BRM Reviews the 4/24/2015 Impact (Just a Normal Night)

[Big Red Machine]

It this show is supposed to be A Night of Knockouts why are they calling it “TKO?” Shouldn’t it be “ANOK?”
OPENING SEGMENT- As you would expect, the episode called A Night of Knockouts begins with Kurt Angle coming out to open the show by having a segment with Eric Young, both of whom have Y chromosomes. They push this whole deal of “will we get the crazy heel Eric Young or the lovable babyface Eric Young in tonight’s title match,” and I just don’t understand how anyone could possibly care at this point.
EY says that Kurt made him not a crazy heel anymore with his nice speech and his show of trust last week. EY says that tonight Kurt will face “the real Eric Young.” So either EY will remain a heel and this whole thing will have been a waste of time, or EY will turn babyface with just two weeks of stupid build, not even four months after what was supposed to be a monumental heel turn, leaving TNA with almost no heels.
Oh look. Here comes Austin Aries, who also doesn’t have a vagina. He comes out to stir up some sh*t between Kurt and EY, then declares that he will cash in his Feast or Fired briefcase tonight. Apparently his declaration that he is doing this somehow nullifies EY’s already-signed title match. That’s dumb.

And now they’re advertising one member of the BDC vs. one member of The Rising.

TARYN TERRELL PROMO- finally! We get an actual Knockout on A Night of Knockouts. Her promo was very eh. She had feeling, but perhaps a bit too much because it came off as a bit phony and scripted. Like the booker was cutting the promo, not the character.

#1 CONTENDERSHIP MATCH: Angelina Love vs. Gail Kim vs. Madison Rayne vs. Brooke- 5.5/10
For whatever reason, this match just really didn’t connect with me much.
Someone tell Brooke to get the word “Glam” off of her top. You’re a wrestler, not a model.

THE RISING VIDEO PACKAGE- the promo was good, but the visual effects were SOOOOO ANNOYING! Visual effects for the sake of doing visual effects.

EY PROMO- I assume this whole thing will lead to EY going crazy again and thus to eventually EY vs. Aries, which just seems like a waste of Aries.

MYCAH (w/the Rising) vs. Kenny King (w/the BDC)- 4.75/10
Homicide was not out with the BDC because… um…
Josh tried to sell us that whoever won this match would get some sort of “advantage” in this feud. How? What does that even mean? This is an ideological feud. What does it matter who wins a wrestling match with nothing on the line?
The babyfaces got ejected from ringside early on, which allowed the BDC to distract the ref and interfere a lot, but Mycah won anyway. Isn’t the whole point of this feud that the BDC have been winning by interference and Drew thinks that’s not cool?
The BDC beat Mycah down after the match, but Drew and Eli rush out to make the save, but then Homicide shows up to help out his stablemates. I guess he wasn’t out here before because he was in the bathroom or something. Or maybe he was in the gym, because he seems a lot bulkier now than he ever has before. Cide beat The Rising down with a billy-club, but that wasn’t enough so Low Ki got out a metal pipe to hit Drew with.

DREW GALLOWAY PROMO- GREAT!
Unfortunately, I wasn’t a fan of a lot of the content from a booking POV. Drew and Ki fighting over a pipe is great and all, but next week will apparently be YET ANOTHER gimmick show in Hardcore Justice, and of all of the matches to choose, they picked “Steel Pipe on a Pole.” Pole matches are always groan inducing because of the Russo-stench, and especially in a promotion with a reputation for overbooking like TNA. In their defense, though, I’m not sure what else you could do with a steel pipe. Maybe they should have just made it a No DQ’s match and had them use a pipe throughout it.
Also, would a Steel Pipe on a Pole match essentially be a pole on a pole? (and if Vince Russo is reading this, I’m sure this notion just sent his hand speeding towards his own pole).

LAURA DENNIS vs. JADE (w/Marti Belle)- no rating. Eh segment.
So in the Dollhouse’s debut, only one of them is going to wrestle?
Oh great. They get angry at Christy for not saying their name correctly. I swear to G-d that if this gimmick winds up being Fem-dango, I’m done with TNA. In all seriousness, though, I don’t like the Dollhouse gimmick. I get that the juxtaposition is supposed to creep you out, but I just don’t find that to be compelling in any way.
Josh Matthews buries Christy for being a bad ring announcer. Josh also told us that Laura Dennis wrestles on the indies as “Cherry Bomb.” Well then why not just have her use that name? And if the answer is because “that’s a stupid name,” then why mention the name at all? And even better, Josh then tells us that he doesn’t know anything about Jade or Marti Belle. So knows about Laura’s indy career but not either of theirs?
Rather than do a tag team squash, they had to do a ref bump and have Dennis win by DQ. The main problem here was the execution. Marti Belle gave Stiffler a running knee to the back, which sent him head-first into the ringpost. He’s a f*cking referee. We’ve seen referees be down for minutes at a time off of clotheslines that barely connect… and yet it took Stiffler less than thirty seconds to recover from this vicious attack and have Christy call for the DQ. This caused the Dollhouse to beat Christy up, too. Then they stuffed a jawbreaker into her mouth and started being creepy again. I’m sorry. I just don’t find this interesting or compelling in any way.

ANGLE & EY BACKSTAGE- Kurt and EY both think what Aries is doing was bullsh*t. If only there was some sort of authoritative body that makes kayfabe booking decisions for TNA that they could talk to. Instead, we get an angle about “will EY quit TNA over this?” I really hope so at this point.

MICKIE JAMES MAKES A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT- great stuff
Magnus introducing her was great touch. Mickie gave a great retirement speech. Then James Storm came out and convinced her to do one more match. I don’t quite understand why Magnus is so unhappy with this. It’s just one more match.

MICKIE, MAGNUS, & DAVEY RICHARDS BACKSTAGE- decent, but again… it’s just one more match.

MANIK vs. DAVEY RICHARDS- 5.5/10
Meanwhile, backstage, the rest of the Revolution are paying no attention whatsoever to this match. I LOVED that spot that Davey and the ref did when the ref went to raise Davey’s injured arm and Davey sold it like it killed him. Brilliant!
POST-MATCH ANGLE- The Revolution beat Davey down but the Hardys make the save. I guess this sets up for Davey and the Hardys vs. The Revolution which I like as a callback to the similar situation over the winter which led to Matt and the Wolves vs. The Revolution while Jeff was injured.

EC III BACKSTAGE PROMO- oh look. A political joke. This will suck.

EC II SPEECH- this actually was a lot better than I thought it would be, until he started including those stupid “statistics.” Oh look. You’re taking a shot at Vince McMahon by talking about “lazy millennials.” Is there ANYONE who found that funny? Anyone at all?
Then Ken Anderson came out and completely killed the joke. And the whole thing about EC III politicking for a title shot? If he hasn’t been pinned in twenty months, then he deserves a title shot anyway.
So this Anderson vs. EC III feud will continue, which makes me sad because I’m just completely sick and tired of Anderson. This thing would have actually been good if they had done it as a video package so that he wouldn’t have been interrupted.

TNA KNOCKOUTS TITLE MATCH: Taryn Terrell(c) vs. Awesome Kong-
Taryn came out and asked for this match to be made a No DQ’s match, which should have immediately set off alarms in your head. Didn’t these two have a brawl that involved weapons a few weeks ago? Well why not spend the intervening weeks to build off of that and set this match up as a No DQ’s match from the get-go and actually advertise it as such? This would make it feel like the feud has actually progressed from their previous matches, and would give us a reason why we shouldn’t be worried that this match will got to a DQ just like the other ones did. If you want it to be a set-up for this awful turn you can still have Taryn be the one to make the challenge, and it would still feel a lot more natural (and less overbooked) than this crap.

NO DQ’S MATCH FOR THE TNA KNOCKOUTS TITLE: Taryn Terrell(c) vs. Awesome Kong- 3/10
Josh tried to push that Taryn is so desperate to beat Kong that she’s willing to throw away the champions advantage, and that same reasoning works to explain why she’d be willing to turn heel and cheat to beat Kong. The problem is that we haven’t ever gotten a sense of that coming from Taryn herself in her promos, because they haven’t had her cut any promos about it.
They did some decent stuff until the Dollhouse came out and helped Taryn win. He powerbomb though the table did look great. I also couldn’t help but notice that Taryn took the opportunity to feel Kong up while pinning her. That was weird.
I’ve talked at length about in multiple threads on this forum about why I thought this turn was a bad idea and about how I thought it could have been executed and set up better, but after watching it, let me add in one more reason I dislike it: Taryn just doesn’t fit in with the Dollhouse. She did her best, but she really came across as someone playing a role rather than as being legitimately nuts and creepy the way Jade and Marti Belle come across. As much as I love her, I will be the first to admit that Taryn is decently limited on the mic. She seems to do well with real emotion, but for the most part, that seems to limit her to being a generic, hard-working babyface… and that’s fine. Every promotion needs some of those. Who are the most over babyfaces in every promotion right now?
WWE- John Cena, Daniel Bryan, Sami Zayn
New Japan- Tanahashi, Okada, Honma, Ishii- (I’ll admit that Nakamura doesn’t fit well here)
ROH- The Briscoes (yes, they have a degree of whacky to them, but at their core, this is what they are)
Lucha Underground- Prince Puma, Johnny Mundo, Son of Havoc
TNA- Kurt Angle, Bobby Roode (I’m not counting Aries because he’s a tweener)
AAA- Alberto El Patron

Just let Taryn do what she’s good at.

AUSTIN ARIES PROMO- good. Also he had a staredown with EY, who was leaving the building.

MAGNUS SENDS PEOPLE TO FOLLOW MICKIE- eh. We’ll see where this whole thing goes in the end.

CLOSING SEMGNET- decent
EY jumps Aries in the ring. Oh look it was a swerve all along that everyone saw coming. EY gave Aries a piledriver on the floor, then gave him one on the steps. So I guess Aries will be out for a while.
Kurt Angle came to yell at EY and save Aries, but EY wound up attacking Kurt. Throughout all of this, a grant total of one security guard and two referees to came out to help. EY took Kurt’s knee brace off, hit him in the knee with a chair, and then locked him in the Figure Four.
Ah. Here comes security. Just in time for the show to end.
HARDCORE JUSTICE HYPE- in addition to the Pipe on a Pole match, we will get The Revolution vs. Davey & The Hardys in a Street Fight. Now here’s the problem with this whole thing: The gimmick of tonight’s show was that it was supposed to be all about the Knockouts… except that it didn’t feel any different from a regular episode of Impact. We got just as many men’s matches as we did women’s matches (or would have if the scheduled main event had happened) and the men were focused on just as much as the women. Yes, the women got more segments on this show than they normally would, but it didn’t feel like the show we were promised… so why should we believe them next week when they promise us a hardcore show?
Also, I just don’t like the gimmick here. It is YET ANOTHER gimmick week, and it’s totally unnecessary. The only match that has any real build behind it is the Drew vs. Ki match, but that is just pipe on a pole… and when compared to the street fight or whatever else they do (probably either going to be a ladder match or an Ultimate X match for either the X-Division Title or #1 contendership thereto), it will probably look lame in comparison.

Another bad episode of Impact.