BRM Reviews the 2/20/2014 Impact (bad)

[Big Red Machine]

OPEENING VIDEO PACKAGE- this had a short little video package for Gunner that wasn’t bad, but it seemed like there was very little effort put into it, and that they could have done so much better.

DIXIE’S STABLE TALKS ABOUT SOMETHING BACKSTAGE- eh.

DIXIE, MAGNUS, MVP SEGMENT- good, aside from the parts involving the Wolves
Magnus calls out MVP, then brings up his history in a gang and his time in prison, then threatens to beat him up. MVP cuts a good promo in response, then asks whether or not Dixie is accepting MVP’s challenge for a Lethal Lockdown match. Magnus announces, on Dixie’s behalf, that Dixie accepts, then says he will beat Gunner tonight. Magnus goads MVP into punching him, and MVP beats Magnus up until EC III comes out and the heels beat MVP down two-on-one. We cut to the back to show that the Wolves aren’t able to help MVP because they are being held back by…TWO F*CKING NOBODY LESS-THAN-JOBBER SECURITY GUARDS! WHAT THE F*CK?! If you’re going to do this, at least have it be at bunch of security guards and have them all be large. These two schmucks were smaller than the Wolves!
The Wolves eventually overcome the security guards, but not in time to be of any help. Fortunately for MVP, Gunner was actually helpful and came out to make the save. EC III and Magnus retreated up the ramp, but the Wolves came up behind them… and inexplicably decided to let Magnus go, Then they beat EC III up two-on-one like good babyfaces.

BOBBY ROODE ANGLE VIDEO PACKAGE- good.
This was a lead-in to Roode showing up and the cameraman asking him for a comment. Bobby says “anything that I have to say, I’m going to say in front of the world.” So why not say it right now with this camera broadcasting it live around the world?

EC III & MAGNUS BACKSTAGE- this would have been good if I gave sh*t about this angle.

SAMOA JOE PROMO- he challenges anyone in Dixie’s stable to a fight. Zema Ion and the Bro-Mans come out, so Joe offers to take on all of them.

HANDICAP MATCH: Samoa Joe vs. Zema Ion & the Bro-Mans- 1/10
Joe beats BOTH OF THE TAG TEAM CHAMPIONS AND THEIR FRIEND AT THE SAME TIME IN LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES.

SAM SHAW ATTACKS A DUDE WHO WAS HANGING OUT WITH CHRISTY HEMME- good.

BOBBY ROODE & JAMES STORM BACKSTAGE- I really didn’t like this. First of all, it’s a tease of retirement that absolutely no one believes. Secondly, I’d rather have some sort of redemption for Roode start with him coming back at Lockdown as a member of Team MVP. Let him turn face by doing that, not by apologizing to James Storm in a random backstage segment. You can still do the apology after he turns face.

AUSTIN ARIES & MVP BACKSTAGE- decent.
The Lethal Lockdown match was just accepted a few minutes ago, and MVP already has three quarters of his team finalized. Don’t get me wrong: it makes perfect sense. It’s just very different from the usual Lethal Lockdown set-up. MVP tries to recruit Aries. Aries says he will let MVP know what he decides.

VIDEO PACKAGE ABOUT THE UK TOUR- apparently Gail and Madison have been getting into fights backstage for the whole tour, (which, in kayfabe, has been about a month now), and we have heard NOTHING about it. It is, apparently serious enough to warrant a street fight.
Was this really the best they could do? It just feels like such lazy storytelling. Why not have them get into a backstage shouting match one week, then have them interfere in each other’s matches the next week, then a backstage brawl the week after that… something that feels like it would warrant a street fight. Something that would feel like a REAL FEUD instead of a half-assed attempt at one.

STREET FIGHT: Madison Rayne vs. Gail Kim (w/Lei’D Tapa)- 4/10
Madison, the babyface, starts the match off by jumping Gail from behind. Gail locked in the Figure Four around the ringpost, and I thought “what a great finish for a street fight!” Then the referee started counting and telling Gail to break the hold… IN A STREET FIGHT!
This match was short, but the weapons shots all looked vicious. Gail was actually bleeding from the nose bu the end of it.

GUNNER VIDEO PACKAGE- much better!

THE CAMERAMAN INTERVIEWS EC III- dumb. I think they were trying to say that EC III thought Kurt was going to retire or something like that.

STORM & GUNNER BACKSTAGE- okay. Some of the stuff Gunner said here was great babyface stuff that would have worked much better as a passionate promo instead of words in a conversation with Storm.
Wait… WHAT THE F*CK?! Did Gunner just GIVE Storm the f*cking tag title shot briefcase? Really? Well I guess the tag titles can’t be that important if he is willing to give the f*cking briefcase away, can they? And why the hell would he do this? If he wants to be tag champs with James Storm, WHY NOT JUST CASH IN THE BRIEFCASE WITH STORM AS YOUR PARTNER?!

BOOBY ROODE PROMO- he announces his retirement. Raise your hand if you actually think Roode will be retiring. Anyone? No? Then why is TNA wasting our time with it? Dixie comes out, begs Roode not to retire, and offers to let him be the captain of her team at Lockdown. She offers to give him 10% ownership of TNA they win at Lockdown. Dixie offers for Roode to have his own lawyers draw up the contract. Roode says he’ll do it. Great. Even more people in on this ownership power struggle. If Bobby Roode wanted to own the company, couldn’t he just buy it like MVP did?

JB INTERVIEWS THE WINNER OF THE “ONLINE WORLD WIDE GUT CHECK”- mixed feelings.
First of all, I have watched EVERY SINGLE IMPACT since Gut Check began and never once has this thing even been mentioned. The guy is from Germany, so he spoke German, but that’s not the important part of this segment.
In the background, some dude was showing Christy Hemme something on his phone. Samuel Shaw charged out of nowhere and jumped the dude. THIS is how backstage segments should ideally be done. You create a reason for the camera to be there broadcasting the interaction.
After that, though, it all fell apart. Sam Shaw jumps the guy Christy is hanging out with, accidentally knocking Christy out in the process. Then he picks the unconscious Christy up and carries her off… and NO ONE TRIED TO STOP HIM! Not the cameraman, not JB, not anyone else who may have been hanging around, and most importantly NOT THE NEW WRESTLERS THEY WERE DEBUTING WITH THIS SEGMENT!
And how does Mike Tenay react to this? He just lets out an irritated “geez. What is the deal with this guy” like he was any old heel randomly walking up to someone and calling them a bad name instead of AN OBSESSED CRAZY MAN KIDNAPPING A WOMAN WHO HE HAS A CREEPY CLOSET SHRINE TO AND WHO RECENTLY TOLD HIM THAT SHE DOESN’T WANT TO SEE HIM ANYMORE! There appears to the rational viewer to be a very strong kayfabe possibility right now that Christy Hemme is about to be HELD AGAINST HER WILL AND RAPED (and maybe even murdered, we don’t know quite how crazy her rejection has driven Shaw)… and Tenay reacts like this is just some sort of annoying personality quirk that Shaw has. WHAT THE F*CK?!
E.G.O. BACKSTAGE- I totally forgot they were a stable. This was good. Roode is now acting like a babyface for heel purposes… but there are possibilities here that could leave them all as heels (like Bad Influence cheating to win and Roode picking them because of that).

BAD INFLUENCE vs. THE WOLVES- 5/10
They have BAD INFLUENCE VS. THE WOLVES AND THEY DIDN’T HYPE IT UP AT ALL?! WHAT THE F*CK IS WRONG WITH THEM?! And they only give it five minutes. That’s just criminal.

SAMUEL SHAW & CHRISTY HEMME BACKSTAGE- So the cameraman has been following them this whole time, but never once tried to help or called for help or anything? And apparently the guy showing Christy pictures who Shaw jumped Ken Anderson. That would have been something for the announcers to point out. Anyway, Christy wakes up very groggy. Sam Shaw massages her shoulders and is creepy.

It was nice to see a TNAShop commercial that didn’t completely objectify the Knockouts.

WILLOW THE WISP PROMO- so… the problem here is that if you don’t know his pre-WWE history (which I’m certain most casual fans don’t, and some smarkier fans might not know this specific gimmick), it really seems like Jeff Hardy got depressed and quit TNA, then went home and did a whole bunch of drugs and TNA is deciding to air it (and yes, you can tell that this is Jeff. The facepaint of the chin matches up with his and their bodies are the same).

MAGNUS VIDEO PACKAGE- bad.
Magnus talks about how important it is to be the World Heavyweight Champion, then immediately says that if you aren’t aligned with the President of the company, you are nothing. So which one is it? (I’m guessing the former because you know who else wasn’t aligned with the owner of his company? Stone Cold Steve Austin, and he’s about as far from “nothing” as you can be in wrestling)

Before the world title was about to start, but AFTER the introductions, Tenay announced “we’ve just been informed that this World Heavyweight Title match-up is going to be contested under “Magnus Rules. You know what that means-”
No, Mike, I don’t know what that means, because NO ONE HAS EVER USED THAT PHRASE BEFORE! Fortunately Tenay did indeed explain the rules right after that (No DQ’s, no Countouts), but don’t say “you know what that means” about a phrase that no one has ever heard before.
Secondly, if they JUST found out about, and JB didn’t know because he didn’t announce it as such, how are the fans in the arena going to know? Hell, how are the wrestlers going to know? (and to make matters worse, the referee, who actually wears an earpiece that can be explained for kayfabe purposes), didn’t know, either, because he started to count Magnus out in the beginning of the match.
Thirdly, don’t call it “Magnus Rules.” That’s just stupid. Sometimes this gimmick works, if either the name fits well (“Butcher’s Rules”) or you first train the fans to associate the guy’s name with the rules in question (like WCW did with “Raven’s Rules”), but to just one day start calling it “Magnus Rules” is dumb. And really… why call it “Magnus Rules” when you are in the UK and you can just call it “Duchess of Queensbury Rules” or a “London Street Fight” or something.


“MAGNUS RULES” MATCH FOR THE TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Magnus(c) vs. Gunner- 3.5/10

Right before the commercial break, Magnus had the advantage, but decided to call for help anyway. Instead of the heels, though, James Storm and the Wolves came out and Tenay said that the playing field would be level as if this was some sort of cliffhanger. When we got back from commercial, the heels had still not come out, while Tenay tried to sell us that the mere presence of these men at ringside was “neutralizing” the heels ability to interfere. THEY HAVEN’T EVEN TRIED YET! And isn’t Dixie’s stable, like eight people? EC III, Spud, Bro-Mans, Zema Ion, Bad Influence, and Bobby Roode?

Lo and behold, after EC III and the Bro-Mans came out and brawled away with the Wolves and Storm, Spud came out at a key moment and put Magnus’ leg on the ropes to save the title for him.

Apparently Hebner didn’t get the “no countouts” memo. He also yelled at Magnus for trying to use the title belt as a weapon, but didn’t actually try to stop from doing it, so either way, he is doing a sh*tty job. He also tried to yell at Gunner for going to the top rope, so… um… I give up. I don’t know what to say.
I’m actually convinced that the “Magnus Rules” thing was added in post-production because the ref always tried to count them out and yelled at Magnus for trying to use the world title and all of the other interference and weapon’s shots were done behind the ref’s back. This, of course, begs the question of “why would you added in a stip in post-production if it is going to be completely contrary to what is happening in the match?” All it will do is make you look stupid, and this wasn’t even an attempt to boost ratings because no one found out about it until immediately before the bell rang.

Anyway, they do stuff and no one buys that Gunner will win because of the Joe match, which was unavoidable. Everyone knows that Magnus isn’t losing the title to a midcarder just a few weeks before his showdown with Joe.
That being said, now that fans have been smartened up, some title shots feeling like “throw aways” is inevitable and unavoidable. We know that the world title will almost never change hands on free TV and we know that the champ probably won’t lose the belt in his first few defenses or against someone who doesn’t have much momentum behind them or isn’t at least on the cusp of being in the main event.
For various reasons (progressing an angle or keeping up the prestige of a title etc.), though, these matches do have to happen, so the question then becomes “what can you make out of it?” These matches, when executed correctly, can be invaluable in helping to build a guy (Davey Richards vs. Michael Elgin being a prime recent example). With this one, they seemed to have been building Gunner subtly for about two months now, but nothing big, so the match didn’t feel that important. Then, with the finish being what it was, it made it feel like the whole thing was about Storm, not Gunner. Sure Gunner almost beat the champ, but he didn’t look particularly impressive, and with the current angle being that Magnus is a paper champion, almost beating the champ doesn’t actually count for much. If they had at least given this more time and not had the earlier interferences, they could have really built Gunner up and gotten him something out of this, too.
And speaking of the finish… the problem here was that they telegraphed it so painfully. The minute that the referee decided to occupy himself by yelling at the pretty much dead Spud who had just been tossed out of the ring, walking right past James Storm and letting Storm stay in the ring, you knew exactly what was going to happen. Gunner, who rarely goes to the top rope, going to the top rope instead of just f*cking pinning Magus or going for one of his finishers didn’t help, either (though at least they had used the diving headbutt as a nearfall earlier in the match, so there was at least some psychology to it). It would have been so much better to have Gunner lock Magnus in the Gun Rack and then have Storm superkick him because at least that would have made more sense for Gunner to do and it wouldn’t have come off as a total rip-off of the finish to the main event of Hard Justice 2006 (though that one used a guitar so it looked much cooler).
And if these two HAVE to feud, why the hell would you have one of the most over babyfaces in your company who fans are still clamoring to see get a proper world title run be the heel and have Mr. No Charisma be the babyface?!

Another bad show from TNA. Aside from the obvious in-ring issues, the lack of time for the matches, and the booking, production, and hype mistakes, I think they made a major mistake by omitting certain things from this show. The first and biggest was Alpha Female. Last week they did a big angle debuting a new wrestler by having her attack the most over woman in the company… and this was not even mentioned once! Similarly, some comments from EY about Abyss’ departure would have been good. Hell… I’d have even settled for some mention of it by the announcers. It also would have been nice to get some sort of follow-up on Bully Ray. From what I gather, losing this casket match should really just shatter him. Some follow-up there would have been nice.