BRM Reviews the 9/22/2016 Impact

[Big Red Machine]

TNA IMPACT WRESTLING GRAND CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT SEMIFINAL MATCH: Drew Galloway vs. Eddie Edwards- 6/10
Or, as JB introduced it, “another match” in the tournament, which made it sound completely unimportant.
A perfect example of a match that would have been SOOOOOOO much better if they had just gave them all of this time it have a regular professional wrestling match. The match had nothing close to a decisive winner (you know, because it was just nine minutes of wrestling between two main event stars), so we got a decision from the judges, which makes the result feel like cheap bullsh*t. This match was every reason why these stupid rules shouldn’t exist.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Drew gets cheap heat by claiming that “TNA, like American politics, is rigged.” Then he says boring stuff that brings out EC III and they have a confrontation which annoyed the sh*t out of me because this should be the match at BFG, not Ethan vs. Lashley and Drew vs. Rex in a Bullsh*t Rules match.
Drew cut his promo and walked off, but on his way up the ramp, Lashley came out. You remember how on the old two-hour ROH PPVs (and on quite a few EVOLVE shows, too), Gabe used to book the show so that the segments and matches all flowed into the next? Well this came off like a completely clumsy attempt to do that (which is probably because Gabe is a much more intricate booker than anyone in charge of TNA has ever been, and is an expert at keeping guys involved in multiple storylines at once and making his storylines intersect, which facilitates this).
While Ethan was paying attention to Lashley, Bennett came out of the crowd and jumped him from behind. Ethan got beaten down. Moose came out to make the save but suffered the same fate. I found this frustrating because of how completely pointless it all was. You don’t need to do a segment to set this tag team match up. That’s what the ending segment of last week’s show was about! So why are you wasting time with pointless segment that has guys fighting when I’m already going to see these guys fighting in the main event? TNA has done this very often over the past three years or so, and it drives me nuts. If instead of all of this silly crap they’ve done so far, they had just let Eddie and Drew wrestle each other for twenty-something minutes, this would have already locked up a spot as the best Impact all year.

MARIA YELLS AT ALLIE BACKSTAGE- this was fine (though the bit where Maria forced Allie to declare her to be the greatest Knockouts Champion of all time was good).

ARON REX/ELI DRAKE GRAND CHAMPIONSHIP VIDEO PACKAGE- this wasn’t bad, but it felt like padding. Unfortunately for them, I just can’t get excited about this stupid title.

LASHLEY & BENNETT BACKSTAGE- annoying, but at least they tried to build up the BFG matches. I hate it when heels are booked to argue just for the sake of it.

TNA IMPACT WRESTLING GRAND CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT SEMIFINAL MATCH: Eli Drake vs. Aron Rex- 5.5/10
They traded verbal barbs before the match. Rex was GREAT! The match was mediocre. Rex’s finisher is a discus elbow called “The Revelator” which is a terrible name. Even worse was the fact that the announcers were pushing that he can hit it “from anywhere” (read as “out of nowhere).

DECAY PROMO- better than usual, which means that it wasn’t ridiculous, annoying bullsh*t. Then Vanguard 1 showed up just to be a dick and taunt them.

ARON REX IS CONFRONTED BY DREW GALLOWAY- not a bad exchange, but I’d rather they didn’t interact so much.

CODY RHODES WILL BE AT BOUND FOR GLORY- cool, I guess.

ANOTHER DECAY PROMO- blah blah blah. They say stuff. This time it was the Hardys’ turn to appear in different places around the arena while Decay stood in the ring. I feel like I’ve seen this segment a million times already. No one said anything of any actual value.
Then the lights went off, and when they came back on, Steve and Abyss were tied to the ringposts with some sort of… bungee cable, maybe? Rosemary was unrestrained, but was jumped by the magically-appearing Reby, who now has her own, more broken appearance with crazy grayish hair. Reby actually closed this off by cut a great promo, which was the only decent part of this.

ETHAN & MOOSE BACKSTAGE- they, too, are arguing for no real reason.

DJ ZEMA ION PROMO- This was DJZ’s first appearance on the show since winning the X-Division Title THREE WEEKS AGO. He gave a small mea culpa to officially turn him babyface about five months after he actually turned, then made an open challenge for the title, resulting in…

TNA X-DIVISION TITLE MATCH: DJ Zema Ion(c) vs. Trevor Lee (w/Andrew Everett)- 2.25/10
No mention whatsoever was made of Gregory Shane Helms’ absence from Lee’s corner. The match went less than four minutes, with DJZ winning clean. They now have ONE episode of Impact to build up an X-Division Title match for BFG that people actually care about… but let’s be honest: we all know they’re just going to dump the entire division into a title match for no reason… which is exactly what they did three weeks ago when DJ won the belt, making things completely meaningless. Maybe they should have spent the past few weeks building up a match that will actually entice people to buy their PPV and make them some money? Or at least a match that won’t make the X-Division look like a complete and total afterthought?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Lee and Everett attacked DJZ until Eddie Edwards came out and made the save. Then he asked DJZ for a title shot next week and DJZ accepted. So yeah. They’re not even trying to set anything up for Bound For Glory.

MARIA BERATES ALLIE BACKSTAGE AGAIN- same as above.

MARIA KANELLIS’ “PUBLIC WORKOUT”- entertaining.
Allie and Sienna come out with Maria, but that new Laurel woman Maria brought in last week and who seemed to be part of her stable is nowhere to be found. Maria berated Allie a lot, and also assured Sienna she would get her rematch at some point. This was all done very well.
She had a match against a jobber. Brian “the worst referee ever” Stiffler ordered the bell to be rung while Maria was still holding a foreign object. Maria squashed the jobber (with some help from Sienna first).
Allie, in her stupidity, reveals that Maria ordered her to find her a tomato can for this “public workout,” which Maria of course denies. Maria also yelled at Allie for not having a second opponent ready for her, but then, suddenly, one showed up. She was wearing a full body ninja outfit and came out to stereotypical Asian music, and of course everyone but Maria sees where this is going, but it’s still entertaining to watch (although if I was booking it I would have had Allie schedule this second opponent and then it would be revealed that Gail either beat her up and took her costume or that it was Gail in disguise so Maria could berate Allie over this, creating more sympathy for Allie and more heat for Maria, as opposed to having Maria not see the obvious trap coming).
The next match starts and the ninja is acting like a complete and total Kung Fu movie parody goofball for a while before she unmasked herself as Gail Kim and Maria was angry. Sienna attacked Gail but Gail laid her out with Eat Defeat.

MICHAEL BENNETT & BOBBY LASHLEY vs. ETHAN CARTER III & MOOSE- 4/10
Less than eight and a half minutes for easily could have been a huge main event. It also had an extremely anti-climactic finish which didn’t feel like it mattered at all because these guys all just kept fighting, which we’ve seen them do a million times now. For some reason this brawl was one that needed to be stopped at all costs (as opposed to most other TNA brawls- or even just plain assaults- which are allowed to go on forever without anyone intervening), so the X-Division comes out to help the agents and referees hold these guys apart, making them all look like jobbers. Then Billy Corgan has to get his face on TV this week so he comes out and books a Lethal Lockdown match for next week where Lashley and Ethan will captain teams against each other with the winner picking the stip for their BFG match, because everything needs to be a gimmick match in TNA. Billy never mentioned the sizes of the teams, and, in fact, supposedly just made this announcement right now, but somehow they already have a video package ready to go with Josh Mathews doing the voice-over, and he knows that the teams will be four each. There was absolutely no point to this video package other than to shoot kayfabe in the foot.

This was a mostly inoffensive episode of Impact, which I think is the best thing I’ve had to say about the show in months. The built for BFG continues to be uninteresting.