BRM Reviews the 8/22/2013 Impact (HardCore Justice... still)

[Big Red Machine]

ACES & EIGHTS BACKSTAGE- more teasing of Bully’s mysterious lover named “Brooke.” Anderson is unhappy with Bully because Bully didn’t tell him about the Tito thing and because Bully hasn’t been returning his calls. Bully then tells Anderson to stop worrying about whether Bully returns his calls and to start worrying about “earning your stripes” and taking care of his own club business.
“Earning his stripes?” Anderson is the f*cking VICE PRESIDENT!

OEPNING IN-RING SEGMENT- bad.
Tenay starts off with one of his obnoxious, overly-verbose descriptions of what is going on in the world’s most unnatural speech pattern.
E.G.O. cut promos about how great they are. Roode makes an appeal to recruit Austin Aries. James Storm and Gunner come out and Storm warns Daniels and Kaz not to trust Bobby Roode. Does James Storm not realize that Kaz and Daniels are also dirty despicable lying cheaters?
Then Storm (after giving fair warning) punches Roode. Gunner (without giving fair warning) punches Kaz, and rather than help his partner, Christopher Daniels just rolls to the outside. Then Earl Hebner comes out and orders that a match be started and, for no reason, ejects Daniels from ringside. Apparently Earl has booking power now. I'm not quite sure exactly what it was, but there must have been some confusion about something here because Storm, Daniels, Kaz, and Roode are not the type of guys who would normally screw something like this up.

JAMES STORM & GUNNER vs. BOBBY ROODE & KAZARIAN- 5/10
The fans don’t give a damn about Gunner. Anyway Kaz and Roode pick up a win over the tag team champions.

AUSTIN ARIES PROMO- good.

Apparently there will be an in-ring celebration of Bully’s title win tonight. Why would TNA agree to this? Well… the logical answer would be that Bully threatened to show up on someone else’s TV show and do unspeakable things with the TNA World Heavyweight Title if TNA didn’t let him do this… but of course TNA never mentions anything of the sort. So all spring TNA kept telling us that “the belt gives you power” but never once showed it, and that they have the opportunity to show it, they don’t, and the story is that TNA management decided to throw a party for someone that they hate.

SONJAY DUTT vs. MANIK- 5.25/10
So much for those new X-Division rules. Did they even last five months? And how did TNA write them out? Hulk Hogan Tweeted that there would be new rules and Tenay mentioned it in passing a minute into the X-Division match. And to make matters even worse, there is a new rule that all X-Division matches must now be singles matches. Did they not learn their lesson? Why have a limiting stipulation for no reason? All it does is limit the number of stories you can tell!

ACES & EIGHTS BACKSTAGE- entirely pointless.

STREET FIGHT FOR TWENTY BFG SERIES POINTS: Jay Bradley vs. Hernandez vs. Christopher Daniels vs. Joseph Park (w/Eric Young)- 4.5/10
Apparently it was more important to show us the Main Event Mafia talking backstage WITHOUT SOUND than to show us Hernandez’s entrance. Some star he must be if watching people talk without sound is more important than showing us the crowd getting excited for him.
I always hate it when promotion gussy up the ringside area for a gimmick match, like the way that WWE will set up a bunch of ladders of varying sizes around the ramp for a ladder match. Well TNA, in their never-ending quest to suck at as many things as possible, decided that, because this was a “street fight” they would line the ramp with orange traffic cones and two signs on the stage that say “General Parking.”
Kaz and Roode made almost no attempts to interfere in this match, even when Daniels was getting his ass kicked. Aries came out and turned kinda-sorta babyface by going after Daniels. Joseph picks up the win after Jay Bradley hits him with brass knuckles, causing him to be busted open and go Abyss on everyone. That’s right. Not only were the brass knuckles not the finish, but they didn’t even knock the man down for any length of time. You have weapons all over the ring. Why would you use brass knuckles for this?

MAIN EVENT MAFIA BACKSTAGE- Sting says that Tito was Rampage’s “so-called best friend.” Since when? And by who?
Sting says that no one has stepped up to be their partner so far and that he doesn’t think anyone will step up. Really? Jeff Hardy isn’t willing to put his career on the line to fight the Aces & Eights? Or Chris Sabin? Or James Storm? So much for this being a major feud with the whole locker room uniting against Aces & Eights and Aces & Eights being a major threat to TNA.
Magnus says that it doesn’t matter if anyone steps up. Joe then buries the entire roster by saying that “no one is good enough to step up.”

BULLY RAY’S CELEBRATION- horrible
Bully comes out with Tito Ortiz. No other members of the Aces & Eights showed up. Really?
Bully and Tito then both cut bad promos. Bully then revealed that his lover to be Brooke Tessmacher. So this whole thing about Bully claiming to still be in love with Brooke Hogan was just Bully pointlessly lying to everyone, INCLUDING HIS OWN BEST BUDDIES IN ACES & EIGHTS FOR NO REASON!
Tenay talks about how shocked he is, finishing off with by saying “you shocked us all” WITH NO EMOTION IN HIS VOICE WHATSOEVER! Please fire him.
Bully then says that now that he has Brooke Tessmacher, Tito Ortiz and Taz with him, he can never be stopped. This snubbing of the rest of Aces & Eights is just so forced it is stupid.

GAIL KIM vs. ODB- 4/10

JEFF HARDY VIDEO PACKAGE- okay

AUSTIN ARIES PROMO- awesome! Easily the best thing on the show by miles.

Tenay tells us that Hogan isn’t here because he has been meeting with lawyers. At nine pm on a Thursday night? Really? Did he really schedule this meeting for the only two hours during the week where his job requires him to be somewhere?

CHRIS SABIN VIDEO PACKAGE- not bad, but they should have opened the show with Sabin cutting a promo like this. I like how Sabin mentioned that only Rampage came out to help him, but stopped short of criticizing the rest of the MEM. Like he realized it was a giant plot hole so he had to stop himself from mentioning it.

Apparently Anderson decided to wait an entire commercial break before asking Bully to come out and watch the match. Why not ask him BACKSTAGE, BEFORE THE F*CKING MATCH?!
Just before the match was about to start, AJ Styles came out to his new music, then did his little jig and all of a sudden it turned into his old music and he was a babyface again. How did the sound guy know what AJ was going to do?

LOSER OF THE FALL LEAVES TNA: Aces & Eights (Mr. Anderson, Knux, Garrett Bischoff, Wes Briscoe, & Devon) (w/Bully Ray, Tito Ortiz, & Brooke Tessmacher) vs. the Main Event Mafia (Samoa Joe, Sting, Rampage Jackson, Magnus, & AJ Styles)- 5.5/10
Nowhere near good enough for a main event. So the man who has to leave TNA forever is a guy who isn’t even under contract, is a heel, and is a member of an outsider who won access to all TNA events for all of their members. So what is to stop Devon from coming back?
This whole AJ babyface turn once again proves that TNA has no idea how to do even the most simple things right. You have the babyfaces fight valiantly all match, but they just can’t overcome the odds. You all of the babyfaces beaten down surrounding the ring aside from Joe, who is the legal man and is getting his ass kicked in the ring. Then something happens and Joe starts to make a comeback, knocking four of the heels down, then doing some sort of double-down spot with the fifth one. Joe crawls towards his corner and looks up… but no one is there to make the tag to.
THEN AJ runs down the ring and extends his arm, and seeing AJ there, ready to fight on the side of the angels once again inspires Joe to dig down for the last burst of strength he needs to lunge over and make the hot tag to AJ, who runs wild on the heels until the rest of the babyfaces recover. THAT is how you do something like this because it a) incorporates the story that this match has been built upon, b) builds to the big moment of AJ’s turn c) makes AJ’s turn more important by making it the climax of the match, and d) gives us a reason for AJ to have turned babyface (he was inspired by the MEM, especially his good friend Joe, fighting bravely for the company that he loves and helped build).
TNA did actually do one thing right, here, which was that they kept the camera on AJ as opposed to cutting to the rest of the guys brawling. Props to the director for that.

Yet another bad show from TNA.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Taz says that he “wasn’t completely shocked” by Tito Ortiz’s turn last week, to which Tenay responds “what does that mean?”
What sort of an idiotic question is that? It means either he knew it was going to happen, or he guessed that it might happen. What the hell else could it mean? And why does it matter what it means? Why the hell would Tenay even ask the question in the first place?
2. Tenay tells us that if Daniels wins the street fight, he will take over the lead in the BFG Series. Taz then tries to mock Tenay as being old fashioned by telling him that he should be using a calculator, rather than pen and paper to figure this out.
If you cannot add twenty to a number without using either one of those aids, YOU ARE A MORON!
3. Tenay- “How important has Eric Young been in terms of the career of Joseph Park, advising him over the course of the last several weeks”
He helped Josesh develop a strategy that MAY have helped him win a grand total of ONE MATCH, so I’m going to say not very important at all.

4. Tenay- “Steel chair, like a necktie, around the head of Hernandez”
Um… Mike… you wear a necktie around your neck, not your head. Hence the name “necktie.”

[Big Bad Booty Daddy]

Brooke Tessmacher called it!!


She looked hot as hell tho