BRM Reviews the 4/17/2014 Impact

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- utter sh*t.
EY comes out and thanks the fans for his support. He vows to defend the belt whenever and however the fans want.
Then Dixie came out and claimed to both be responsible for all of EY’s success and to have intellectual property rights to all beards ever. I swear to G-d she actually said this. Yes. Dixie Carter,: Businesswoman not only thinks it is possible to own intellectual property rights to the concept of facial hair, but believes herself to own this non-existent patent.
She tries to convince EY to be her corporate champion, but EY doesn’t want to, so he makes fun of her and tells her that he is now and always has been his own man. This would be the same guy who just said he would do whatever the fans wanted. He says he will go get into the General Lee and run her over. Rather than being outraged that Eric has just threatened her with vehicular assault on worldwide TV, Dixie responds by asking if that was supposed to be a Dukes of Hazard reference. I would normally be annoyed by stupid questions like this, but in Dixie’s defense: she is talking to Eric Young. He might well believe that he can animate the corpse of Robert E. Lee and ride on its shoulders while it pummels the metaphorical Ferrari Dixie had earlier compared TNA to.
Dixie says that his Dukes of Hazard reference proves that EY isn’t hip and culturally relevant, so she will give him a makeover tonight… and if he doesn’t submit to the makeover, she will do some unspecified terrible thing to ODB. This angers EY, who gets in Dixie’s face and tells her that was her only warning.
The Bully Ray comes out and Tenay asks “how about the tension last week when Bully Ray was face to face with Dixie Carter and the table was in the ring.” First of all, I don’t think there was any less interesting way Tenay could have possibly phrased this. Second, I would like to respond to Mike’s question. “How about the tension last week,” you ask? Yeah. That was some tension. So much tension that the whole thing was resolved OFF-SCREEN DURING A COMMERCIAL AND IT WAS NEVER EVEN MENTIONED AGAIN.
Bully gets in the ring and makes says everyone is tired of Dixie. He also says that he isn’t here to steal EY’s spotlight… except that is exactly what happened. Bully put EY over huge, but the moment he showed up, his feud with Dixie took center stage, and the new babyface TNA World Heavyweight Champion who just last week achieved his lifelong dream was relegated to the background.
(Come to think of it, something very similar happened to Chris Sabin during his short run as champion last summer where the feud between Bully and Brooke Hogan completely overshadowed his upcoming title defense against Bully, and in hindsight, it feels like this was the beginning of the end for Sabin as he quickly lost the title, then went back to being a random midcard schmoe with his title reign barely ever being mentioned again, ensuring that it didn’t elevate him in any way. Unfortunately, I see something very similar happening to EY. I will be shocked if he comes out of Sacrifice with the title and if he is ever portrayed as a strong main eventer after that).

So while Bully is saying all of these bad things about Dixie, Dixie points out that Bully Ray made an agreement with her, then double-crossed her and didn’t even give back the money she paid him. “Why is anyone here listening to this man?” she asks… and she’s got a damn good point. Over the past two years, Bully Ray has pretty well proven himself to be a big liar (or were we just supposed to forget the Aces & Eights?). Why should we believe ANYTHING he says?
Bully replies by warning Dixie not to piss him off. He reminds her that last week they were in the ring together and there was also a table in the ring “and if you know your wrestling history like you say you do, you know what happens to people like you when there’s tables in this ring.”
First of all, Bully’s phrasing here was atrocious. I assume the phrase “people like you” was him being very careful about not implying any sort of male-on-female violence… except that male-on-female violence is EXACTLY what he is threatening, which makes his attempt to avoid directly implying it seem extremely silly.
Additionally, the whole phrase as worded (“you know that happens to people like you when there’s tables in this ring”), actually seems to try to remove Bully’s history of putting women through tables from the general idea here by not specifically mentioning Bully at all. “you know what I’ve done to people like you when tables are involved” would have gotten the message across much better.
Semantics issues aside, this was still stupid because he was mad at Dixie last week, too, and as he reminded us, he had Dixie in the ring alone with a table… and yet he DIDN’T PUT HER THROUGH IT. So why would he do so now when he has had more time to calm down from the Dixie-orchestrated assault on him by Bobby Roode?
Bully then says that he is “tired of this” and points at EY, saying “this is his moment. This is his time.” THEN WHY THE F*CK DID YOU COME OUT HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?! EY was holding his own against Dixie perfectly fine and didn’t need your help at all. Bully then gets the crowd to sing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye”… and acting completely out of character, Dixie just leaves. Bully then resumes putting EY over on the mic, and Mike Tenay assures us that this has been “just another great moment involving our new world heavyweight champion Eric Young.” I don’t know, Mike. I will admit that between the two of us, you are the one with years of experience in the wrestling business and the guy with the nickname “the Professor,” but you’re also the one who has been saying absolutely retarded sh*t that makes no sense every week for the past decade, so I’m going to have to disagree.
General tip: assuring us that a moment is “special” in a loud, excited voice just makes it seem like you are trying to force “specialness” where none exists, killing any “specialness” that the moment might actually have (and this one, for the record, had none).

STREET FIGHT: Madison Rayne vs. Velvet Sky (w/Angelina Love)- 4/10
Yeah. Because a women’s street fight isn’t something you wouldn’t want to hype up in advance or anything. TBP wait on the ramp to ambush Madison, but she comes through the crowd and jumps them from behind. I will excuse this because the heels had a pile of weapons, but it would have been better to have her charge out with a weapon of her own. They had an okay match. Madison was a good babyface, and she got some revenge on Velvet before heading to the PPV to get her revenge on Angelina. After the match, Taz claimed this was a title match.

EY & BULLY BACKSTAGE- EY thanks Bully for putting him over. Bully says he still has more of the money he stole from Dixie, so he will go back to a strip club in New York and spend more of it.
Then Abyss walked up behind EY and yelled at him for messing his head up (or something). Abyss takes advantage of EY claiming he would defend the title wherever and whenever the fans wanted by challenging EY to a world title match tonight. EY accepts… if it is a Monster’s Ball match… so they will be having YET ANOTHER no DQs match on this show.

EC III & SPUD BACKSTAGE- not bad. I just don’t give a crap. The end made be LOL, though (they both said “shut up and follow me!” and then headed for different doors before Spud turned around to follow Ethan).

MVP & AUSTIN ARIES SEGMENT- very good
First he puts EY over, then says he is unhappy that Joe hasn’t called or texted him and says that Joe is disgruntled. Then Austin Aries comes out and cuts an awesome promo. MVP says he hasn’t been using Aries because Aries screwed him over in a random match against Bobby Roode two months ago and chose to team with Roode instead of him. MVP offers Aries a match right now, but Aries wants a match for next week. If MVP wants to wrestle Aries right now, can't he just... you know... book the match for right now?

VIDEO PACKAGE FOR EY-
This video package started out with EY saying “they said you weren’t big enough. You don’t look the part. You’re just a role player. No one will take you seriously.” Yeah, they added a few more lines about comedy after that, but it doesn’t matter. They might as well have just issued a press release saying “Attention! We are a fourth-rate WWE rip-off.”
Apparently this Monster’s Ball World Heavyweight Title match is official. It would have been nice to have MVP mention that while he was in the ring talking about EY a few minutes ago.

TNA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Bro-Mans(c) (w/Zema Ion) vs. The Wolves-
An un-hyped, un-announced world tag team title match. Last week they kept their tag titles by intentionally getting DQed. NOTHING has been done to prevent them from doing this again this week. Can you guess what the finish to this match was?
To make matters worse, this comes JUST ONE WEEK after MVP put the stipulations on a big world title match that Magnus would lose the belt if he was DQed.

WILLOW PROMO- sh*t.
“Rockstar Spud reminds me of dirty boogers: They aggravate my soul.”- is there even such thing as clean boogers? And if dirty boogers aggravate your soul, your life must suck. Do you fly into a rage every time you sneeze?
“EC III reminds me of dirty sheets: the more you read, the more you hate.”- Sorry Jeff. It’s not the dirt-sheets making me hate TNA; it’s the moronic angles and sh*tty promos like this one.

EY PROMO FROM LAST WEEK AFTER WINNING THE TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE- good.

HANDICAP MATCH: Ethan Carter III & Rockstar Spud vs. Willow- 3/10
People were chanting for Spud. Willow wins but gets attacked right afterwards. Kurt Angle makes his big return to make the save. He charges down the ramp at the man who put him out of action for two months… and just talks tough at him. EC III yells at Kurt and tries to punch him, but Kurt ducks it and gives EC III a German Suplex, then lets EC III get away. Tenay would later call this a "very memorable moment." This coming from the guy who can’t remember sh*t.
Kurt really doesn’t seem to care about getting his revenge on EC III, and if he doesn’t care, why should I? And even if I did care, Kurt got some revenge on EC III right here by hitting him with that German Suplex. So why would anyone buy the upcoming PPV to see Kurt get his revenge?

KURT ANGLE PROMO- he says he and EC III will have a one-on-one match soon and he will make EC III suffer and break his limbs and beat him up so badly that they will need to take EC III out of the ring in a body bag. Well Kurt…you just had him a few minutes ago! If you want to hurt him so badly, why didn’t you do it then?

BOBBY ROODE PROMO- decent. He claims to be the new “master of the tables match” and says he will make an open challenge that can be accepted by anyone except Bully Ray.

SANADA VIDEO PACKAGE- very good… but it just made me wonder why the X-Division Champion hasn’t defended the belt in the MONTH AND A HALF since he won it.

KENNY KING PROMO- AWESOME!
“I didn’t come out here to talk about MVP’s intelligence because that would be a very short conversation.” Kenny says he will do commentary for the second match in the Best of Three Series for the X-Division Title between Sanada and Tigre Uno.

BEST OF THREE SERIES MATCH FOR THE TNA X-DIVISION TITLE: Sanada(c)(1) vs. Tigre Uno(0)- 4/10
Yet another match which should theoretically be a huge deal, but had no hype at all. The match was short.

BULLY RAY GIVES SOMEONE A PEP-TALK- he urges this mystery man to beat Bobby Roode in his tables match open challenge. Very strong hints are dropped that it is Gunner.

TABLES MATCH: Bobby Roode vs. Gunner- 5/10
Storm costs Gunner the match. Storm then beats Gunner down after the match. Bully comes out ot make the save… and for some reason the two heels run away from the one lone babyface.

TAZ, MADISON RAYNE, WILLOW AND ECIII TALK ABOUT EY- this was all in kayfabe, so EC III actually buried him. Madison said… something. Willow claimed that EY was the greatest TNA World Heavyweight Champion ever. Taz put EY over… but Taz has been such a hypocrite on commentary for the past four years that nothing he says carries any weight. With all of these video packages, TNA has really tried to make EY and his title win seem like a big deal, but all of that will be lost if they just switch the belt back to Magnus and don’t follow up with EY at all (see: Chris Sabin).

GUNNER & BULLY BACKSTAGE- set up a tag match for next week, but I hated the way Bully was talking to Gunner here. He was treating Gunner like a whiny child.

MONSTER’S BALL FOR THE TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Eric Young(c) vs. Abyss- 7/10
I’ll be nice and give this a 7/10. Lots of good hardcore stuff in here.

A terrible show from TNA that just happened to have a good main event.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Mike Tenay- “The world champion busted- interrupted by- let’s be honest here, Taz- one of the people who has the power to do so: Dixie Carter.”
So now you need to have some sort of “power” to interrupt the world champion? You’d think with the long years Mike Tenay has been in the wrestling business, he’d know not to say dumb sh*t like this that just doesn’t make any sense. And you’ve got to love the “let’s be honest here, Taz” thrown in there for absolutely no reason at all, as if someone would dispute that the owner of the company can interrupt anyone she damn well pleases.