BRM Reviews the 11/28/2013 Impact (THIS COMPANY SUCKS!)

[Big Red Machine]

Apparently Anderson is going to hold a “proper burial” for Aces & Eights. They have an eight man elimination tag team match on this show, and they think it is a good idea to waste time with sh*t like this?

The show proper opens with Tenay commenting on the demise of Aces & Eights… and Taz just completely blows it off like it is no big deal, completely sh*tting on the last year and a half of TNA storylines.

OPENING SEGMENT- DUD!
First of all, Dixie hires Rockstar Spud as her Chief of Staff.
So we get this complete and 5’4 130 pound chump who we haven’t seen do anything but lose a few matches way back in February, threatening the big stars of Impact to stay in line. Laughable.
Dixie also tells us that the next round’s TNA World Heavyweight Title Tournament matches will be Angle vs. Magnus in a Last Man Standing match and Roode vs. Hardy in a tables match. She failed to tell us WHEN those matches would be, but TNA finally got smart and added a graphic in post-production telling us that they would be next week.
Then Dixie announced that the winners of each of tonight’s matches would receive a nice Thanksgiving turkey dinner, courtesy of the Carter Family. First of all, the show starts at 9 PM. It will be over at 11. Who the f*ck eats dinner at 11 PM?
More importantly, though, WHY THE F*CK AM I SUPPOSED TO CARE WHO WINS A TURKEY DINNER?! It’s not like any of these guys are going to go hungry if they don’t win (from a kayfabe POV, anyway. Outside of kayfabe, that turkey probably costs more than the X-Division or most of the Knockouts can afford).
Dixie then introduced EC III, and Tenay told us that we were about to “witness history!” because this was the first time that EC III and Dixie were in a ring at the same time. Tenay is the most easily impressed person in history. Anyway, Dixie introduced EC III who said he had some handpicked international competition to face tonight. This segment was just utterly dull and horrendous. Dixie was good when she was pushing the AJ angle, but other than those thirty seconds, this was painful to sit through.

EC III vs. CURRY MAN- 2.25/10
Curry Man got no pop at all. EC III got “You can’t wrestle” chants.
Daniels did his gimmick where he fakes speaking Japanese by just stringing together the names of puro legends, which Tenay immediately killed by explaining it.
ANGLE, STORM, & GUNNER BACKSTAGE- Apparently Storm & Gunner are on Angle’s team. Gunner tells Storm “what I did last week, I did because I thought it was right.” So apparently Gunner and Storm have not talked about the events of last week’s show until just now. What great friends they are.

BRO-MANS, ZEMA ION, EY & ODB- DUD!
So Zema Ion returns to TV, and TNA decides that the best use for him is to put him with the goofball comedy losers. And don’t the comedy losers in question already have a male valet? Because it is TNA and they are f*cking stupid, they have decided to bring the turkey suit back yet again. EY apparently has booking power now, too, so he books Bro-Mans in a Losers Must Wear the Turkey Suit match against Dewey Barnes & Norv Furnam. Yes. The two guys who last week EC III specifically told that they weren’t needed anymore were apparently flown in by TNA for this show. WHY?! THEY HAVEN’T WON A F*CKING MATCH! THEY COULDN’T EVEN WIN A HANDICAP MATCH! And the boss’ favorite nephew also thinks they are losers. WHY ARE THEY BACK?
Anyway, this segment ends with all of the guys acting like retards and making turkey sounds.

VELVET SKY vs. LEI’D TAPA (w/Gail Kim)- 1/10
This went a lot longer than it should have. Tapa is a monster. She should be beating Velvet with ease (and from a non-kayfabe POV… neither Velvet or Tapa are very good in the ring, so why would you have this go any longer than it needed to?) Even worse, they decided to do a spot where Gail tripped Velvet up from the outside. TAPA IS A MONSTER! She shouldn’t need any help from the outside at all!

So far tonight we have not gotten any indication of who the final member of Team Angle is or who any of the members of Team Roode are… but instead of hype up their main event, or perhaps one of next week’s big World Heavyweight Title Tournament matches, TNA chose to first hype up the Aces & Eights funeral (as if that was something we are supposed to be excited to see), and then to have a video package about the history of the f*cking turkey suit.

LOSERS MUST WEAR A TURKEY SUIT: Dewey Barnes & Norv Furnam vs. Bro-Mans (w/Zema Ion)- Squash
Because of the “winner gets a turkey dinner” stip, this match was actually a match in which the winners got a turkey dinner and the losers had to wear turkey suits. TNA IS STUPID!
I actually breathed a sigh of relief when this turned out to be a squash because I was afraid that TNA would actually put Barnes and Furnam over the tag champs. Unfortunately, once this match was over, we had to suffer through almost two minutes of Robbie E. making retarded noises while two dweebs that no one cares about had to put on turkey suits and dance around in them. From commercial to commercial this entire block was GIGANTIC F*CKING WASTE OF TIME… and they did it on a show where they need to make time for an eight man elimination tag team match (which Dixie said she wanted to be the best main event ever).

FRIENDS OF AJ COMMERCIAL- the exact same as last week.

DIXIE PROMO ON AJ- she gives AJ one week to return the title. Yes. BEFORE the tournament TNA has going on right now is even over.

TEAM ROODE BACKSTAGE- boring, but at least it told us who was on the team. It would have been much better to just have a graphic and use this time for something more productive.

EC III YELLS AT A COOK BACKSTAGE- apparently they have not even started cooking Thanksgiving dinner yet, and it is already TEN PM! Not only was this segment entirely pointless, but it really shows you why this company is in the state it is in: 1) they waste time on pointless idiotic sh*t that is supposed to be funny but isn’t productive in any way at all, and 2) the writers do not put any thought whatsoever into the show that they do not even think to ask themselves “does it make sense that this event would occur during the timeslot that the show is on the air?”

FUNERAL FOR THE ACES & EIGHTS- A GIANT MOTHERF*CKING DUD THAT MADE ME REALIZE HOW MUCH I HATE THIS GOD DAMN COMPANY!
Remember when Planet Jarrett threw a “funeral” for Team 3-D after laying them out, and they were all such disrespectful assholes, making jokes, littering in the church, chewing bubblegum, banging their hockeysticks, and, in James Storm’s case, urinating the casket? And remember how mad it made you because the heels were being such giant douchebags, and how much you wanted to see Team 3-D get their revenge? Well this was the babyfaces just being giant douchebags for no real reason. This sh*tty stable is finally f*cking dead, so please just let it be dead and move on from it!
The lowlight of this was Mike Tenay trying to be funny and saying that he had the “stinky” cut that Taz wore for “eighteen months.” Yes. You read that right: “Eighteen months.” Taz only turned heel in January! So even in a f*cking PRE-TAPE Mike Tenay f*cks up the facts of a angle, and the people in charge of TNA either don’t care enough or don’t pay attention to their own angles enough to correct this!
We also found out that they don’t care enough to make sure that the show airs in the right order, because EY brought the f*cking turkey suit with him, which I guess was supposed to hype up the turkey suit match… which aired BEFORE this f*cking segment… so how the hell is this supposed to hype that match up?
Then Bully comes in and I’m not quite sure, but it sounded to me like he threatened to murder Anderson’s pregnant wife.

MORE IDIOCY WITH ROCKSTAR SPUD & THE COOK- pointless

Tenay announced that tickets for TNA Genesis 2014 go on sale tomorrow. So for one of TNA’s big four shows, tickets go on sale JUST SEVEN WEEKS BEFORE THE SHOW. WHAT THE F*CK?!

Now that Aces & Eights have been forced to disband forever, Tenay plugs One Night Only: World Cup of Wrestling, which will, of course, feature the Aces & Eights. FAIL! Why couldn’t they have run this one last month?

EIGHT MAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH: Team Angle (Kurt Angle, James Storm, Gunner, & Magnus) vs. Team Roode (Bobby Roode, Christopher Daniels, Chris Sabin, & Kazarian)- 5/10
When this match started with forty minutes left in the show, I was quite surprised and was ready to take back many of the things I had said earlier about how them doing lots of stupid sh*t would wind up hurting this match because they didn’t give it enough time… and then they only gave the match eighteen minutes, ending it with over twenty minutes left in the show! WHAT THE F*CK?!

Storm is eliminated first via clean roll-up, with no communication issues or problems with Gunner whatsoever. Despite this, he gets very angry at Gunner and stares at him on his way to the back. Gunner is then eliminated via non-finisher by Bad Influence just seven minutes in (and we know it’s not a new finisher, either, or else they would have tried to pin Kurt after they hit it on him later on). By the time we went to the first commercial break, Magnus had gone to the back with an injury.
Hebner kicks Daniels’ hands off of the ropes for no reason at all, allowing Kurt to do the double German Suplex spot. So I guess Kurt does still have someone on his team. Hooray for biased refereeing. That was such an idiotic spot, and everyone in this match should know better. The double ankle-lock spot was cool, though.
Then we got the finish, which absolutely sucked. Kurt, who was actually dominating all four men at the time and seemed completely calm and collected, uses a chair right in front of the ref to get intentionally DQed. Taz at least tried to claim that Kurt had “snapped” and was “out of his mind,” but Tenay just said nope, “that’s the focused Kurt Angle that we all know,” basically admitting “yup, the babyface got himself DQed for no reason.”
Apparently Kurt is nowhere near the badass that Michael Elgin is.

When we got back from the break, Tenay tried to sell to us how important it was that Kurt gave “both the win and the turkey dinner” to Roode’s team, and when he said that, I just could not contain my laughter at how dumb this whole situation was.

BOBBY ROODE PROMO- decent.

STORM & GUNNER BACKSTAGE- okay
Storm is unhappy that he got pinned right in front of Gunner and Gunner didn’t do anything. I thought this was a bit odd during the match, although it looked like the pin caught everyone by surprise, and that by the time Gunner had processed what happened and started to react, Storm was already pinned. If this is what they were going for, they pulled it off well… except that Storm was also right in front of the other three members on his team and isn’t mad at them at all.
While ranting about this, Storm sarcastically comments that it “wasn’t part of the plan.” Gunner responds by asking “what is the plan?”
Then the cameraman pipes up and says “I know you both have individual dreams, but do you have a goal as a team?” I don’t know maybe THE SAME GOAL AS EVERY OTHER TEAM! TO WIN THE F*CKING TAG TEAM TITLES! How the f*ck could anyone who works for a wrestling company ever ask this question?
Gunner angrily walks off and says “is it your plan or is it our goal?”

WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE TOURNAMENT MATCH HYPE PACKAGES- awesome

ROCKSTAR SPUD, EC III, & DIXIE BACKSTAGE- Dixie says that she and EC III are leaving to go to their own Thanksgiving party with all of their family members (it is currently 10:30 pm and they need to fly from Orlando to Texas to get there, so I’m not sure when the Carters are starting their dinner, but it has to be after 11:15... or I guess 10:15 in Texas), so she is leaving Rockstar Spud in charge of dinner.

THANKSGIVING DINNER-
They are eating Thanksgiving dinner IN THE RING. And I have to watch this. Apparently the winning managers get to come out and watch, but Gail takes Tapa’s seat. Also Velvet shows up, and I didn’t even notice that she was out of place until Roode called it out. DO YOUR JOBS, ANNOUNCERS!
So Sabin makes Velvet go to the back, and while Sabin was being a douche here, I do have to point out that Velvet was not entitled to this meal in the first place, so I’m not sure why she expected that she would be allowed at it. Ion gets to take Velvet’s seat, while Tapa, who actually won the match, just gets to stand there. I honestly was more interested in this injustice than in Velvet being sent to the back.
So they all go around the table and say what they are thankful for. Kaz makes fun of Joseph Park, just like he did in the earlier backstage segment. Gail says she is thankful for being so pretty and for Tapa being so dominant. Sabin says he is thankful for his hair. Bro-Mans says they are thankful for not having to wear the turkey suits. Roode calls Canadian Thanksgiving the “real Thanksgiving,” which was the only decent part of this segment. He also talks about beating Angle again and about wanting to be the TNA World Heavyweight Champion again (all of which was covered in the tournament video package and his earlier backstage promo, making it redundant).
Then Kurt Angle comes out and says “I don’t see a ring full of winners. I see a ring full of turkeys.” The incomparable wit of Kurt Angle, everyone.
Then Angle says that all of the heels cheated to win their dinner tonight, and thus he will not let them enjoy it. Two problems here:
1) Bro-Mans did not cheat
2) THE HEELS DIDN’T CHEAT IN THE MAIN EVENT, EITHER! In fact, the guy who cheated in that match, was YOU, KURT! And you were punished for it by being DQed, which is why your team lost!
Roode dares Kurt to try to take them on. Kurt brings out his backup: Gunner, Storm, Dewey Barnes, Norv Furham, Velvet Sky, and, for some reason, Eric Young and ODB. So it turns out that it’s not just Kurt, but ALL of the babyfaces are sore losers.
The babyfaces then stalk the heels and surround the ring, looking for all the world like Nexus, a big HEEL stable, used to before their beatdowns. We then get a crappy fight that was half-brawl, half-food fight. For example, ODB took it to Tapa with a steel chair, while Velvet threw a pie in Gail’s face (so after all of this talk of outside talent, it appears that Gail and Tapa will just go back to feuding with ODB and Velvet). Despite having two pathetic jobbers and one comedy dork on their team, the babyfaces beat up the heels.

This segment really just sums up why I f*cking hate TNA sometimes. Gail interfering in Tapa’s match, which only hurt Tapa, was done just to justify Kurt’s line about all of the heels cheating. So not only are they hurting their new monster just for the sake of an idiotic comedy segment later in the show, but they then don’t even bother to have all of the other heels cheat, making Kurt’s claim invalid anyway, so all they really did here was hurt their brand new monster.
They also had one of their top babyfaces, Kurt Angle, come out and tell a blatant lie in order to rob the heels, most of whom actually won cleanly, of something that they won that they actually deserved! Then the rest of the babyfaces joined Kurt, making them all look like sore losers. No one likes a sore loser, and therefore no one will cheer for a sore loser or want to see a sore loser do well. If you make your babyfaces into sore losers, no one will tune in to your show or buy your PPVs to seem them win!
Most damning, perhaps, is all of the wasted potential here. By doing this elimination match less than a week after Survivor Series, TNA looks like they are just a WWE rip-off (especially with the Autumn of AJ angle and this “Wheel of Dixie” sh*t going on). At least when ROH did it, they had the brains to not do it quite so close to Survivor Series (they did it late last month), to call it something different, and to emphasize other aspects of the match (the special 2 hour time limit and the fact that anyone who eliminated Adam Cole would receive an ROH World Title shot), so it didn’t just look like they were ripping off Survivor Series.
TNA has always claimed to be the “real wrestling alternative” to WWE, which they have always claimed is the land of cartoon characters and dumb comedy skits. In order to justify this, if TNA is going to do something like this that is a blatant rip-off of a WWE concept, they need to do it BETTER than WWE. They needed to put on an awesome match that would hopefully blow Survivor Series out of the water, and if there was ever a time to do it, this was exactly it.
It is Thanksgiving. No one is watching TNA live tonight, and many people might skip the show entirely, so it isn’t a good place to advance angles, but if you put on an awesome match, people will hear about it and seek it out. TNA had a perfect opportunity to do that here. They had six of the best workers in the company in the ring, plus Magnus, who is good and clearly a rising star, and Gunner who is certainly competent. They started this match with FORTY MINUTES left in the show. When was the last time that ANY match in WWE went forty minutes? These eight guys getting forty minutes should have blown anything that WWE was going to do at Survivor Series out of the water (remember, this show was taped last week), simply because WWE just wouldn’t give that much time to one match on a PPV, especially one of their Survivor Series matches that had almost no thought put into its booking. This was TNA’s chance to beat WWE at its own game by showing them up in their own “Traditional Survivor Series Elimination Tag Team Match.”
Instead TNA used less than half of the forty minutes available to them to put on a poorly booked match with a sh*tty finish that made all of their babyfaces aside from Kurt and Magnus look weak and made Kurt look dumb. Instead of more wrestling, they then used the rest of the time on the show for an idiotic, nonsensical juvenile comedy skit that made Kurt Angle look like a liar and made most of their babyfaces look like sore losers. This was TNA’s moment to shine. To tell the world that even though this year has just been one gigantic turd for them, that things are looking up. That they are still the TNA of old where AJ, Joe, Daniels, MCMG, Beer Money, and the like got a chance to shine. Where guys like Ken Anderson got the chance that they never got in the WWE. To convince the world to just give them a bit more time to find their footing once again because it will be worthwhile. But instead we got the worst of the classic TNA comedy bullsh*t that shows that they have no idea whatsoever how to book a company.

To close this sh*tfest off, Mike Tenay declares “what a way to spend a holiday!” Yeah. If you’re the sort of person who likes getting his or her head shoved through windshields. I believe that Dozer put it exactly right a few weeks ago when he said "f*ck this company!"


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1.Tenay “[Curry Man] certainly had a measure of success, both as a singles wrestler and a tag team competitor.”
This is technically a true statement because an iota is indeed a measure, but for all intents and purposes other than semantics, this is an out and out lie. Curry Man did not win a single title belt in TNA, and was a comedy jobber for the entirety of his run.

2. Maybe I missed whatever joke they were trying for here, but Taz claimed that he had “never been a member of anything in my life.” This would be the same Taz who, prior to last week, was a member of Aces & Eights.

[cero2k]

so much hate in this review, i thought this was one of the most enjoyable shows of their year.

[Big Red Machine]

so much hate in this review,

Because it deserved it. I want TNA to succeed. I really do. A lot. And when they do sh*t like this that just show no respect for the fans and is completely detrimental to business, both in terms of kayfabe damage to characters and in terms of fan perception of the product as a whole (i.e. coming off like a fourth-rate WWE rip-off), I get upset at them for squandering so damn much.

i thought this was one of the most enjoyable shows of their year.

HOW?! And especially when compared with last week's show!

[cero2k]

so much hate in this review,

Because it deserved it. I want TNA to succeed. I really do. A lot. And when they do sh*t like this that just show no respect for the fans and is completely detrimental to business, both in terms of kayfabe damage to characters and in terms of fan perception of the product as a whole (i.e. coming off like a fourth-rate WWE rip-off), I get upset at them for squandering so damn much.

i thought this was one of the most enjoyable shows of their year.

HOW?! And especially when compared with last week's show!

because of stuff like this

Because of the “winner gets a turkey dinner” stip, this match was actually a match in which the winners got a turkey dinner and the losers had to wear turkey suits. TNA IS STUPID!

this is the thanksgiving show, it's supposed to be somewhat comedic. this wasn't a show that i watched to see stories continue or drama, i was just watching it for fun. Last week it was good for wrestling and good storyline progression, don't expect the same from a comedy show.

it's also probably because WWE has been sucking ass for the last 3 months

[Big Red Machine]

so much hate in this review,

Because it deserved it. I want TNA to succeed. I really do. A lot. And when they do sh*t like this that just show no respect for the fans and is completely detrimental to business, both in terms of kayfabe damage to characters and in terms of fan perception of the product as a whole (i.e. coming off like a fourth-rate WWE rip-off), I get upset at them for squandering so damn much.

i thought this was one of the most enjoyable shows of their year.

HOW?! And especially when compared with last week's show!

because of stuff like this

Because of the “winner gets a turkey dinner” stip, this match was actually a match in which the winners got a turkey dinner and the losers had to wear turkey suits. TNA IS STUPID!

this is the thanksgiving show, it's supposed to be somewhat comedic. this wasn't a show that i watched to see stories continue or drama, i was just watching it for fun. Last week it was good for wrestling and good storyline progression, don't expect the same from a comedy show.

it's also probably because WWE has been sucking ass for the last 3 months

I didn't watch this expecting angles to progress, either, and I was actually slightly surprised when they tried to do something with Storm & Gunner, Bully's promo, and with Velvet and Sabin, and seemed to be setting things up with Gail and Tapa (way too early, IMO). But that doesn't mean that things don't just jump out at me as being completely asinine. And food fights, a British man yelling at a cook, and people making odd sounds and being forced to wear turkey costumes is not my idea of funny.
Just because it is the Thanksgiving show doesn't mean it has to be a farce. As I said, there was no reason they couldn't have put on great matches tonight.