BRM Reviews TNA Slammiversary 2010

[Big Red Machine]

TNA Slammiversary VIII (6/13/2010)- Orlando, FL

KAZARIAN vs. KURT ANGLE- 7.5/10
GREAT opener!

TNA X-DIVISION TITLE MATCH: Doug Williams(c) vs. Brian Kendrick- 5.75/10
I really dislike Williams using the Tornado DDT as a finisher in this angle. It just makes him look like a hypocrite. He should be using either Chaos Theory or a submission.

BISCHOFF PROMO- good. Bischoff played his role perfectly.

TITLE vs. CAREER MATCH FOR THE TNA KNOCKOUTS’ TITLE: Madison Rayne(c) vs. Roxxi- 3.5/10
This match wasn’t that bad until Madison’s poor selling of the second Voodoo Drop.
Roxxi putting her career on the line here makes NO SENSE AT ALL! She earned the title shot by pinning the champ! She already had the match! Why should she need to give something up? And changing the stip now won’t get you any PPV buys… so why do it? There is no reason, be it kayfabe logical or promotional, to add this stip!!!!!!

JESSE NEAL vs. BROTHER RAY- 3.5/10
This started off with one of those moronic swerves that is done purely for the sake of doing a swerve. Bubba could have gained the same advantage by jumping Jesse before the bell, and he wouldn’t have had Devon out to possibly interfere afterwards! The match itself wasn’t much. Bubba did his best to try and get the fans to cheer for Jesse, but it didn’t work too well. Another thing that really bothered me about this match was that Bubba was pinned after only missing a senton, and getting speared. JUST TWO MOVES! WTF?! Tommy Dreamer showing up in the crowd was dumb, too. It is the second biggest PPV of the year, and Tommy shows up this late! You would think that (like all of the other fans) Tommy would have made an effort to show up ON TIME.

HERNANDEZ PROMO- good

MATT MORGAN vs. HERNANDEZ- 4.5/10
Matt Morgan came out and tried to get out of the match by handing the referee a doctor’s note. I believe that Taz said it best “Are you freaking kidding me? A doctor’s note? What is this? High school?
So after this moronic waste of time, Hernandez came out and they wrestled for a bit until Hernandez got himself DQed. Fine… then Hernandez goes to hit Morgan with a big boot into the ring-post (so far so good)… until the ref jumps in the way (which has never happened before, and is stupid). If they were going to do this, they shouldn’t have Hernandez care that he hit the referee. If he is going to go into a full-out rage against Morgan… have him do it. Don’t half-ass it.

HULK HOGAN PROMO- eh.

MONSTERS’ BALL: Abyss vs. Desmond Wolfe (w/Chelsea)- 6.5/10
Another obvious, stupid swerve ending. And Abyss shouldn’t have needed brass knuckles to win a Monsters’ Ball. It is HIS MATCH. He should be winning it with thumbtacks or broken glass or something like that.

JAY LETHAL vs. AJ STYLES (w/Ric Flair)- 6.75/10
I didn’t like Lethal getting the pin with a non-finisher. Still a good match, though.

STING PROMO- even if he sent Christy away, why did they cut to a camera all the way up in the rafters rather than “in the back” where Tenay said they were going? Did Sting kidnap a cameraman and all of his equipment… and nobody noticed? And they didn’t set up another cameraman instead to do the missing one’s job? They just figured they’d let the signal go to a camera that they knew was missing? COME ON! Just have Sting cut the promo from the interview platform like everyone else. Doing this doesn’t add any mystique to Sting, and doesn’t make him look like a badass. It just makes the company look dumb. Sting’s promo itself was the same stupid BS we had been getting from him since March 8th.

JEFF HARDY & MR. ANDERSON PROMO- stupid.

BEER MONEY vs. JEFF HARDY & MR. ANDERSON- 6.75/10.
Didn’t really feel like it ever got out of second gear. Also, Slick Johnson was way too over the top here, to the point where it took away from the match.

TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Rob Van Dam(c) vs. Sting- 4.5/10
Why the hell was Hebner out there yelling at them to get back in the ring for so damn long? Do your job, Earl, and ACTUALLY COUNT THEM OUT!
The action was lame (with RVD completely carrying it) and the ref bump was so clearly choreographed that it annoyed me. And I’m still not sure why hitting a referee with a crossbody hurt RVD so much. No one ever sells crossbodies when they hit WRESTLERS with them… but doing the move to a ref hurt RVD so much that he was rolling around the ring in pain?

Sting starts beating RVD with a baseball bat, so Jeff Jarrett casually strolls down to the ring to make the save. No need to run or anything, Jeff. It’s not like your sworn enemy was in the ring, hitting your chosen champion with a baseball bat or anything. You just dawdle on down to the ring.

Overall, this show was bad, and certainly wasn’t good enough for Slammiverary. It was full of pointless, see-through swerves, and other sh*t that didn’t make sense, capped off by a terrible main event.

Stupid Announcer Quotes:
1. Tenay says “Taz, earlier today, you and I were discussing the eight year history of TNA, and talking about tag teams that were the cornerstone of this tag team division, and I think if you look back over those eight years, well… Team 3-D comes to mind, but then there’s Beer Money Incorporated”
Neither of those teams had ever had a match in TNA together over the first three and a half years of the company’s existence! So obviously they couldn’t have been “cornerstones” of the division for that time! Why the snub of AMW? After all, talking it up would only make James Storm look even more impressive as a tag team wrestler! Or G-d forbid they mention someone like Triple X who might actually get new fans interested in buying old TNA DVDs!

2.Tenay- “Maybe it’s a case where Anderson and Hardy; they don’t care about scouting the opposition. They just want to bring their best offense, their best arsenal, to the ring, and let that fly”
Taz “I think that’d be the best thing that Hardy and Anderson could do”
So the best thing that they could do would be not do any scouting and rush into the match blind? Moron.

3. Tenay (about RVD and Sting)- “Could you really have two more different or two more divergent styles than the champion and the challenger bring to this match?”
Yes. Easily. Sting’s style is very middle of the road. It involves doing a lot of different things. He is an “all around” type of guy (a little less on the submissions and the high-flying, but he uses them at times), so it really isn’t possible to find someone whose style is different enough from Sting’s to make the above comparison, especially when such amazing divergent styles such as high-flying and straight ground submissions exist.
And what the hell was the point of throwing the word “divergent” in there? There was NONE AT ALL except Tenay trying to make himself sound smarter and failing. I swear he sits there at the announce desk with a thesaurus and flips through it while he is speaking, which is why he always uses a fancy synonym after the regular word rather than just using the fancy one.

4. Taz (about RVD)- “he has an ‘extreme’- pun intended- aggressive style.”
This statement is either a horrendous failure at grammar, or at vocabulary. It should be “extremely,” the adverb, not “extreme” the adjective. Or, Taz meant it to say it like this- “he has an ‘extreme,’ (pun intended) aggressive style.” In this case, extreme either means the same thing as the “extreme” in ECW, or what people are now calling “extreme” wrestling because they are trying to capitalize off of ECW’s popularity without being able to say “ECW” so they use the term extreme… meaning that THERE IS NO PUN HERE!

5. (a special triple whammy!) Taz & Tenay like that Hebner is giving them “a little leniency” with rules by not counting a count-out. –
a) I think that allowing them to fight on the outside for two and a half minutes longer than they are allowed to has gone past the point of “a little” leniency.
b) Clearly, this was not the original case, as Hebner spent so much time before yelling at them to get in the ring. It seems more like Hebner just gave up and stopped caring (great work ethic from the senior official)
c) You can give leniency when something is at the referee’s discretion! In this case there is no discretion! The rule about count-outs is concrete and precise. You can’t just ignore it because you feel like it!