BRM Reviews the 11/3/2016 Impact (frustrating)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- wow. I had no idea Brandi was great on the mic. This was awesome. Then Maria (w/Sienna) interrupted her. Maria cut a short promo on Brandi, then started talking about Allie for a while (which seemed very out of place). Maria offers to have Brandi join her “lady squad,” and “not just ride on the coattails of your husband,” pointing out the she is Maria Kanellis Bennett and not Maria Bennett. Well… that’s awkward.
Look… Brandi has been awesome in this segment and she certainly held her own in the ring last week, so she clearly has some talent, but the fact of the matter is that she is riding Cody’s coattails here. If TNA didn’t want Cody, Brandi would not have this job (and I’d argue the same is true for Braxton Sutter, who wouldn’t have a job in TNA if not for Allie). And the whole thing about the last name… we all know what the deal is with that: that if she isn’t “Brandi Rhodes” then TNA has no backdoor to advertise Cody as a Rhodes. These are facts, and Maria bringing them up puts me as a fan in a very awkward position because I want to like Brandi (especially after her promo here) but the fact remains that she is riding her husband’s coattails and that is something we usually see as a negative. I think it would have been better for Maria not to bring it up at all.
But then again, if she didn’t, we wouldn’t have gotten Brandi’s fantastic response. She said she doesn’t need or want Maria’s help. Sienna gets in her face so Brandi gets physical. Brandi then goes after Maria but gets taken down from behind by Sienna and laid out with her finisher.

Apparently the “DCC”- the masked guys, are being given a title shot. Yes, I know they challenged the Hardy’s last week by hand-delivered iPad-o-gram (they couldn’t have just sent Matt an e-mail?), but they are unknown individuals- people from outside the company as far as we know (although I’m sure one of them will wind up being James Storm because last time we saw him he was suspended for being disgruntled) who have been hijacking the feed and assaulting TNA employees. Remember last year when TNA was all “OH NO! GFW has the championships which means they have the power! We’re doomed unless we get them back!” Or the time before that with Aces & Eights? Or the several other times they’ve pontificated about how important it is not to let some evil outside force have the championships? Well then why is TNA management just giving these clearly hostile outsiders a title shot?

EDDIE EDWARDS VIDEO PACKAGE- This is the sort of thing you do to build Eddie up for his big title shot, not a month after he won the belt in order to hype up a title defense against someone else.

TNA GRAND CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH: Aron Rex(c) vs. Jesse Godderz-
No, Josh, I don’t “have to love” your Stupid Rules Championship with its excitement-killing rules, so why don’t you just shut the f*ck up (yes, this really did make me that angry).
So Rex’s new heel gimmick is that he has rings on his fingers that he basically uses as brass knuckles, but he disguises them by putting athletic tape on them. If they’re hard enough to knock someone out, shouldn’t the referee notice when he checks him for weapons (which is what these are) before the match?
Apparently not because in TNA, the referees don’t check the wrestlers for concealed weapons nefore the match unless there is a special request to do so. This is extremely stupid on its own, but if Josh is suspicious then surely someone in the office would order for Rex to be checked right? Sometimes I feel like TNA is trying so hard to not be “sports entertainment” that they wind up making the exact same sort of mistakes that WWE does but they arrive at them from the other direction. With something like this WWE would rely on suspension of disbelief to explain why the guy is never caught. What TNA has done here is, in an attempt to be believable, they have come up with something so simple and basic that a provision to prevent it is already built into the basic rules of professional wrestling but they’re so focused on doing something basic and simple that they forget to think about the basic rules.
And what’s even the point of doing this thing with the Grand Championship? This is the sort of thing that you could do with any belt, so doing it with the Grand Championship only fights against the unique ruleset of the belt. I get that the idea is that he cheated because he was down in rounds and was thus about to lose but not only could you do that same sort of thing without rounds, but I think it would work even better without rounds because most fans (that I’ve talked to, anyway) don’t find victory via judge’s decision to feel like a legitimate, satisfying way to win.

TEAM X GOLD TEAM DJZ, BRAXTON SUTTER, & MANDREWS VIDEO PACKAGE- I was ready to dismiss this as merely a waste of time (I think all three of them said what amounts to “the X-Division does high flying” and “we’re stronger as a team than we are on our own”), but then I caught this infuriating little line from Braxton Sutter:
“Team X Gold is the new style. We put everything into this: Go for broke.”
First of all, “Team X Gold” isn’t a style of wrestling. It’s a stupid gimmick… match? Tournament? IT’S BEEN OVER A MONTH NOW AND THEY STILL HAVEN’T TOLD US WHAT IT IS YET! Anyway, whatever it is, it certainly isn’t a style. And it’s also not “new,” as the gimmick seems to be that you split into teams and then everyone is required to follow the rules. And the second part of his statement is just another way of saying “high-risk style,” which, by the way, is what has killed the X-Division: The inability of those in charge of the company since 2012 to see it as anything more than “high-flying,” “high risk,” “daredevil” spotfest division.
Then DJZ went and said the same exact thing in different words. This dragged on for what felt like forever because they just kept saying the same sh*t over and over and over again and it’s even worse because anyone who has been watching the show for more than about three months knows that none of it means anything. And now that I think about it, it’s getting me even more angry that these guys legitimately putting their bodies on the line with all of these dives and Ultimate X matches and so on for matches that mean utterly nothing. At least when guys go out there and kill themselves in other promotions it means something, either in terms of the storyline or in terms of progressing their own careers by getting noticed for having good matches, but in the X-Division nothing matters and there is no mobility, so these guys are killing themselves for nothing (and yes I mean nothing because the company doesn’t even have the money to pay them).
By the time this thing ended I could have sworn it had been going on for five minutes, so I rewound it to time it: two minutes. Just two minutes, but it was so boring and repetitive that it felt like two and a half times that.

TEAM X GOLD MATCH: Marshe Rockett, Trevor Lee, & Andrew Everett vs. Rockstar Spud, Abyss, & Crazzy Steve vs. Team Go For Broke (DJ Zema Ion, Mandrews, & Braxton Sutter)- DUD!
So stuff happened until we built up to a spot where Steve was the legal man on his team but Abyss ran in and helped him beat up Lee and Sutter. Spud, realizing that Abyss was going to stay in the ring past the five count, started yelling for him to get back on the apron because otherwise he would get their team disqualified. Well Abyss didn’t go back to the apron… but the team didn’t get disqualified, either. What happened was that both Steve and Abyss were “ejected from the match-up,” leaving Spud on his own. I’ve got two points to bring up here, and I’ll start with the less ranting one first: Why did Steve get in trouble? He didn’t do anything wrong. He was the legal man for his team. It was only Abyss who was in the ring illegally, so why is Steve being ejected from the match as well?
Secondly: What the f*ck is this “ejected from the match-up” bullsh*t?! Where did this come from? This has never been a thing before. I guess it would make sense if this was an elimination match, but they never told us it was one and none of the other Team X Gold matches have been, and if this was an elimination match you’d think JB would just announce that Steve and Abyss had been “disqualified” and were thus “eliminated” instead of saying they were “ejected from the match.” It’s bad enough that I, as a fan watching the match, have no idea what the rules are, but even Spud- WHO IS IN THE MATCH doesn’t seem to understand them, either. Only TNA could possibly put on a match where the gimmick is that the rules of a basic professional wrestling match will be strictly enforced and somehow have the match be even more confusing than normal.
Then three seconds later Sutter pinned Spud, making absolutely nothing of the idea that Spud was left alone and making me wonder why Lee, Rockett, and Everett were even in this match. Josh then claimed that #TeamXGold was trending worldwide on Twitter. This is, of course, a taped show, so anyone who goes to check this will likely find out that Josh is lying, killing his credibility. Well... now that I think about it, if there were actually enough people watching TNA and using Twitter, I suppose it’s not impossible that #TeamXGold was trending worldwide because I can definitely see a lot of people Tweeting “I don’t understand this #TeamXGold bullsh*t.”

EDDIE EDWARDS VIDEO PACKAGE PART 2- Josh told us that while he was injured, “Eddie married the love of his life: Alisha,” reminding me that Eddie Edwards is the worst politician ever, as he can’t even get his spouse booked in TNA when everyone else who has tried has succeeded.

TNA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Broken Hardy Boys (w/Reby Hardy) vs. The DCC (w/the other DCC guy)- DUD!
Matt calls out the “mysterious businessmen.” They appear via Wyatt-style teleportation (camera effect followed by a blackout) behind the Hardys. They beat up the Hardys… and then they just walk away. Then Jeff cuts a promo challenging them to come back and fight so they do. For some reason the bell rings now although it didn’t ring when they were fighting before. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve even seen a referee. Wasn’t this a scheduled and sanctioned title match? Oh. Maybe Hebner was just slow.
Anyway, they had a crappy brawl that ended in a DQ when the third DCC guy just casually strolled into the ring and attacked Jeff right in front of Hebner. Why challenge the Hardys to a title match if you don’t care about the titles to the point where you’re willing to get DQed for no real reason?
So Matt and Jeff each brawl away with one of the DCC guys. The third guy started to randomly attack Earl Hebner. No one came out to help Earl. Brawling continued backstage. I think there was a cameo by a Harris Twin in a window. Then dramatic music started playing over the brawling. No one came out to break this up.
Jeff and one of them brawled through a Grado interview which we were for some reason being shown not from the official camera filming it but from another camera behind that. This brawl was so deadly serious that Jeff stopped in the middle to take a selfie with Grado. Jeff got killed again so Matt dumped some Lake of Reincarnation water on him. Then Jeff took time off to smoke. Then he stubbed out the cigarette on the DCC guy’s mask, and the guy screamed in pain even though he is wearing a plastic mask.
There was a random forklift driver driving by. Matt ordered him to “forklift that man!” The guy refused so Matt bit his arm until he changed his mind. The DCC guy was too stupid to run in not a straight line, and eventually he “tripped” by means of a comical dive into a bellyflop. After all of this the forklift did not ever make contact with the guy.
The DCC guy put Jeff in a crate and ran it into a wall, which probably hurt Jeff a lot less than if the guy had just run Jeff into the wall without putting him in a crate. Jeff then popped out and shouted “JEFF IN THE BOX!” which is the sort of thing I would usually laugh at but I hated this so much that I didn’t.
Matt ripped one of their masks off, but he the guy was wearing another one under it. That was stupid. Matt got kicked off of what was apparently the forklift and has amnesia. Because it worked so well for Cactus Jack. This was SOOOO STUPID. This thing went from a real brawl to a complete and total farce in no time. F*ck this company and f*ck these stupid Hardys.

EC III PROMO- he tells us he is about to go out to the ring to cut a promo on Eli Drake. So why even have this segment in the first place.

EC III CALLS OUT ELI DRAKE- they had a good exchange of promos (although babyface Ethan gets grating when he talks for too long). Ethan wants Eli to put his Bound For Gold title shot on the line against him. Eli says “no.” Ethan then offers to never challenge for the world title again if he loses. This would have been better if he didn’t accidentally screw up the beginning of this by saying that “If I win, you become the #1 contender.” Eli actually managed to sucker me in in his tease of accepting the match before swerving everyone and saying that he was going to cash in Bound For Gold last week.

JB INTERIVEWS BOBBY LASHLEY- he wants to know why Lashley attacked Cody last week. I’ve been wondering that, too, because it seems to me like the only reason that happened was so they would have a reason for someone to cost Lashley the title tonight, which would protect Lashley but hurt Eddie.

EDDIE EDWARDS VIDEO PACKAGE PART 3- why isn’t this time going to my world title main event?

TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Eddie Edwards(c) vs. Bobby Lashley- 7.5/10
They had me thinking I was actually going to get a thirty minute main event but then they wasted ten minutes on ring intros and bunch of commercials. Seriously. Lashley comes out to the ring, then we go to a commercial. When we come back from the commercial it is Eddie’s turn. Then we got the intros and then another commercial.
This was a great match until the stupid, pointless overbooking started. First we got a ref bump. Then Lashley speared Eddie and got a visual pin. A second referee finally showed up and Lashley went for the pin but Eddie kicked out. Then Lashley punched the other referee out for no reason. Brian Hebner saw this was going to DQ Lashley but didn’t. Lashley tried to grab the title belt from Hebner but Eddie hit him with the Boston Knee Party and Hebner fast-counted Lashley. F*ck this sh*t. JUST GIVE ME A CLEAN FINISH!

Another frustrating show from TNA. At least I learned that Brandi is an awesome promo.

[KILLdozer]

Hidden text.

James Storm, Eddie Kingston, and Bram

The DDC are :

[Big Red Machine]

Hidden text.

James Storm, Eddie Kingston, and Bram

The DDC are :

Impossible! One of those men is dead!

[KILLdozer]

Hidden text.

James Storm, Eddie Kingston, and Bram

The DDC are :

Impossible! One of those men is dead!

Maybe he's a magic dead man like the Undertaker.