national TV and every single person in her company ignores her?

Dixie says that Gail will get the ceremony that she deserves at BFG, and also that Gail deserves a shot at the Knockouts Title. Maria says that Gail can’t do so under the terms of the deal she and Gail had made, but Dixie points out that Gail didn’t actually lose that match… a fact which I brought up when the finish happened (8/25/2016 Impact), and no one on the show has brought up until now… which just makes everyone other than Dixie look like morons for assuming that the person who clearly won by DQ somehow lost the match!
Dixie declares that Gail will be in a Knockouts Gauntlet that is happening tonight to determine Maria’s challenger at BFG… which seems like it pretty much telegraphs the finish of that match, so why even have it? (more on this later).
This segment was TERRIBLE! It made just about everyone in the company who isn’t Dixie Carter or Maria Kanellis look like complete and total morons, while our top babyface Gail Kim was made to look like a lame, bland, impotent loser who needed Dixie to come out and set things right for her. If you want to do this Knockouts Gauntlet, it would have been SOOO much better to give this time to a combination of that match and some promos to set up from the women who (until this segment) felt like they had the potential to win (because there are interesting possibilities here that have now been extinguished, but again, more on that later).

EMPTY ARENA EXPOSED METAL MATCH: Rockstar Spud vs. Braxton Sutter- 0.75/10
With NO HYPE, just three weeks away from what Dixie just called TNA’s “biggest night of the year,” we are getting an “Empty Arena, Exposed Metal Match” (so the turnbuckles won’t be covered) on free TV in a feud whose entire build has consisted of one segment that I didn’t even realize was the beginning of an angle, one, off-hand line in a promo segment about something else, and one segment that we were only shown in recap form because it wasn’t important enough for them to show us live footage.

So they are doing entrances for this match… where there is no crowd and no music playing to hide the silence (which makes sense that there would be silence, but years of programing have taught us that it just sounds bad for there to be no reaction to an entrance)… but of course JB still has to do the standard introductions so that the no fans in attendance can hear them.
This begs the question that has been bugging me since this match was first announced one commercial break ago, but now along an entirely different axis: Why is this an empty arena match in the first place? Doing it as an Empty Arena match makes it come off worse due to the lack of reaction, so there needs to be some sort of kayfabe reason that makes that sacrifice necessary. Unfortunately, the only explanation we got was Josh telling us that it was due to “safety” because of the wrestlers brawling around ringside and into the crowd.
OH COME ON! What makes this any more risky than any other No Disqualifications match (of which we’ve seen a crap-ton this year alone). And since when does TNA care about the safety of its fans? I seem to remember Abyss KIDNAPPING several fans during the whole 10/10/10 bullsh*t. I’m also pretty sure I remember Josh Mathews putting over how cool it was that the wrestlers were going into the crowd to fight during that big, pointless schmoz in the beginning of their debut on Destination America. Hell… JUST LAST MONTH we saw Matt Hardy ASSAULT A FAN FOR NO REASON and suffer no repercussions (and others have done so in the past, including James Storm and Abyss).
I thought Josh’s explanation was bad, but Pope decided to one-up (one-down?) him by saying that these two want to hurt each other and “TNA Management- they don’t want the fans to witness someone intentionally hurt another competitor.” Even if we are VERY kind to Pope and assume he meant an attempt to grievously injure someone outside of the confines of the match… that happens all of the time in TNA (including, as Josh mentioned a mere minute ago, the segment that set up this match). And even if we are even nicer to Pope and make the preposterous leap and accept that this dinky little rivalry is somehow the most heated in TNA’s history and thus the risk of intentional injury is the highest… if TNA Management “doesn’t want to the witness someone intentionally hurt another competitor,” then WHY ARE THEY AIRING THIS MATCH ON THEIR TV SHOW?!

It took Josh WAY too long to point out that Sutter didn’t knock Spud’s teeth out on purpose, but rather that it was a thing that happened in the course of a regular professional wrestling match. Almost the entire match was Sutter beating the sh*t out of Spud and because Spud didn’t get any offense in and because Spud was the guy who charged down the ramp to meet Sutter on the stage to start things off and because Spud is the smaller wrestler and a great seller and because of the viciousness of the beating and the effects they did with the blood coming from Spud’s mouth at the end, I spent the most of the match feeling bad for the guy who was supposed to be the heel. Josh did a good job of alleviating this in the end, but it was too little, too late.

The thing that really annoys me, though, is that there is no reason this feud couldn’t have blown off at BFG, but instead TNA decides to do it right here on free TV with no build… and probably just to do what they always do and throw the entire X-Division into a meaningless Ultimate X match or ladder match for the X-Division Title at every PPV and/or big show. Because that will definitely help these two more than getting PPV time to blow-off a well-built feud in a grudge match.

VANGUARD 1 SEARCHES FOR SEÑOR BENJAMIN- bad for the same reasons the previous Matt Hardy segments were bad.
He quickly finds him in a shed in the woods apparently not far from the Hardy compound. Instead of being grateful, Señor Benjamin start to yell at Vanguard 1 for taking so long. What an asshole! If doesn’t want to go back to the unspeakable horrors he has probably been put through by Decay (we know they at least painted the word “Decay” on his forehead) then he should be nicer to his rescuer. At least Leia stopped being snarky when she realized Luke wasn’t a real Stormtrooper (and she only started again when she realized that he and Han had no escape plan whatsoever).
Vanguard 1 went to go get Matt. When Matt came across the shed Señor Benjamin was being held in, he asked “what is this decrepit erection?!” which is exactly what Reby said last night. BURN! Matt frees Señor Benjamin and declares that “a great war is coming” at Bound For Glory. Decay did not show up at all, which indicates that they weren’t guarding their prisoner at all. Did they really kidnap him just for the sake of tying him up in a shed a few miles away, writing “Decay” on his forehead and leaving him there? LAME!
(And that is with me assuming that this is all happening the day after Delete or Decay instead of, say four or five days afterwards, by which point Señor Benjamin might well have starved to death, which indicates that they must have been feeding him at some point, which makes it even more baffling that they would go through the effort of kidnapping him and feeding him only to do absolutely nothing with him.

A CAMERAMAN INTERVIEWS MOOSE- great promo by Moose

DELETE OR DECAY RECAP- completely pointless now that all of its consequences have been completely undone.

HARDYS & DECAY SEGMENT- Matt says that for the things they did last week, Decay must be deleted at BFG and also the Hardys want to take the tag titles from them. Then Reby and the Hardys stand in the ring and they and fans all chant “DELETE!” while pledging their loyalty to sideways Hitler (“side heil?”). Then Decay’s music plays but they don’t show up while Josh Mathews asks questions like “Where is the trio? Where is Decay?” before concluding that they must be “sending a message” to the Hardys. I have no idea what message they could possibly be conveying by playing their music but not showing up. “Download our theme on iTunes?”
Now here’s Rosemary standing on the platform by the hard-cam and talking to the “silly, silly, silly little Hardys.” Didn’t I see this already?
She goes on to say that the Hardys won’t win the tag titles and also that Maxel deserves “a family that isn’t broken” “where he can Decay,” whatever that means. Then she flat-out admits on national TV that THEY MURDERED BRAM.
Here is Abyss on the ramp to say that “these titles are beautiful, and they belong to the Decay” because someone on the TNA booking committee lost a bet so now Abyss has to say that word “beautiful” at least once a show. He says that the Hardys won’t take the tag titles from Decay, which Rosemary already said.
Now Crazzy Steve shows up in the crowd (could we not have at least switched their positions from the previous segment?) and cuts bad promo.
Now the Hardys are speaking again and saying the same boring crap we’ve already heard. The fans are chanting “OBSOLETE!” and I swear I’m not kidding this time: it REALLY DOES look like they’re doing the Nazi salute (I guess the Harris brothers must be comping their friends some tickets).
Now Abyss is talking again and this is SOOOOOOOOOO BAD. Decay gets into the ring and Rosemary says that Maxel will join them. She buries Reby as being a “pathetic, unfit mother,” which sets Reby off and she attacks Rosemary. A schmoz starts, and then quickly ends with all three Hardys hitting Twists of Fate.
This was WORSE than the Old Day. BY FAR. Just like that segment, I spent this one hoping that no one would waking into the room while I was watching it, but at least that was bad comedy, so it is conceivable that someone somewhere other than Vince McMahon would find it funny. There were even one or two bits in there that I almost chuckled at. But this… this is exactly the sort of atrocious, BS overacted drama that is played completely straight but it is impossible to take seriously that people point to when they look down at wrestling fans for watching pro wrestling.
Furthermore, this was completely pointless, as it established nothing that had not already been established in Matt’s MUCH shorted promo in the shed after freeing Señor Benjamin. Even worse, the fact that this felt like the same exact segment we got during the build to Delete or Decay coupled with the lack of consequences from Delete or Decay not only makes Delete or Decay feel completely irrelevant, but also makes this feud feel like a complete and total rehash of what we just spent the last month watching.

They’ve given up on the “One Night Only” shows to the point where they aren’t even giving them goofy names anymore. This one is just called TNA One Night Only: September 2016.

LASHLEY & BENNETT BACKSTAGE- Apparently the fact that Moose vs. Bennett has been signed for BFG means that they can’t wrestle each other until that night. Since when?
Bennett tries to convince Lashley to accept Moose’s challenge so that Moose will be softened up. Lashley sees through this, but Bennett convinces him to fight Moose anyway. I thought this was done very well, as it didn’t make Lashley look dumb while also giving us the match we want and building up the Moose/Bennett BFG match.

GAUNTLET MATCH FOR A KNOCKOUTS TITLE SHOT AT BOUND FOR GLORY: Jade vs. Laurel Van Ness vs. Sienna vs. Gail Kim vs. Marti Belle vs. Raquelle vs. Madison Rayne- 1/10
Allie was originally supposed to be in this match but Maria told her she couldn’t because she replaced her with someone named Laurel Van Ness, who is apparently Chelsea Green with blonde hair. WHY IS ANYONE STILL LISTENING TO MARIA?! And where is Dixie Carter to correct this? Nowhere, of course. Because the script doesn’t call for Dixie to so at this time, because TNA Creative sucks.

I promised earlier that I would deal with the question of why this match is happening when it is so clear that Gail will win, so this seems like the time to do so. The answer is that Gail isn’t the only woman who deserves a title shot. Allie and Sienna still haven’t had their contractually obligated rematches, and the whole deal about Jade not having gotten a fair rematch (or at least one-on-one rematch [she was never pinned in any of the multi-woman matches]) still hasn’t been resolved either. So if only one woman is getting a title shot at BFG it makes sense that these four should hash it out to see who gets the title shot, with the other woman getting theirs later on.
Of course, this only makes sense if these are the only four women in the match… or at least throw them a bone and let them be the last four in, because a battle royale with only four entrants would be pretty lame. But of course that’s not what TNA is doing here. They’re just throwing the entire division into a #1 contendership match because that’s what they do with the Knockouts, X-Division and tag teams.

Marti and Jade’s feud will apparently never send, so that sucks. I’d much rather see her against Laurel Van Ness are they went all Joshi on each other in the opening minute. Maria yells at Sienna because she thinks that Gail taking on Laurel one-on-one while incompetent Allie sets up for a low-bridge is going to be more effective in eliminating Gail than having Sienna and Laurel team up on Gail. Of course Allie’s interference backfires. Then, because TNA’s battle royales are these stupid “gauntlet” matches, we had to have Gail Kim pin Sienna for the first time here in a complete and total throw-away spot where it will mean nothing. None of this was in any way exciting because the earlier segment cut us down from Jade, Allie, and Gail- and even Sienna if you have her cut the right promo- as possible winners to just Gail, with no one else having a shot.
Gail now heads to BFG where we all know that she’ll beat Maria for the belt. I’m usually the guy saying there is nothing wrong with predictable, cliché endings to storylines so long as they are happy good clichés that make sense in a story, like two partners getting back together or, as in this case, a babyface going over and winning the title. And under normal circumstances, I would be fine with Gail picking up the win here (if they had made it a regular battle royale so Sienna didn’t have to get pinned). Gail beats Maria to win the title at BFG and then have not only Maria’s rematch, but also three other women needing rematches who can all be lined up as challengers for Gail (Allie, Jade, and Sienna), and you use the four or five months that should give you to build up Marti Belle or Madison Rayne or Laurel Van Ness or whoever to be ready for whoever the champion may be by the time other outstanding title shot claims are resolved (and you can use Maria and Allie’s title shots to set up the big moment where you pull the trigger on Allie’s babyface turn, etc. etc.).
In this case, though, I just don’t think that Gail vs. Maria is the right title match for BFG. Maybe you could get away with it by having Jade vs. Sienna vs. Allie in a #1 contendership match or something, but Gail slaughtering Maria just doesn’t feel right for the title match, simply because the parameters of the match will require it to not be such a top-knotch representation of the division for the biggest PPV of the year. I also think that Sienna and particularly Jade need to be kept in the title picture to not feel like they are getting the Chris Sabin “win the big title but then get shoved back down the midcard” treatment. I think a five-way would have been best, with a rift forming between Maria and Sienna (which is necessary if they’re both going after the title), and, in the finish, Maria and Allie, with Gail going over to keep as many challengers hot as possible (and, you know, to give her the moment), but Allie’s turn being the big part of the finish so as to cut off the possibilities of fans being disappointed in Allie not winning making them react poorly to Gail’s big win.


IMPACT GRAND CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Mahabali Shera vs. Eddie Edwards- 4.5/10
The story of this match was that Eddie almost had the match won via leg submission at the end of both of the first two rounds and then he finally closed it out in the third.

MOOSE-LASHLEY CONFRONTATION- they teased us that this would replace Lashley vs. Ethan as the BFG main event but then the expected fight started. This part was exactly what should have happened, but then things went in entirely the wrong direction. Bennett coming out was good, but I didn’t like Moose so easily handing his ass to him. Then Lashley and Bennett teamed up on Moose until EC III showed up to make the save, taking out both Lashely and Bennett even though his ribs were taped up and they were playing it up like he was in the hospital all week. We cut to black after what would have been the mere beginning of a comeback if this was a match, which looked really awkward.
What I would have done was had Moose and Lashley do a double-down, at which point Bennett would come out and beat the crap out of Moose with a weapon to build some heat for their match. Then I would have Lashley spear Bennett, to not only make good on his earlier comment that he might decide to kick Bennett’s ass, too, but also to play up Lashley’s tweener side. He might be a cocky douchebag, but he is loner who doesn’t want anyone’s help, and if he says he is going to kick your ass, he will. This also sets up for both men feuding with Lashley down the road (especially if Bennett cheats to beat Moose at BFG).
As for Ethan… if you’re going to try to play up this injury angle, then stick to that. Ethan shouldn’t have appeared on this show at all, and he certainly shouldn’t have beaten up both Lashley and Bennett at the same time with injured ribs.

I shouldn’t have gone to sleep. This was yet another episode of Impact that wound up down in the dumps. If Lashley, Moose, Drew, or Bennett aren’t involved, there’s a good chance the segment will suck. If Decay, Dixie, or Corgan are involved, that chance grows exponentially.