BRM Reviews Part of the 1/12/2017 Impact: The Night I Finally Gave Up

[Big Red Machine]

HARDYS PROMOS- Matt was good but Jeff was TERRIBLE. SOOOO wooden and dull. Like he couldn’t possibly give a sh*t. He sounded so bored.

EC III PROMO- I’ve lost all patience with EC III. Every time he tries to sound cool he comes off like a huge tool. Lashley came out and said that Ethan could have won the world title if he had taken the chair Lashely offered him at the PPV. Then Lashley proposed that they have a Last Man Standing match for the title whenever one of them takes it from Eddie. Then he said he wanted the match as tonight’s main event, which doesn’t make sense because Eddie is getting a tag title shot tonight. Then Ethan said that he wanted the match now instead and punches were thrown and we got a brawl that got broken up Then, after a commercial break, this got re-booked as #1 contendership match. Gimmick matches for no reason, with no hype and no notice. They do realize that this is the same thing they’ve been doing for close to a decade now and it hasn’t boosted their ratings, right?

LAST MAN STANDING #1 CONTENDERSHIP MATCH: Ethan Carter III vs. Bobby Lashley- 7.5/10
In the middle of this match between Lashley and EC III the director saw fit to cut to one fan holding up one of the lame “made quickly at home on my printer” Wolves Nation signs from last week.
The match was really good (and this is coming from someone who generally doesn’t like Last Man Standing matches too much), but I DESPISED the finish. What they did was the equivalent of kicking out at 3.1, which takes any sort of finality out of the finish, which is what a big gimmick match like this is supposed to have.

Apparently someone choosing a ring to put on their pinky is supposed to entice me to stay tuned. I have absolutely no idea who this could be or what they are doing.

Also, they’re hyping up the first ever “Race for the Case” match which appears to just be Feast or Fired. Ah. Here are the differences:
1. There is no pink slip
2. You MUST use your case two weeks from now at “Open Fight Night,” which seems to be the complete opposite of Open Fight Night.


WE WATCH MCKENZKIE MITCHELL GET HER MAKE-UP DONE- why? So that Eli Drake and Tyrus can show up to terrorize the makeup people. You know… because that will make this unauthorized use of camera time feel more “real.” The problem is that in their rush to be so “real” they completely ignored the first question they should be asking: “why is this camera broadcasting in the first place?” Why would they be showing us McKeznie getting makeup done? I absolutely HATE it when they do this. I need to come up with a term for this; for when TNA, in their efforts to be so “real,” completely ignore this basic question which has no answer other than “so the camera can see what it needs to see,” and thus expose themselves as staged.

Anyway, they grabbed a makeup dude and made him get down on his knees and read a written statement. It came off terribly because the poor guy’s terror distracted us from the important words. Then they assaulted this poor, innocent non-wrestler. One assumes there will be some sort of punishment for this, right? When they finally let someone come to check on the poor schmoe who got assaulted, this guy could not have possibly sounded any less concerned when he told someone to “go get an agent. Go get a doctor,” as if these were just suggestions rather than commands that it was imperative that they be followed quickly for the sake of this man’s health.

SPUD IS IN THE RING DRESSED LIKE A SAILOR- Yeah, because this will definitely show everyone that they are trying to be taken seriously as a promotion. And didn’t Spud quit last week?
Apparently he is Aron Rex’s lackey now. It’s nice when they do things like that offstage. It’s a nice reminder of how incompetent TNA can be at telling stories. Rex is now dressing in gaudy, fluffy robes, with rings on all of his fingers like some cartoonish parody of a foppish rich man. Change that. A foppish effeminate rich man. He’s wearing lip gloss, and also looks like he got botox in his forehead or something (I don’t know if that’s a place people get botox and I don’t care).
He says that people always pay to see him, but never pay to see him wrestle. Wrestling is barbaric, so he won’t do it anymore. He thinks people will just pay to see him. WHAT IN THE F*CK POSSESSED TNA TO THINK THIS WOULD BE A GOOD GIMMICK?! Remember when Sandow got released from WWE and everyone was so excited because now he could go to TNA where they would push him like the star we all knew he could be but WWE would never push him as because of pure stubbornness? We’ll they’ve already turned him heel and then neutered him AND HE HASN’T EVEN BEEN IN THE COMPANY FOR SIX MONTHS YET!
Now f*cking Robbie E. comes out to interrupt him. Wait, no… he’s not cutting a promo on Aron Rex; he’s cutting a promo on f*cking SPUD. Now Robbie E. is talking about how this is “a new era for Impact Wrestling” (with his back turned to the heels because he’s a f*cking idiot) and there is nothing I want to see more in the world right now than someone repeatedly beating him in the back of the head with a lead pipe.
Then he called Aron Rex a jackass, which started a fight that he of course lost because it’s two-on-one. Then Rex punches him with all of his fancy rings on. Then he tells us that “violence is never the answer” because a hypocrite gimmick is definitely what this company needs right now.
Everything about this was atrocious and frustrating, from the obvious like Rex’s pointless gimmick change and Spud still being on TV despite having quit, to the fact that this is what Robbie E. is doing now after they seemingly went ridiculously far out of their way to set up a feud between the Bro-Mans and the DCC on their PPV (which, in hindsight, means that they added bad matches with pointless dirty finishes in them for absolutely no reason at all, serving no purpose other than to drag down the quality of the PPV).

DCC PROMO- Hey, look! Someone finally f*cking remembers that Decay TRIED TO MURDER BRAM. It’s Bram himself. Now, thankfully, no one has ever done such a thing to me, but I can assure you that if someone from my place of work did try that, I WOULDN’T WAIT THREE F*CKING MONTHS AFTER COMING BACK TO WORK TO TAKE MY F*CKING REVENGE.
Anyway, they all explained their motivation, which had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THE SYMBOLISM OR THE MLK QUOTE THAT THEY HAD UP ON THE SCREEN FOR THEIR DEBUT. You know… if they had just shown up and cut a f*cking promo like this from the start, I would probably be into these guys. I like all three of them on the mic (Kingston was quite great here, which is only average by Eddie Kingston standards) and I like both Storm and Kingston in the ring and Bram is fine. This is a group that I should like. But the way they were presented from day one has made it completely impossible for that to happen. People will always relate better to real human beings with rational explanations acting in rational ways than they will to people using magic and engaging in pointlessly cryptic bullsh*t, whose every movement seems to be completely random. And don’t tell me it’s “more artistic” or whatever this way because it’s not. It’s not symbolism if the image doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a f*cking picture of a clock or whatever.
The handling of the DCC is the sort of thing that completely destroys my faith in TNA, simply because it means they introduce groups like this without a plan (why would they be going after the Hardys or Eddie Edwards but not Decay, and then pivot to Decay after months of Bram seemingly not giving a sh*t about them?) or that they have a plan for them when they introduce them but are completely oblivious to how absolutely stupid their plan is.

MARIA YELLS AT ALLIE BACKSTAGE- finally! Something good!

DECAY (w/Rosemary) vs. THE DCC (w/
Josh claims that the DCC went after Decay because they “decided they wanted to make headlines” so we know that Josh clearly didn’t listen to their promo.


You know what? F*ck it. I’m done. I don’t need this sh*t in my life. No more TNA. I realize that I’m giving up on people I love watching like Lashley, the Wolves, and Mike & Maria, but I don’t care. I don’t need to spend hours a week pulling my hair out in between fantasies of going to the Impact Zone with a baseball bat and smashing every single thing in the building that isn’t a human being. My new year’s resolution for 2017 is to only watch wrestling that I think there is a chance of me actually ENJOYING.

Maybe next week I’ll attempt to write something more coherent and more professional about all of the factors that have led up to me snapping… but maybe I won’t because this stupid company doesn’t even deserve it.

[cero2k]

i'll have to pick up the Impact reviews