BRM Reviews the 3/6/2014 Impact

[Big Red Machine]

So they are acknowledging the Bro-Mans regaining the tag titles, but not Aries losing the title at the same show.

OPENING SEGMENT- Aries comes out and tells Roode that he wants half of the 10% ownership Roode stands to win or else he won’t join Team Roode at Lockdown. Bro-Mans now say that they too want a piece of the pie. They argue until MVP and the Wolves come out and MVP is about to announce the fourth member of his team when Dixie comes out and interrupts him just for the sake of telling him that she doesn’t care who he picks. She claims to have “spent all weekend in New York securing the victory for Team Roode.” I have no idea what that’s about.
Anyway, MVP says the fourth member of his team will be Jeff Hardy. Dixie says that MVP can’t do that because when Jeff walked out, she suspended him and she will not lift the suspension. MVP says Jeff will be at Lockdown and Tenay (in a very soft and clearly post-produced voice) just tells us “Jeff Hardy returns this Sunday as a member of team MVP!” despite the fact that this whole suspension thing hasn’t been resolved yet. In fact, the Jeff Hardy thing was not resolved in any way! A brawl starts when MVP (the babyface) sucker-punches Roode.

And on a side-note:
1) If Jeff is suspended, how are these Willow the Wisp promos playing?
2) Has MVP not seen these promos? Because Jeff doesn’t seem very sane right now, meaning that he might not be the best choice of a teammate for this super-important match.

SIX MAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH TO DETERMINE WHO GETS THE ADVANTAGE AT LETHAL LOCKDOWN: MVP & The Wolves vs. Bobby Roode, Austin Aries, & Robbie E. (W/Jesse Godderz & Zema Ion)- 4.5/10
So Robbie E. gets pinned about three minutes in, making Roode look like a total moron for picking him for his team. If he can’t last three minutes in a tag team match, how is he going to fare in a match with weapons?
Eddie Edwards doesn’t last too much longer. Way to make him look like a chump. MVP at least got eliminated via illegal leverage. This match never should have been booked as an elimination match. Why book a match where you have to beat THREE hot new babyfaces? Just make it a regular match, have the babyfaves look dominant and then beat them just like they eliminated MVP.

Anyway, they actually did some good stuff with Davey fighting off both Roode and Aries. Then Aries destroyed Davey’s shoulder with a chair, getting himself eliminated by DQ, but injuring Davey so he couldn’t continue, winning the match for the heels… or so we thought.

When we come back from commercial Hebner says that he is going to give Davey one hour to get back to the ring. WHAT THE F*CK IS THIS BULLSH*T?! So if I’m not doing well in a match, I can just fake a bad injury and get an entire hour to recover?
Why would you book this? Just have Davey be too injured to compete so that the heels have the advantage (as they should) and we have doubts about whether or not Davey will even be 100% by Sunday.

SAMUEL SHAW vs. ERIC YOUNG- no rating, decent segment.
Christy Hemme wasn’t at ringside for Shaw’s match. Good. And good thinking by Tenay to point that out. JB introduced him instead. Shaw is wearing his street clothes for some reason. Then Ken Anderson came out an did intros of his own, introducing Shaw as “creepy bastard” (with a British accent), and introducing Eric Young… as being from Nashville, TN. This would be the same Eric Young who was an important part of Team Canada for many years.
EY gets an initial burst of offense because Shaw is distracted yelling at Anderson, then Shaw takes over… then Anderson distracts Shaw, allowing EY to take over again. Shaw gets the advantage on the outside, throwing EY into Anderson, then attacking Anderson and choking him out (and also picking up a DQ win when Anderson tries to fight out of it). Shaw says he will now go back “to claim what is rightfully mine.”

MVP TRIES TO FIGHT ARIES BACKSTAGE- Road agents hold him back. He yells “you have no character” at Aries. What was the purpose of this?

EC III & DIXIE SEGMENT- crappy.
EC III walks in while Dixie is explaining why she missed last week’s show. This is the sort of set-up I like, where they create a reason for the camera to be there to catch a backstage interaction. Unfortunately, the interaction itself was entirely pointless. EC III tells Dixie that Kurt’s leg isn’t 100% because of his attack and Dixie tells him to target that during their match at Lockdown. No sh*t, Dixie. Got any other brilliant advice? Maybe something like “don’t get pinned for three seconds?”
Dixie then says that she doesn’t want to lose at Lockdown and thus she has a secret plan, which we already knew about because of the opening segment.

SAM SHAW BACKSTAGE- he is looking for Christy. After what he said after he choked out Anderson, why was security not sent to detain him?

SAM SHAW IN THE WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOM-
IT’S BEEN A WHOLE COMMERCIAL BREAK! HOW HAS NO ONE STOPPED HIM YET?!
He finds Velvet, who tells him Christy is in the makeup room (can’t fault Velvet for this. I would not want to get on this guy’s bad side).

EC III PROMO- good. He says he will make Kurt tap out to the leg lock. He then says he will become an American Icon on Sunday. Kurt comes out and calls him an “American asshole.” Oh what great comedy. EC III runs away from Kurt, then comes back and sneak attacks him, going after his injured knee, then locks on the leg lock. GREAT build to Lockdown. You see, if you do something, simple and logical where the heel doesn’t look like a chump, it actually makes me want to see the match.

MVP GIVES DAVEY A PEP TALK- the pep talk was horribly lame, but Davey’s little promo was good. They cut away so quickly after he finished talking that it seemed like they cut away before Davey was totally done with what he was saying. Apparently seeing a full twenty seconds of two teams of women walking down a hallway was that important.

KENNY KING VIDEO PACKAGE- Okay. He’s from Las Vegas. We f*cking get it. Now how about showing us how awesome he is IN THE RING?

ODB, VELVET SKY, & MADISON RAYNE vs. GAIL KIM, LEI’D TAPA, & THE ALPHA FEMALE (w/Chris Sabin)- 3/10
I swear to G-d I heard both JB and Tenay call her “Alpha She-male.” No EY at ringside with his wife to counteract Sabin? That seems silly.
NO reaction at all for Madison Rayne. Why did they even bring her back?
So they spend most of the match focusing on Sabin, Velvet, and Alpha Female instead of the women who actually have a match on the PPV three days from now, and they even had Velvet beat the big bad Alpha Female one-two-three with her finisher. If they only brought Alpha Female in for this tour, (and that seems to be the case as I have heard that she is headed to Japan for six months), then I guess this was a good cap-off to the Velvet vs. Sabin & Alpha Female stuff, but if they ever plan on bringing her back, this was bad.

NO ONE HAS CAUGHT SAM SHAW YET- REALLY?

WILLOW THE WISP PROMO- Yeah. You sure made a good choice, MVP. What?

SAM SHAW FINDS HIS WAY TO THE MAKE-UP ROOM- bad!
So apparently Anderson set a trap for Shaw. That eliminates some of the logical problems, but having Anderson beat up and humiliate Shaw totally killed all of his heat just three days before the PPV.

GUNNER-STORM VIDEO PACKAGE- if Gunner is going to be the babyface, at least they are smart enough to edit out the part of the Feast or Fired match where Gunner turned on Storm.

Yeah, okay… Davey has DEFINITELY been given more than an hour at this point.

GUNNER & STORM SEGMENT- awesome… but why the f*ck would you have a Last Man Standing match IN A CAGE and why the hell would you have a Last Man Standing match in the FIRST MATCH OF THEIR FEUD?!

BOBBY ROODE DRAGS BRIAN HEBNER TO THE RING- apparently I’m not the only one getting fed up with this sh*t.

WINNER GETS THE ADVANTAGE IN LETHAL LOCKDOWN… AGAIN: Bobby Roode vs. Davey Richards- 6.5/10
We got another horrifically obviously post-produced cut-in of Tenay talking about the death of Billy Robinson. Obviously this was important to do, but why not do it as a separate segment, like a commercial buffer, instead of cutting it in somewhere that made it clear how post-produced it was.
Good story. Davey looked tough and valiant, but the way they did this really made me wish they just had Roode vs. Richards for control and had Aries hit Davey in the shoulder with a chair a bunch during a ref bump or something.

TIGRE UNO HYPE –good

DIXIE & MAGNUS BACKSTAGE- what is the point of these two arguing? What does it accomplish?

LOCKDOWN RUNDOWN- women’s title match? Shaw vs. Anderson? Storm vs. Gunner (is it Last Man Standing or not? Taz said he wasn’t sure)? NO HYPE FOR MUTA?!

MAGNUS & SAMOA JOE SEGMENT- I can understand it If others liked this, but I found it to be pretty boring. I did think that Joe making Magnus tap was the perfect way to go off the air on the go-home show.

A decent show from TNA. They certainly were on message and did a good job of building to Lockdown, but there wasn’t match wrestling on the show, and there was stuff I would have done differently.