BRM Reviews the 1/12/2016 Impact (Awesome)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING BIT- Ethan is backstage admiring his title. Tyrus show up to tell him that it’s time for the show. For this segment, they appear to be using WWE-style “just pretend they aren’t here” cameras. No explanation for why there is a change. And it’s not like this was something that they needed to show and this was the only way to do it. This segment didn’t matter one bit, so why even do it?

EC III PROMO- fine. His interaction with Tyrus was very good. It showed Ethan being both afraid of Tyrus, dismissive of him, reminded us about the title shot Tyrus has in his pocket, and showed us EC III’s slimy politician side.
Jeff Hardy shows up to congratulate Ethan, but he can’t help but be an ass to Ethan while doing it. I will admit that I did laugh pretty hard at Jeff’s joke that Tyrus can’t read. Not sure why I found it so funny. Probably something in Jeff’s timing.
Jeff is back from his big leg injury and wants a world title match, but Ethan says no, rightfully pointing out that Jeff hasn’t done anything to earn it (although he and Matt do deserve a tag title shot). Ethan ha Bob Ryder send out a random person from the back for Jeff to face. That person is Shynron, whose short introductory promo make him come off 100% like… well… a CHIKARA character. By the end of it, you really did want to see Jeff beat him up because he was so annoying.

JEFF HARDY vs. SHYNRON- no rating, fine segment.
Yeah… “The Master of Motion” is a TERRIBLE moniker. He did come off as very athletic and someone whose moves would have looked really cool if Jeff Hardy hadn’t countered all of them. This was a good first win back for Jeff to build up to him challenging Ethan for the title.

Mr. Anderson apparently has a new talk show. I’m scared.

They are advertising what appears to be a four-on-three handicap match pitting the entirety of the Dollhouse against The Beautiful People, including the very pregnant Angelina Love.

JB INTERVIEWS THE DOLLHOUSE- great!
Then Velvet and Madison showed up and warned the Dollhouse that they should be worrying about the Beautiful People instead of Gail Kim, at which point all four members of the Dollhouse as well as myself broke out into fits of laughter. The two of them started a fight with the four members of the Dollhouse… and apparently have managed to last through an entire commercial break on their own. The brawl has spilled out to ringside, where Josh told us that this match is now a street fight, ad that it is supposed to be Jade & Kong vs. Velvet & Madison, which make you wonder why the graphics department made a graphic that had SEVEN WOMEN IN IT one of whom told everyone just last week that she couldn’t wrestle because she was pregnant!
STREET FIGHT: The Beautiful People vs. Awesome Kong & Jade (w/the Dollhouse)- 2/10
So these women get out a Kendo stick and some chairs and a trash can… and all the crowd can do is chant “we want tables!” How about you shut the f*ck up and thankful for the weapon you’re getting?
I didn’t like this match very much. The two babyfaces beat all four heels up by themselves before Jade hit one move (a package piledriver) and got the win. Gail Kim, who it was established last week hates the Dollhouse, did not show up to help them at all.

For the second straight week, Christie welcomes us to the show when we are a good chunk of the way in already. She is wearing a black shirt and what appears to be the bottom half of a tooth fairy costume. The only purpose of this was so that she could ask us if we are ready for a beer bash, which is kind of annoying to me at home who won’t be able to participate in it.

BEER MONEY BEER BASH- AWESOME!
Someone needs to tell Pope to stop trying to get this horrendous “Bearded Outlaw” nickname over.
Roode apologizes to Storm for screwing him out of the TNA World Heavyweight Title over four year ago… which is EXACTLY the first thing they should have done in this segment. I loved it!
So they do their Beer Money stuff and everyone loves it, but then EY and Bram show up to ruin it for everyone. EY says that he made Storm quit… and once again, TNA seems to have forgotten that we never saw anything on the air about Storm quitting… or even leaving the company at all. EY then tries to steal the Silas Young/Beer City Bruiser “friendship” from ROH by declaring that he has no friends, but he like how Bram “thinks” and “how he operates,” so they are going to work together.
Storm responding to this crazy ranting by metaphorically telling EY to suck his dick. EY kept on ranting and said he wanted Roode’s King of the Mountain Championship, so Roode told him he would put the title up right now if it meant he got to shut EY up, so when we got back from commercial, we got a…

TNA KING OF THE MOUNTAIN TITLE MATCH: Bobby Roode(c) (w/James Storm) vs. Eric Young (w/Bram)- 6.75/10
Wow. They actually did the “pull the ref out of the ring” spot right. I’m really not happy with EY winning the title because that ensures that we’ll be hearing EY talk more, which is a terrible, horrible thing to do.

ANDERSON HYPES UP HIS TALK SHOW- he’s kind of a dick heel now. Then again, he was a dick as a babyface, too, but knowing that he will be a heel has actually made me more interested in this segment for some reason.

BENNETT & MARIA MEET WITH EC III & TYRUS- Bennett says that “next week, I make my in-ring debut.” OH COME ON! They had to know he would be wrestling at the PPV by the time this was taped, right?
Other than that, this was good. Ethan Carter does not believe in Miracle.

ANDERSON INTERVIEW MATT & REBY HARDY- mostly good.
Anderson was being a huge dick and Matt was doing an admirable job putting up with him, but once the interview started, Matt transformed into a whiny, excuse-making little b*tch, claiming that Ethan didn’t beat him and instead it was EY’s Piledriver onto the concrete in the earlier match that beat him (despite the fact that he wasn’t even selling it by the time of the EC III match). This (and Reby’s performance) were the only bad parts of this.
Anderson then managed to goad Matt into a big babyface speech and Matt vows to make Ethan an offer he can’t refuse in order to get one last title shot. Reby Sky just sat there the whole time, looking extremely bored until Matt made his big speech, at which point she wanted to leave, so they left. On the way out, Reby gave Anderson a death glare during which she looked like a much lamer Mickie James.

CHRISTIE HEMME INTERVIEWS DREW GALLOWAY IN THE CROWD- great!
He totally rips off Adam Cole by declaring this to be “story time with Drew Galloway.” Drew cut a great promo to hype up the main event.

EY & BRAM ARE CRAZY TOGETHER BACKSTAGE- hated it.

TIGRE UNO & THE WOLVES vs. JESSE GODDERZ, ELI DRAKE, & DJ ZEMA ION- 5/10
The Tiger-Wolves pick up the win in a sentence that exists purely so that I could refer to them as the “Tiger-Wolves.”
The match was fine, but I didn’t like the booking of DJ Z’s face turn because it made the Wolves look bad. I’d have rather had Eli and Jesse’s lack of help cause DJ Z to be forced to tap out to a submission by one of the Wolves (or even to Tigre Uno), then have Eli and Jesse yell at him afterwards and have that be the impetus for his face turn rather than one miscommunication.

THE HARDY BOYS BACKSTAGE- this conversation seemed pointless. Like two guys almost arguing about something they agree on. Then Reby showed up and had to talk with Matt urgently, so they left.

EC III & MATT HARDY SEGMENT- I think it would have been better to wait until next week to do this (and save the match for the week after that), both to make it a bit more episodic and to be able to say that Matt has spent so much time considering this big risk. Also, giving Drew vs. Kurt an entire half hour would have been awesome.
Matt claims that he and Ethan are “lifelong rivals.” I laughed. Matt wants one more match is willing to put his career on the line. I hate stuff like this because of the way it kills suspense for who will win. Title vs. Career can work, but it needs a lot more build than this. Furthermore, this feels like a HUGE waste of Ethan’s streak.
Oh. Well. They’ll get out of ending Ethan’ streak by making this Last Man Standing (based off a line in Ethan’s promo), which also damages Ethan’s streak in a way because it gets ridiculous that this guy loses these big gimmick matches like Last Man Standing or that First Blood match with Bully Ray and yet the announcers keep treating this unpinned/unsubmitted streak like it is akin to him being undefeated (by contrast, Jay Briscoe only had one such loss in his similar streak, and the story in that match was that he could have won, but his hatred for Adam Cole was so great that he chose to try to injure Cole more instead of climbing the ladder and winning the title).

KURT ANGLE vs. DREW GALLOWAY- 8/10
The announcers claimed at one point that Drew had gone for the Claymore, but to me all it looked like was a big boot. I thought the Claymore was like Roderick Strong’s Sick Kick.
Drew taking that belly-to-belly almost head-first into to the guardrail was extremely scary. The match was awesome and I understand the desire to make things unpredictable by not having Kurt lose every match of his Farewell Tour, but Drew is one of the guys I would definitely have wanted Kurt to put over on his way out.
Also of note is the disappointing fact that we didn’t get an overrun this week, so it was probably just a special thing for the first week.

This has to have been the best show TNA has done in a VERY long time.