BRM Reviews the 11/17/2016 Impact (very bad)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- fine, I guess
Eddie Edwards calls out the DCC for a fight. They respond by taking over the PandaTron (AnthemTron?) and cutting a promo while still wearing their masks, even though they revealed their identities at the end of last week’s show. They say that it’s not about titles, so that’s a first in TNA. They say that they “bring order through chaos,” which to me at this point reads like more Wyatt Family gobbledygook. Then they come out to answer Eddie’s challenge, so we got what was first a one-on-one brawl until the others decided to join in and save their pal.
The member of the group who they couldn’t identify last week was referred to only as “Kingston.” I thought it made Josh and Pope look bad when they couldn’t identify a very well-known independent wrestler who has even had stints on TV for ROH, but now that they’ve had one week to do research, pooling the knowledge of everyone in TNA, they couldn’t even come up with Eddie’s first name? Dude! Just put “Kingston (surname)” into Wikipedia and you’ll find a link to “Eddie Kingston (wrestler)” complete with his picture and telling you that he showed up on Impact last week!
The entire DCC came out in their masks. Again… what’s the point of wearing them if you’ve revealed your identities already? To make this even sillier, Josh Matthews was able to identify the one in the ring as Kingston before he even took his mask off, so the masks don’t even help hide which one is which. Once they all started fighting, they took their masks off, so- again- what was the point of wearing them?
Kingston was the one who got in the ring with Edwards. He needed a distraction to get the heat but then Edwards made his own comeback and Kingston had to be saved by his pals. Jeff Hardy came out to make the save completely unarmed, and fought the entire faction off, making them look like sh*t- especially Kingston, who Jeff laid out with the Twist of Fate. Way to get these guys over as a threat there, TNA.

EDDIE EDWARDS & JEFF HARDY GO TO SEE AIDEN O’SHEA TO TRY TO MEET WITH BILLY CORGAN BECAUSE THEY WANT A MATCH- you know… say what you will about Teddy Long’s love for booking tag team matches, but at least when Teddy saw a situation he went out there and did something about it. Corgan just seems to sit on his ass all day and wait for the wrestlers to come to him to ask for matches.

PINFALL OR SUBMISSION ONLY MATCH: Aron Rex vs. Jesse Godderz- 4.75/10
Okay… the angle here isn’t that Rex is always about to get beaten but retains his title via judge’s vote. It’s that he is usually getting beaten and will surely lose if it goes to a vote from the judges, so he is using a hidden foreign object to hit his opponent out and win by pinfall. So how does this stipulation address that situation?

Meanwhile, nothing has been done to address Rex’s cheating. Not even checking him for weapons before the match, which is so simple and obvious that most promotions do it before every match regardless of angle.
Godderz won clean to earn a title shot under completely different rules.

MARIA & PALS BACKSTAGE- Maria cuts a promo on Brandi while Laurel makes Allie jealous re Braxton Sutter. Maria and Sienna yell at Allie about how no one will be dumb enough to team with Brandi. This was meant to tell us all that Allie will naturally show up to team with Brandi, but all it made me think about was why Billy Corgan booked this match without assigning Brandi a tag team partner. He has got to be the laziest authority figure in the history of pro wrestling.

GAIL KIM GIVES THE SPEECH SHE WAS GOING TO GIVE LAST WEEK- which is that she is going to vacate the title because she is injured (she was originally injured in the Maria match but Rosemary’s attack aggravated it so the doctor won’t clear her). Yeah… this seems like a completely pointless attempt to protect Gail that will only result in the further devaluation of the title.

EDDIE & JEFF COME OUT OF CORGAN’S OFFICE- they’ve got a No DQs handicap match against the DCC. Really? No one wants to help them and Corgan won’t assign someone to be their partner?

LAUREL VAN NESS & SIENNA (w/Maria Kanellis Bennett & Allie) vs. BRANDI RHODES & MADISON RAYNE- DUD!
Josh Matthews said that “they told Brandi Rhodes to find a partner.” “They” implies plural, rather than Corgan, who is just one singular person… which means that despite LOSING POWER MULTIPLE TIMES, Maria is somehow STILL booking the Knockouts Division. WHAT THE F*CK?!
Allie was sent to the back before the match just to be mean. Madison must have new music because I didn’t recognize it.
The match was sloppy and dragged on too long. Brandi Rhodes pinned Sienna, cementing Sienna’s neutering as a monster, and in barely six months of TV time.

HARDYS BULLSH*T- OH MY G-D MAKE IT STOP! It’s just the same jokes as before. Also, more putting over the Young Bucks, who we all know will never show up. And yes, I understood that the whole “delete” thing is Matt’s memory coming back or whatever. I just find it extremely stupid.

#1 CONTENDERSHIP MATCH: Ethan Carter III vs. Bobby Lashley vs. Trevor Lee vs. Mike Bennett (w/Maria Kanellis Bennett)- 6.75/10
Ethan’s getting another title shot. Snore.

MORE HARDYS CRAP- they’re watching The Final Deletion to try to jog Matt’s memory. Matt overacts a lot. It is completely beyond me how anyone can enjoy this stupidity.

EC III & ELI DRAKE ON THE FACTS OF LIFE- decent segment leading to some VERY odd stipulations.

DECAY MENACE JADE- Once again they start this segment by having someone shooting a promo or a commercial or whatever for TNA, and yet for some reason they are showing us the feed through a completely different camera. It’s sh*t like this that makes me so angry at TNA. They are so focused on trying to be different from the negatives of “sports entertainment” WWE- trying so hard to make things logical and realistic- they are so focused on being the opposite of WWE that they have done a complete 180 from WWE’s direction without ever noticing that WWE was only 90 degrees off course, so now TNA is equally off course, just in the opposite direction. If WWE is attempting to “experience nature” by watching TV in your house with the windows open, TNA is trying “experience nature” by hollowing out a tree and standing inside it for a day.
Other than that this was fine. Props to Jade for showing no fear here (compare to Gail Kim from back in April when she got kidnapped). Hopefully she won’t also be a f*cking idiot and go wandering into their obvious trap.

JADE ACTS LIKE A F*CKING IDIOT AND WANDERS INTO AN OBVIOUS TRAP- well… so much for that.

BASILE BARAKA vs. MAHABALI SHERA- 0.25/10
Slow and boring. They put the babyface over right away, clean in the middle, just to make sure it means less when it happens at the end of the feud. Right afterwards Baron Dax comes out to attack Shera, so if the babyface is going to be laid out at the end, why not just have the heel cheat or do a DQ? Then Al Snow comes out, still trying to be friends with the guys who turned on him last week. They tell him to go away, and THAT is why Al attacks them and helps Shera. Not because they assaulted him last week. No, that was just fine with Al. But this rejection right here: now THAT must be answered for.

ROSEMARY & JADE WITH WEIRD CAMERA AND SOUND EFFECTS- terrible on every level
I don’t know where they shot this, but it looked like they were somewhere in the underbelly of Cloud City on Bespin. The pointless sh*t that TNA chooses to spend their time and money on completely baffles me. Rosemary not only lets Jade feel her up, but she is dumb enough to let Rosemary get behind her. Jade says that it will be her vs. Rosemary for the Knockouts Title. What? Since when? And why? I think Jade is still owed a rematch (I don’t remember at this point because it’s been so long), but what has Rosemary done to deserve a title shot (especially as compared to someone like Laurel, who might actually be unpinned and unsubmitted right now)? Rosemary then challenges Jade to a Steel Cage match while putting on an acting performance that that made Matt Hardy’s earlier look subtle.

HANDICAP NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH: The DCC vs. Eddie Edwards & Jeff Hardy- 7.75/10
This was a vicious weapons match and definitely saved this episode of Impact from being yet another potentially worst of the year, but the handicap part of the stip definitely takes away from the DCC’s win. We couldn’t find another babyface to team with Jeff and Eddie? Maybe one who isn’t a champion so he can take the pin?

So yeah, another boring nonsense-filled episode of Impact that got lucky and had a great main event.