BRM Reviews the 1/5/2017 Impact (disappointing)

[Big Red Machine]

EDDIE EDWARDS VS. EC III WORLD TITLE VIDEO PACKAGE- not that EC III doesn’t deserve a rematch after their finish the last time they faced off, but… the last time we saw Eddie he was in the middle of a match with Lashley that, as far as we know, is still going on, so shouldn’t we be focusing on that before booking Ethan’s rematch?

So Anthem Sports & Entertainment bought TNA, and apparently the first thing they did was go out and waste money buying new covers for the turnbuckles with their own logo on them. The more things change in TNA, the more they stay the same Along those lines, I would like to state here, for the record, if tonight ends with a new top heel stable, I will start throwing things. Will the lamps in BRM’s den survive the night? Read on to find out!

OPENING SEGMENT- waste of time.
“TNA World Heavyweight Champion” Eddie Edwards is introduced to the crowd. Does this mean he defeated Lashley or that their match is still going on but he hasn’t lost yet. Eddie wastes time saying a whole bunch of generic nothing, to the point where I, possibly Eddie’s biggest fan, popped when Lashley interrupted him and told him that no one wanted to hear that crap. They’re not fighting, so I assume the match must have ended at some point. That seems like something we should have been told.
Lashley cuts a good promo and says that “after that garbage we saw in Cameron, I demand a rematch, right here, tonight.” Okay… so did they have a screwy finish at some point in the past three weeks? What happened? (This is why you don’t end a show with a match still in progress!)
Now EC III comes out to act like a tool. Ethan and Lashley yell at each other, then Eddie yells at both of them. He wants to defend his title in a triple threat match to start off the year. Doesn’t TNA management do any booking at all?
Eddie says he has a surprise tonight, which will probably be Davey. Josh claims that “Eddie Edwards calls himself ‘Mr. A.I.P.- anything is possible.’” I have never once heard Eddie call himself this.
Apparently Josh somehow knows that the three-way for the title will be the main event and not the opener like Eddie had wanted. Again: Doesn’t TNA management do any booking? Did they really come into this big show with no main event planned? I absolutely hate segments like this. Not only does it make the company kayfabe look bad, but more importantly, it’s completely pointless. If you want to have these guys in a three-way main event for the title, just book that and advertise it from the beginning! Or even better, announce it a week or two in advance and plug it on your website and social media and the recap shows you’ve been doing instead of Impact for the past two weeks. Then all you need is a short promo from each guy at some point during the show and instead of wasting thirteen minutes on nothing, you could have added ten minutes to your main event.

TNA GRAND CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH: Moose(c) vs. Mike Bennett (w/Maria Kanellis Bennett)- 6.25/10
What did Mike Bennett do to earn this title shot?
This match was every reason that this stupid title needs to go. It was a match that would have been a lot more exciting without the forced breaks in the middle, and having go to a judges’ decision instead of a real finish was extremely frustrating.
That being said, I totally marked out for the Moosesault.

SWOGGLE & THE BROKEN HARDYS BACKSTAGE- pointless
Also, a deactivated Vanguard 1 was there. The whole point of this was to kill kayfabe on the Hornswoggle is Vince’s kid angle.

SPUD CALLS OUT SWOGGLE- yeah… because that’s something from Total Non-stop Deletion that really needed to be followed up on.

ROCKSTAR SPUD vs. SWOGGLE- DUD!
Swoggle squashes Spud. This is the sort of stupid bullsh*t TNA needs to not be doing.

ROCKSTAR SPUD PROMO- he quits. Good. Hopefully we’ll never have to see Spud again.

BENNETT YELLS AT MOOSE BACKSTAGE- he agrees with me that these rules are stupid. He wants an Anything Goes match with Moose tomorrow night on the PPV to blow off their feud. If this was what they wanted to set up tonight, they picked a TERRIBLE way to do it. The way they booked that match builds to something like a “regular rules” match for the title or maybe a match with longer rounds or whatever. It did not in any way feel like build for a No DQ’s match. If they wanted a No DQ’s match they should have had Moose be defending the title and Bennett come out between rounds one and two and take his knee out with a weapon or something. Then you have Moose still want to fight despite the injury, causing him to lose the belt. That way you have both a weapon being used and some reason for there being some heat there (and it also sets up something for Moose to do afterwards, plus free up the title belt to be defended on the PPV).

ELI DRAKE HAS WILE E. COYOTE SIGNS- this would have been fine if he didn’t speak at the end. That kills the build for him speaking when he comes out to the ring.

ELI DRAKE IN-RING PROMO- he rattles off a quick promo telling EC III it will never be over between them, then quickly transitions over to bringing out his guests, the Broken Hardys. The way this was done made Eli and his feud with Ethan look completely insignificant, like something to quickly get out of the way before the “real stars” show up and by wasting his return to being allowed to talk on pushing something completely unrelated.

THE FACTS OF LIFE WITH ELI DRAKE WITH SPECIAL GUESTS THE BROKEN HARDYS- terrible
Eli complains that he didn’t get an invite to Total Non-Stop Deletion. Matt points out that he did in fact get one because Matt invited everyone ever. Matt then suggested that Eli didn’t show up because he was scared “like Mc-Ma-han’s Day of New,” and was someone who talked trash but never showed up to back it up like “the Bucks of Youth.” So he’s building up one match that everyone knows will never happen, and another match that is going to happen on a competitor’s show. Can you imagine any other promotion in the world letting someone get away with this?
Then Jeff talked and was very annoying. Then Eli talked and was slightly less annoying. Then Matt talked and was slightly less annoying than that, and by the time we got back to Eli again someone was finally saying something decent. Then was annoying again. Eli wants a shot at the tag titles tomorrow night on the live PPV. Matt accepted the challenge. Throughout all of this no one at any point noted that Eli doesn’t have a partner. Then they ended it with a physical confrontation so anemic it barely counts.

EDDIE EDWARDS PROMO- he said some of the same things he said in the opening segment, in the same exact words. We once again tease Eddie’s surprise but are interrupted by Lashley who says basically the same stuff he said to Eddie before. I know I said that the opening segment was pointless, but this was even more pointless than that.

POINTLESS TOTAL NON-STOP DELETION VIDEO PACKAGE- pointless. Anyone who wants to see this has seen it already, and even if that weren’t the case it’s not like this is the replay of a PPV or anything so it’s not like they’re even making any money off of this.

THE HELMS DYNASTY (w/Gregory Shane Helms) vs. DECAY (w/Rosemary)- 2/10
They JUST showed us a recap of The Final Deletion INCLUDING LEE & EVERETT TURNING ON HELMS so why are they all back together again like nothing happened?!
Oh. Here’s a promo to do a stupid job of explaining it. Maybe you should have showed this first? (And as an aside, I laughed my ass off at the “there’s no “I” in “unity” line. That’s brilliant.)
The match was short and boring but had a cool finish. Josh Matthews teased Decay going after the tag titles, which is the last thing I want to see.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- The lights were out for a long time and the DCC showed up. WHY ARE THEY STILL WEARING THEIR G-D DAMN MASKS?! They attack Decay from behind, then take their masks off. Who could possibly care about these two heels factions fighting each other?

MARIA & ALLIE BACKSTAGE- good set-up for a segment later tonight.

AND HERE’S THE SEGMENT- Maria’s Lady Squad is in the ring. Maria gives all of the credit for saving the company to herself and her husband. She’s so damn great.
She calls out Allie and mocks her and yells at her. She taunts Allie, asking her if she wants a match, and Allie emphatically says yes, so we get…

ALLIE vs. SIENNA (w/Laurel Van Ness & Maria Kanellis Bennett)- 3.5/10
I like how Maria only told Allie to “get your boots and your kneepads on” but didn’t explicitly tell her to get into her gear, so Allie came out wearing her street clothes with her boots and kneepads over them. Allie is so great sometimes.
Madison Rayne’s commentary is getting slightly better, so she’ll probably be at the point where she doesn’t sound wooden by the beginning of 2018. Braxton Sutter came out to support Allie. Laurel tried to seduce her, which distracted Allie, allowing Sienna to cut her off. Allie made her comeback but Laurel then kissed Braxton to distract Allie (so basically the same spot again), but this time it led to Sienna hitting Allie with her finisher for the win.
One clever fan has a sign that says “Allie is the Bomb” with some cherries on it.

FINAL PLUG FOR THE PPV- Sienna is getting a title shot, Eli will get to pick a partner of his choice, Moose vs. Bennett, and “a four-way X-Division Title match,” (they won’t even tell us who is in it!) because why should anyone have to earn a shot at that title?

TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Eddie Edwards(c) vs. Ethan Carter III vs. Bobby Lashley- 7.5/10
They had a pretty great match until the overbooked finish. Davey was, indeed the surprise.

This show was a huge missed opportunity for TNA. If you’ve got the live PPV tomorrow night, go all-out with it. Save the title match for that show, make your main event an X-Division #1 contendership match or something, actually do something to build up the women’s title…
And even if you aren’t going to build up the PPV (and I don’t understand why you wouldn’t, but even if, for whatever reason, you aren’t, you shouldn’t go half way with it like they did here), this show should have been used to set some direction, but we really didn’t get any. This felt like the same old TNA, with nothing really going on. They did nothing to make me optimistic for the new year… or even to make me care about next week’s show.