1st Impact on Destination America: A Series of Rants by BRM

[Big Red Machine]

The show opens with a mystery person picking up a note. He unfolds it, and inside there is the Destination America logo on the top half, while on the bottom, someone has written the following in all caps in Sharpie:
“Tonight Destination American becomes Destination Impact!! Your limo bus will be outside to take you to the Manhattan Center. BE READY!!”
What the f*ck?

OPENING THEME SONG/VIDEO- not bad. We see guys just… doing things. Lashley waking up. Gail Kim working out. EC III fixing his hair. Aries putting on his sunglasses. Roode admiring his title. Kenny King escorting women onto a bus. Jeff Hardy taking a picture with a fan (apparently Jeff walks around in face paint all day). Tessmacher showering. The best of these was the Wolves walking into an elevator and shaking hands. It just made me laugh.
There were two things that I noticed here.
1. While there aren’t any action shots of the guys, either, the women are clearly here just for sex appeal. Not ten seconds into it, we got a rather gratuitous shot of Gail Kim’s cleavage, and Gail’s clip was the only one of a woman who was dressed in more than just TBP’s sexy skimpy ring attire. That’s not the way I would start off on a new channel. It’s not as bad as putting Delirious in your opening match (and no, I will never let that go), but it’s not the best way to draw in the maximum possible viewers.
Actually, now that I think about it, there was nothing here to suggest that this is a professional wrestling program other than the quick shot of Roode admiring the title (and that could just as well be for boxing or MMA).
2. This is very NOW-centric. They have Roode with the title. They have tons of shots of New York City. This sort of stuff will have to change if Roode drops the belt or if they go somewhere else… and I actually think that’d be pretty cool to do. I’m not saying a completely new intro every week, but if the title changes hands, change out the shot of Roode for a shot of the new champ admiring the belt.

James Storm declares that 2015 will be “the year of The Revolution.” Abyss laughed.
We then cut to what appeared to be Bobby Roode standing in a nightclub giving the locker room a pep talk. The Wolves there with him, as well as Spud and Crazzy Steve, and others I couldn't recognize in the brief time and poor light they were in on TV. We then cut to MVP giving his guys a pep talk in a scene that feels like they copied it from Evolution’s entrance video (not the helicopter part. The hanging out with hot chicks part).

Coincidentally, the babyfaces and heels have all arrived at the arena at the exact same time, and a West Side Story stare-down ensues, even though it makes no sense for, for example, MVP & Pals to get along with James Storm’s crew. Speaking of them, Mahabali Shera was with them. Didn’t Storm chase him away?
Roode and King step up to each other and have a stare-down, then Kenny King sucker-punches Roode and a big brawl ensues. I groaned. This was just horribly stupid. It came across as cliché and corny and every single thing you don’t want to be when you are making a first impression.
Anyway, things start out with this big brawl spilling into the arena, and Josh Matthews is calm as can possibly be.

So these random dudes are all fighting. If I’m a first-time viewer, I have no reason to care about any of them, and if I’m a hardcore such as myself, I am still pondering why this giant schmoz broke out. What does The Revolution or the Bro-Mans care about MVP & Pals that they would want to help them? Why would Austin Aries or the Menagerie be so quick to leap to Roode’s aid? Why do the Beautiful People even care at all?
So we have mayhem breaking out as they show us shots of this brawl all over the arena. In the aisles, in the crowd, in the balcony. A grand total of about three security guys tried to break this up.
This brawl is so wild and the fans care about it so much that they are taking selfies with the wrestlers… and whichever wrestler took a selfie with a fan during what is supposed to be a very kayfabe dangerous situation is a f*cking idiot, and Josh Matthews is a f*cking idiot for pointing it out.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that EC III was there and involved in the action. That’s about the only positive thing I can say about any of this.
Kurt Angle then came out and yelled at security for trying to break things up, because “THIS IS NEW YORK CITY! THIS IS THE MANHATTAN CENTER!” Kurt asks the fans if they “want this fight to continue.” They say yes, so in the midst of all of this chaos, Kurt announces that all of the titles will be defended tonight. If am I a first-time viewer, I still have no idea who any of these people are.
Kurt told Bobby Roode that the fans expect his match tonight to be the Match of the Year, and so does he. I guess Kurt hasn’t seen the Toyko Dome show yet.
Kurt says he has one last important announcement to make. MVP slides into the ring in the middle of this big brawl, and he just starts chatting with Kurt. He asks Kurt if his big announcement will be to tell that fans that he (meaning Kurt) assaulted him (meaning MVP). The fans chanted “SHUT THE F*CK UP!” at MVP, and the censors cut the audio out for the F word, which is so much worse than bleeping it because it made it impossible to hear what MVP was saying because every fifth word he said cut out as well. Also the sudden starts and stops of audio are very unpleasant.
MVP said that the proper way to show disrespect to an authority figure in New York is to turn your back on him (because that’s a particular topic it is a good idea to reference), so MVP did that and urged Kurt to attack him. Kurt didn’t. MVP talked trash to him and said he was a shadow of his former self. He then reminded us how old Kurt is by telling us that he won his gold medal almost TWENTY YEARS AGO.
Kurt admits that he resigned as Director of Wrestling Operations. Then why was he booking matches three minutes ago?
Oh. Apparently it was effective after he just made those few matches. That’s stupid. Now it’s getting stupider as he was “activated as a wrestler” “fifteen minutes ago.” Now he’s back to booking matches again, booking himself against MVP in a Street Fight. THIS MAKES NO F*CKING SENSE!
Kurt says that the match starts right now, and he sucker-punches MVP, just like a heel would.
Wait… no… according to Josh Matthews, apparently it will start after the commercial.

STREET FIGHT: MVP vs. Kurt Angle-5/10
Turns out Josh was wrong, because when we got back to the show, they were already fighting (which was good, except that it made Josh sound like an idiot)… but for some reason the referee is trying to break it up, which lets MVP take advantage cut Kurt off. So, for the record, we got absolutely no shine on TV for one of our top babyfaces.
The fans are chanting “M-V-Pussy” at MVP, and that is getting censored, too. The next chant, “M-V-Penis,” not only didn’t get censored, but also made me laugh.
Taz described a move as “shades of Samuel Shaw.” Yes. He really said that. When you do a “shades of” reference, you referred to someone that people have actually heard of, and first time viewers will have no f*cking idea who Samuel Shaw is.
Oh… and no hype for Kurt’s return match?
The match itself was very good for the time it got, and the crowd was super-hot for it, but I have to criticize the announcers because MVP used a chair to work over Kurt’s knee, which has had multiple surgeries in the past fifteen months… and neither announcer pointed this out.

Okay… now that all of that is out of the way, I have a lot to say.
As you can probably tell, I DESPISED the way they opened the show. For first-time viewers, this would have thrown them in WAY over their heads, with a bunch of people they have no reason to care about just fighting for apparently no reason. Then Kurt Angle came out and made a bunch of matches, and then MVP and Kurt started talking about events that they had absolutely no idea about. The announcers were no help at all, although there really wasn’t much they could have done (at least until the match started).
Even more than how unfriendly it was for first-time viewers, I hated this because of the way it all came across. It was all action, but not in a good way. It came across like it was all random, wanton action, rather than something focused, like a match would have been. It was chaos for chaos’s sake.
It was like a combination of a lame attempt Lucha Underground’s artsy-ness and something you would see an early 2000’s indy do to try to rip off ECW… and then they tried to have a regular pro-wrestling segment right in the middle of it, complete with the trademark TNA lack of sense. As someone who has been watching TNA for a long time and has been extremely unhappy with the creative direction of the product for a long time, this not only did nothing to convince me that this was a new beginning, but cemented my belief that this is the same old TNA, but with an even smaller budget.

MVP & KENNY YELL AT EACH OTHER BACKSTAGE- MVP demands to know why Kenny didn’t interfere in his Street Fight with Kurt Angle. Kenny claims he was “with the girls.” Did Kenny King really manage to pick up MULTIPLE women in the ten minutes (if that) between the end of the show-opening schmoz and the end of the MVP-Kurt Angle match?
MVP is also pissed at Lashley for not interfering, and says he will go yell at him.

We cut to Josh Matthews and Taz. Josh read a statement from Dixie claiming that they are “pulling the curtain back like never before. You are going to get up close and personal with the wrestlers and Knockouts of Impact Wrestling. The cameras will be virtually everywhere. If something goes down- if something happens- you’re gonna see.”
While he said this, we got security camera footage of Bro-Mans, Angelina, and Samoa Joe standing in a circle talking while someone dozed off in the foreground and a second person (Magnus, I think), dozed off in the background. We also got to see what I assume was a view from inside the production truck.
*raises hand*
Excuse me! I have an important question: How is that in any way different from the way things were before?

And out of kayfabe: why does TNA think that “pulling back the curtain” will help the product? They’ve been trying to do that for years and it hasn’t helped one bit. Russo did it before that in WCW, and it also failed there.

We then cut to a shot of Crazzy Steve honking his horn and holding a teddy bear. The camera then panned to EC III, who cut a promo. Steve tried to get on TV, but Tyrus shoved him.
During this promo, he mentioned that he had vowed to take Spud apart “piece by piece by piece” and while he said this, Tyrus held up what appeared to be an empty baggie in one hand and an unidentifiable device in the other. I had no idea what this was. I think I vaguely remember them cutting Spud’s hair or something, so maybe that’s what it was, but if I, who am hardcore enough to be writing a review on the internet, don’t remember the angle after two months, then most casual fans probably don’t either, and a first-time viewer would be completely clueless.
If that was Spud’s hair… why should I care at this point? It’s been two months. Spud has grown his hair back by now, and Ethan carrying the lock of hair around ceases to be mean and becomes just plain creepy.

Josh Matthews puts over Mike Tenay, then throws us to Tenay to talk about his new show, “Impact Wrestling Unlocked,” which will be “Impact from a different perspective. An enhanced viewing experience with stats, facts, news, and opinions. In addition to that, we’re gonna go beyond Impact with a conversation much like the one I had earlier today with James Storm about the Revolution.”
MIKE TENAY’S INTERVIEW WITH JAMES STORM- terrible
Tenay has the same grating style of talking that he does when he announces, throwing in extra phrases all over the place like “when it comes to the formation of the Revolution- tell me- what were your motives?” instead of just asking “what were your motives in forming the Revolution?” like any normal person would ask.
Storm says that he formed the Revolution because “every time management gives me something, I’ve knocked it out of the park… but management did not fulfill their part of the deal, and now I am here to collect.”
OH MY F*CKING G-D! WHEN WILL THESE DUMB F*CKS LEARN THAT NO ONE GIVES A F*CKING SH*T ABOUT YOUR G-D DAMNED WORKED SHOOT HORSE-PISS ANGLES!
Tenay then asks about Storm’s “recruiting tactics,” saying: “almost amazing, from Sanada to Manik to “the Monster” Abyss, they just flock to you. What’s behind that?”
Flock to him? WHAT ABOUT THE PART WHERE HE KEPT MANIK TIED UP IN A SHED IN THE WOODS FOR WEEKS AND BEAT AND/OR RAPED HIM?! That’s not “flocking” to someone. That’s Stockholm Syndrome!
Tenay suggests that the tag titles are just step one for Storm. Storm answers him by essentially saying “why should I reveal my evil plan to you?” Then he proceeds to reveal his evil plan (or at least his evil modus operandi), and buries the all of the company’s titles while doing so. He then closed it off with this cornball line. “Do you believe in G-d? Did your momma warn you about the devil? Well she should have warned you about me.” Between his wording and the extra rasp in his voice, Storm came off less like someone who is evil and a lot more like someone who is trying really hard to pretend to be evil for TV.
Anyway, none of this makes me want to watch Impact Wrestling Unlocked.

TNA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Revolution (w/Manik & Sanada) vs. The Wolves- 5.75/10
The Revolution come out and the announcers start talking about the Feast or Fired Briefcase and a new fan probably has absolutely zero idea what they are talking about.
The Hardys came out to ringside to watch the match. Not only was the fact that they won a #1 contendership tournament never mentioned once, but when Josh wondered what reason they could possibly have to be out here, Taz replied that he had no idea.

The Wolves appear to have both gotten their clawmarks logo tattooed on their chest, which looks really cool. They also stole Jay Lethal’s spot where he does a bunch of suicide dives in a row. The match was good, with the Woves actually busting out a new combo that had me buying it as a nearfall.
The action was good and the crowd was hot, but the production was not. What do I mean by that? Let’s play a game and find out!
So Davey Richards has climbed to the top rope and is poised to hit some sort of high-flying maneuver, but Manik sneaks his way up onto the apron right next to Davey. If you were the director, which of the following would you do?
1. Leave the shot on the hard-cam, where we can see what happens?
or
2. Cut to a shot of the Hardy Boys standing and watching at ringside, which we have already seen about eight times?
Guess which one the dumbsh*t TNA director chose?
Oh… and he did THE SAME EXACT THING about a minute later when Sanada interfered.

The finish was overbooked poop involving the Hardys running in to stop Sanada and Manik from interfering, which included those four fighting right in the middle of the ring, right in front of the ref. Then Abyss went to go get the cowbell that the referee just let James Storm hang on the ropes near his corner (because leaving a weapon right near the ring is always good refereeing), but Jeff Hardy went to stop him and they had a tug of war over it which resulted in Jeff accidentally elbowing Eddie in the face, which allowed Storm to hit the Last Call and retain the titles.
This title match went just over six minutes. A great start to the new Impact.


MVP & PALS BACKSTAGE-
MVP yells at Lashley and claims Lashley wouldn’t be champion without him. Lashley throttled him and told MVP that this was about him regaining the title. Then they all exchanged words that imply that MVP will try to screw Lashley in tonight’s main event.

EC III SEGMENT- Borash was in the ring and about to introduce someone, EC III interrupted him. He made a few statements that were needlessly close to trying to use religion to get heat (in my opinion, and it’s not even my religion, so I’d guess that most Christians out there would be more offended than I would). He also stole Tyson Kidd’s catchphrase.
Based on the way this was censored, I’m pretty sure the fans chanted “you suck dick” at Ethan, and he responded by saying “I’m very good.”
Now we have people responding to the “You can’t wrestle!” chants by chanting “yes he can!” F*ck off, smarks.
Ethan called out Spud, but he didn’t show because Tyrus had beaten him up. Tyrus dragged Spud up the ramp, lifting him up by the waistband with just one hand, making Spud look like a complete and total loser. And again… with no background by either the announcers or a video package, why is a new fan supposed to care that Ethan is being mean to this small man in a horrific suit?
Ethan says that he will now cut off the rest of Spud’s hair. Well… that’s lame. When Ethan said he was going to take Spud apart, I thought he meant he would beat the sh*t out of him. Shaving his head? Who gives a f*ck at this point? You already cut his hair in this feud.
JB tried to stand up for Spud. I can’t help but notice that none of the babyfaces in the locker room are doing so. What happened to Spud’s new friend Eric Young?
Anyway, JB slapped Ethan which got a huge reaction from the crowd. The only reaction it got from me, though, was inciting a violent urge to throw something because I didn’t get to see the slap because, for some ungodly reason, while the slap occurred, THE CAMERA WAS FOCUSED IN ON BRODUS CLAY’S CROTCH!
Tyrus destroyed JB. Again… no babyfaces lifted a finger to help him. EC III then shaved a bald streak in JB’s head.

KENNY KING & MVP BACKSTAGE- they are angry. I could barely hear them because the crowd was making so much noise. Could they have not picked a quieter area to tape this in? Or at least signaled to these guys to talk louder?

X-DIVISION/LOW KI VIDEO PACKAGE- AWESOME!
They quickly and concisely explained to us what “X-Division” meant, why this title was so important, and who our champion was, while showing us clips of cool moves and shots of wrestlers a first-time viewer might recognize, like Rob Van Dam and Jerry Lynn.

TNA X-DIVISION TITLE MATCH: Low Ki(c) vs. Austin Aries- 6/10
Why is Aries getting this match? Joe had to vacate the title because of injury but he’s healthy now… so why isn’t he getting the first title shot?
Matthews: It’s not a weight class.
Taz: It’s definitely not a weight class.
Could neither guy remember the damn slogan? I mean really! How do you say or hear “it’s not a weight class” and not immediately have the “it’s not about weight limits; it’s about no limits” motto pop into your head?!


The crowd chanted “this is wrestling!”… before these guys had actually done any wrestling. Low Ki had made a half-hearted attempt at a kick, which Aries easily dodged. That was it. It’s one thing for a crowd to be hot. It’s another thing for them to be dumb.
For absolutely no reason, Josh Matthews mentioned that Low Ki was the first ever Ring of Honor World Champion. No mention of the fact Aries was ever ROH World Champion, though. He then ignored the match to congratulate Taz on having a podcast, and plugged the fact that “WWE Hall of Famer Edge” is Taz’s first guest.
Taz says that Aries is known for systematically picking his opponents body apart while Low Ki is known for his explosiveness and risk-taking… which is pretty much completely backwards.
Once again, the match was great for the time it got, but it only got seven minutes.

We were informed by Matthews that the Knockouts Title would be defended in a battle royale.

BATTLE ROYALE FOR TNA KNOCKOUTS TITLE- DUD!
Most of the women didn’t get their entrances shown, making them look like unimportant nobodies. There is even a girl standing in the back who I don’t even recognize. Hell, the Beautiful People didn’t even get their full entrance shown.
Jesse and Zema came out with them, then introduced Robbie E. to the crowd. This took place IN THE MIDDLE OF THE INTRODUCTIONS FOR A TITLE MATCH, with all the rest of the women just standing in the background like unimportant nobodies. All except for Taryn, that is, as she was apparently content to sit back and let these douche-hats steal her spotlight after she has worked so hard to win the title.
Robbie cut a promo blaming Tessmacher for his loss on the Amazing Race. Apparently he also recently dumped her. Does Brooke come out to defend herself? Of course not. Taryn does.
Process of elimination seems to rule that the one I don’t recognize is Rebel. This was confirmed by Matthews upon her elimination.
Brooke came out to do a run… out? She came out of the crowd for some reason, ran up the ring steps, and hit Robbie with a crossbody. Why does everyone else in the division get a title shot but she doesn’t?
Gail and Taryn snuck up on Velvet from behind and eliminated her while she was distracted by the fact that a woman was assaulting her boyfriend. Gail and Taryn are supposed to be the babyfaces.
They got down to three so quickly that it made everyone but Gail, Taryn, and Havok look like chumps. Taryn got the win by dumping Havok from behind after Havok had just finished a semi-epic struggle with Gail. Again… Taryn is supposed to be the babyface.
After the match, Havok, who still hasn’t gotten a rematch yet, attacked Taryn from behind and beat the crap out of her, making Taryn look like a chump, too. No security tried to stop this vicious beating. Some referees just stood around and yelled at her.
Then the lights went out and people booed because it was lame and dumb. When they came back on, people cheered because standing there, nose-to-nose with Havok was AWESOME KONG!
And remember those referees that were so afraid of Haovk they wouldn’t do anything to get between her and Taryn? Well now they have no problem getting between Havok and AWESOME KONG!
The Kong-Havok thing was definitely a great moment, and was the type of Lex Luger surprise that this show needed, but the way they got to it absolutely sucked. Why bury everyone else in the division when all you had to do is have Havok murderize a jobber, then do exactly what you did with Kong?
Havok decided to walk to the back and the whole situation was defused, except that for some reason, dumbsh*t referee who should have been kayfabe fired a million times over, Brian Stiffler, started screaming and yelling at Kong as she literally just stood there. Then Kong gave him a chokeslam. Shouldn’t Kong be suspended for this? And either way, what was the point of that whole thing? Are we supposed to think Kong is tough because she can beat up a referee?

They announced Hardys vs. Wolves for next week.

TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Bobby Roode(c) vs. Bobby Lashley- 5.5/10, but I really should give it a dud for the finish.
During the match, they showed us picture-in-picture view of events backstage. MVP and Kenny King wanted to bring two guys in dumb masks backstage, but a nameless TNA employee told him they couldn’t come in because he didn’t know who the masked men were. The masked men then assaulted both the employee and his much larger friend who had the same dumb beard that he did.
This absolutely killed this match because you KNEW that the match wouldn’t end until these guys got involved, so all of the nearfalls that Roode and Lashley did ceased to matter. When these guys finally came out about ten minutes later and just stood on the ramp, no one tried to stop them. Not security and not the other babyfaces. So unless these four guys beat everyone up, this made no sense.
Roode was about to win by making Lashley pass out in the crossface, but Kenny King pulled the referee out of the ring and MVP punched him out. Why? Don’t they want Bobby to lose?
Oh. Here comes Kurt Angle to stop them. Nope. They beat him up because it was four-on-one. No one came out to help Kurt.
Then, for no reason at all. The masked men took off their masks. They were Low Ki and Samoa Joe. THEN WHY THE F*CK DID YOU HAVE THEM CONFRONT SECURITY IN MASKS! Why not just bring them the masks inside the f*cking building where they are allowed to be because they work here. OH MY F*CKING G-D THIS COMPANY SUCKS SO F*CKING MUCH!
Eric Young came out with a steel chair to chase the heels off, and when I saw him, the first words out of my mouth were “He’s gonna turn on him.” And what do you know? He did. And do you know how I knew? Because I’VE SEEN THIS SAME EXACT THING A MILLION, TRILLION, ZILLION TIMES BEFORE FROM THIS COMPANY!
S.E.X. Planet Jarrett. The Christian Coalition. The Angle Alliance. The Main Event Mafia. Fortune. Immortal. Aces & Eights. Dixieland. MVP & Pals. MVP & Pals Mark II.
TNA has been in existence for just over twelve and a half years, and they have done the “top heel stable” angle ELEVEN TIMES!
So TNA has decided that it would be a good idea to turn three guys who the fans love to cheer. Because it has worked so well whenever Steve Austin and Bill Goldberg and Sting have turned heel, right?

And therein lies the problem. This is the same old TNA. Yet another “new beginning” has passed and TNA has never changed. It is now and always will be the same overbooked clusterf*ck of a company that it was back in 2002. If they brought in Gabe Sapolsky, Lance Storm, or Jado & Gedo to book, I would have hope, but at this point, that is the only way. It would take someone with such a strong track record of avoiding such bullsh*t for me to ever think they will change.
We got three short title matches, and one long one with a screwy, overbooked dumbsh*t finish. It’s the same sh*t that didn’t work over and over and over again. Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling will never, ever, ever, ever, ever learn from its own mistakes, much less from anyone else’s. The entirety of their playbook is to go back to the same sh*t that didn’t work before. Forget “We Are Wrestling” or Cross the Line” or “Wrestling Matters.” You know what TNA’s slogan should be? “If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again!”

This show failed on so many levels. This was their debut on a new network and also their first new show in seven weeks. Despite this, the closest thing we got to a refresher or a video package about ANY of the angles was the clips of the previous Roode vs. Lashley matches. Even I, a hardcore wrestling fan with a good memory, had to think hard and check my previous notes to remember most of the angles. Imagine how lost someone who doesn’t take copious notes on every show- never mind someone who had never seen the show before- would be.
That video package they did before the X-Division Title match? They should have done that before ALL of the matches. They should have introduced us to the wrestlers and given them some time to cut promos to let us know if we are supposed to like them or hate them.
Imagine a video package focusing on Knockouts Champion Taryn Terrell. They talk about her rise to the top and put over the title and its history and put over the Knockouts as athletes, and end it with Taryn talking about how hard she worked to win this title on the last episode of Impact, and she’ll be damned if she’s going to lose it her very first defense!
THEN you do a title match, once you have made the belt mean something and given people a reason to want to see Taryn win.
You can do something similar with the Wolves, talking about how they spent most of last year defending their titles against two of the greatest teams in wrestling history, but then got screwed out of them by James Storm’s Revolution, and they are going to get their titles back or die trying. THEN you do the title match!
Don’t just throw Kurt Angle’s big return match out there with literally NO notice. Have Kurt come out to open the show and welcome us all to Impact Wrestling on Destination America. Then have MVP come out and let them do their segment. Rather than do the match, have Kurt announce that he will be resigning after tonight’s show and returning to action next week (that news alone should be a sufficient bombshell for the beginning of the first episode) to face MVP. Then have MVP attack his knee in a dastardly manner and have the announcers explain that Kurt is coming off of knee surgery. Then, next week before the match, you can do a whole video package on it to both make Kurt more sympathetic and to make it mean more when MVP works his knee over during the match.
Why not build up the big title defense by letting Bobby Roode cut a promo about how much the TNA World Heavyweight Title means to him, and how much he loves representing TNA? Again: make Roode likeable and make the title mean something.
Give us a video package so that first time viewers can understand why we are supposed to care about Spud. Give us simple promos by Austin Aries or the Beautiful People that get their characters across the new audience and will still be entertaining to the established audience. Book Joe vs. Low Ki for the X-Division Title and let them both cut a promo before the match so we can understand their characters and care about them. Then give them time to tear the house down.
WHY IS THIS SO F*CKING HARD FOR THEM?! GAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

Yes, the action in the ring this week was good for the time it got, but only because they threw their best workers out there and had them go balls to the wall. It’s not going to be this good when Bro-Mans or the Menagerie or Velvet Sky or even a guy who isn’t bad, but just doesn’t work a fast-paced style (like Eric Young, for example) is out there. It doesn’t give me hope for the future.

On top of the creative failings, there were certain things that I absolutely hated about the production. I’ve already talked about the poor choices by the director as well as the mute-button censoring, but I also had a problem with their graphics. Specifically, the Destination America logo in the corner was WAY too big, and it was in solid color as well, rather than being transparent and small like every other network does. Their “join the conversation on Twitter” graphic was also very big and solidly colored, so when both were up, about half of the bottom third of my screen was blocked.

Oh yeah. Lashley then speared Roode and won the title as a complete and total afterthought.

It might be on at a different Bat-time and on a different Bat-channel, but it’s still the same old sh*tty TNA Impact.

[cero2k]

i''m not gonna disagree with anything today, since you really wrote a lot and the show was a bit of a clusterfuck. But i'm not mad at anything that happened, i do question taking the title off Roode so fast, I question why pick two x division to turn since they already have KK, i do question why make a second heel stable is we already have The Revolution, but it's still the type of moves that make me want to watch next week's show.

I marked out fo JB slapping ECIII (at least the sound of it), Kong's return, and i actually marked out of the idea of Low Ki and Joe, not only working together, but getting featured in the main event scene.

also, liked Josh on the table, that did made the show feel new

[Big Red Machine]

but it's still the type of moves that make me want to watch next week's show.

Really? Do you REALLY believe they'll have a good explanation for any of this?

I marked out fo JB slapping ECIII (at least the sound of it), Which is why I was pissed off I didn't get to see it because of their sh*tty camerawork.

and i actually marked out of the idea of Low Ki and Joe, not only working together, but getting featured in the main event scene.

You mean like Kenny King has been since he joined MVP's stable?

[cero2k]

but it's still the type of moves that make me want to watch next week's show.

Really? Do you REALLY believe they'll have a good explanation for any of this?

I marked out fo JB slapping ECIII (at least the sound of it), Which is why I was pissed off I didn't get to see it because of their sh*tty camerawork.

and i actually marked out of the idea of Low Ki and Joe, not only working together, but getting featured in the main event scene.

You mean like Kenny King has been since he joined MVP's stable?

(1) i really don't care for a logical explanation, i'm sure whatever they have will be good enough, i just wanna see the actions that will take place after this

(2)At least KK is around and not just jobbing in the multi man x division matches. Joe and Ki are two man that i wasn't even sure they were coming back, and to see that they got added to a relevant story tells me that they're staying for a while more

[Big Red Machine]

(1) i really don't care for a logical explanation, i'm sure whatever they have will be good enough, i just wanna see the actions that will take place after this

(2)At least KK is around and not just jobbing in the multi man x division matches. Joe and Ki are two man that i wasn't even sure they were coming back, and to see that they got added to a relevant story tells me that they're staying for a while more

1. What actions? Roode will be angry and maybe hit people with chairs. We've seen it all so many times before from TNA.

2. He's not jobbing X-Division matches. He's jobbing in other matches. We knew Ki was sticking around or else they wouldn't have put the belt on him (that was also why they took the belts from the Wolves and Gail, and why Abyss was made James Storm's partner). I can understand being excited that Joe is sticking around... but how many times have they failed to use him well before? At this point, I'd rather he leave the company so I can watch him in ROH or New Japan or where I know he will be used well.

[cero2k]

1. What actions? Roode will be angry and maybe hit people with chairs. We've seen it all so many times before from TNA.

2. He's not jobbing X-Division matches. He's jobbing in other matches. We knew Ki was sticking around or else they wouldn't have put the belt on him (that was also why they took the belts from the Wolves and Gail, and why Abyss was made James Storm's partner). I can understand being excited that Joe is sticking around... but how many times have they failed to use him well before? At this point, I'd rather he leave the company so I can watch him in ROH or New Japan or where I know he will be used well.

(1) those actions, exactly. I wanna see them unfold. I wanna see Ki and Joe and Young come out as heels and hopefully we get a Young heel promo, which i've always loved

(2)Between the time Ki lost the title and the main event, i thought he was taking off and thus losing the title. As for Joe, yeah, that applies to every single wrestler in TNA and WWE, but i'm just happy he's still somewhere where I can watch him