MVP, KENNY KING, & LASHLEY BEAT UP KAZ- Kenny King was the one who started it, but in his defense, Kaz was being a dick.

Tenay calls Kenny King, MVP and Lashley “one of the most shocking and impressive factions ever assembled.” Really, Mike? Lashley was almost a star in WWE, then did nothing. MVP was a midcarder in WWE. Kenny King was one half of an upper-cared tag team in a promotion smaller than TNA, then came to TNA, was X-Division champion for two months, then was off TV for most of a year. How is this faction impressive?


MVP PROMO- He starts off by saying that he is brilliant because he got himself into a position where he was able to bring in his friends and “take power.”
I don’t see how he can say this when his team only won at Lockdown because Bully decided to turn babyface, and Kenny King was already in TNA for a year and a half before MVP showed up. Furthermore, MVP had spent most of the time since Lockdown purposely NOT booking Kenny King.
He then says that “throughout history, no one has ever said ‘may I please be the king?’” I guess he doesn’t understand the concept of an election, because that is essentially what happens.

The crowd started chanting “you sold out!” at MVP. How does that even begin to make sense? MVP responded by claiming he had sold out arenas all around the world. This would be the same guy who couldn’t even draw 1,000 paying customers in his own hometown!

Then he gave the mic to Kenny King, who attempts to plug a plot-hole by claiming that all of the issues he was having with MVP were a work that Kenny came up with so that no one would suspect they were really in cahoots. Okay… but no one thought that in the first place, so you really didn’t accomplish anything other than hurting each other and wasting time on your own show which you could have been using to build up feuds to make that money which you now claim to be all about.
MVP says that his plan is “being played out to perfection.” That might be, but your plan is utterly stupid. If you brought Lashley in to help you with your plan, why didn’t you put HIM on your Lethal Lockdown team instead of a clearly kayfabe drug-addled Jeff Hardy? And if your plan is to be world champion, why didn’t you just restart your world title match last week? Or book yourself into a world title match as soon as you could after gaining power?

Then the Wolves came out and things got good. Davey demands to know what all this BS is and why MVP lied to them when he told them they were fighting for “the era of the wrestler.” MVP says that he told them what he told them because he knew that they didn’t have the stomach for an evil plan like this. He said that to do what MVP is doing now, you need to be “heartless.” Davey responds by saying that he and Eddie aren’t heartless. They have a lot of heart, and they think this is BS. MVP threatens for fire them. The Wolves start a fight anyway, and get beaten down 3-on-2. Eddie took an awesome bump for Lashley’s spear. Davey then wound up getting speared off the stage through a table.
See TNA? Was that really so hard? You successfully explained why Davey and Eddie aren’t part of MVP’s stable, set them up as top babyfaces, had them fight bravely against the odds, then had the heels use a numbers advantage to beat them up and be total assholes while doing it! THIS is what you need to be doing. Why is it that you rarely ever get this sh*t right when it is so damn simple?!

EC III & DIXIE SHOW UP AT THE IMPACT ZONE- Didn’t MVP declare that neither Bully nor Dixie can come to the Impact Zone until they settle their feud? Why yes he did… but we can’t expect TNA to remember something that happed THREE WEEKS AGO can we? That would be way beyond their brain capacity.

Davey is being taken to the hospital. Eddie is going with him because he is a good friend.

EY SEGMENT WITH MVP & PALS- this wasn’t bad… except that we JUST SAW THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPEN WITH THE WOLVES!
Oh! But wait! This time Austin Aries comes out to help EY. Great! But why didn’t he come out to help the Wolves? He would have had a better chance of winning that fight because it would have been three-on-three.
That logic-issue aside, this segment was pretty great. The result was Aries vs. MVP and EY vs. a Mystery Opponent for later.

BRAM & MAGNUS BACKSTAGE- Bram says he talked to MVP and got Magnus vs. Willow in a Falls Count Anywhere match. Magnus brings up a good point: Bram talks to Magnus an awful lot for someone who has only been here for two weeks. Then they have some good character stuff the ended with Magnus flooring Bram, and Bram laughing and saying “it’s not about you vs. me. It’s about you finding yourself. That’s what we want.” We who? MVP’s group? Or someone else Bram is working with?

ANGELINA LOVE PROMO- she acts like a cowardly heel, so Gail beats her up.

TNA KNOCKOUTS TITLE MATCH: Angelina Love(c) (w/Velvet Sky) vs. Brittany- 4/10
Angelina makes an open challenge for the title, but excludes all former Knockouts Champions. The sad thing is that Brittany is the ONLY woman on the roster who isn’t a former champion. The crowd was a lot more into this than I thought they would be, considering Brittany’s horrible lack of babyface fire. They gave Brittany a visual pin here, which seems to be leading up to Brittany getting a title shot, but this is TNA so that probably won’t happen.
TBP give Brittany the brown bag treatment after the match , but Gail makes the save. Good stuff.

THE CAMERAMAN INTERVIEWS DIXIE- He asks her how she is in the building tonight when MVP banned her from showing up a few weeks ago. So how does Dixie answer this extremely important kayfabe question? She basically says that the fact that MVP turned heel allows her to show up. HOW DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE?!

JAMES STORM & KEN ANDERSON AT THE BAR- BAD!
First of all, are they really blowing off work to go drinking? That seems like it is something that would get you fired.
Anderson suggests various standard bar games as a competition, but Storm calmly rejects all of them with threats of violence. Then Anderson suggests a drinking contest… and I guess that James Storm’s alcohol addiction is so overpowering that it will somehow prevent him from just hitting Anderson with a beer bottle… which is strange because James Storm loves to hit people with beer bottles.

MVP vs. AUSTIN ARIES- 4/10
Match ends in a DQ when King and Lashley interfere. EY comes out to fight them, but gets his ass kicked. MVP announces that EY will face Lashley tonight.

DIXIE CARTER CONFRONTS MVP- she says that what he has done recently necessitated her showing up at Impact, even though she was banned. THIS MAKES NO SENSE!
Then she tries to seduce him and offers an alliance, but that story gets put on hold as Bully rushes out to try to attack her. She and EC III run away. Meanwhile, MVP just stands there doing nothing while the very feud that he banned from the building just three weeks ago starts to occur RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. MVP mentions this as well, and I have to say: for a guy who loves to talk about how much power he got himself, MVP doesn't really seem to have the ability to enforce sh*t, and that is really what power is: the ability to influence outcomes. If MVP bans Bully and Dixie from the building, but they just show up anyway, then what power does MVP really have?

Bully then cuts a promo on MVP. He calls out MVP for picking on EY because "Eric Young has been here since day one." A lie. So between his inability to get basic facts right and the fact that (as he reminded us at the beginning of this segment) MVP owes all of his power to Bully because Bully decided to be a crooked referee, and also double-crossed Dixie Carter and stole her money, and seems to not understand why Dixie is angry with him... why should I give a sh*t what Bully has to say? MVP isn't doing anything that Bully himself didn't do JUST LAST YEAR. And if Bully thinks so highly of EY, WHY DIDN'T HE COME OUT TO HELP HIM?! We have had TWO segments on this show where MVP's faction beat EY down, and both times, Bully and his steel pipe were nowhere to be seen!

Anyway, Lashley distracts Bully and Kenny King blindsides him, and they beat Bully down. Dixie comes out to watch, and MVP suddenly stops caring about her presence. Dixie orders EC III to get a table to put the down Bully through... but Bully fights back with a back body drop, totally killing the beatdown he just got from our new top heel stable. He corners Dixie, but EC III clips his knee then puts him through a table anyway (oh, look! It's the Bobby Roode feud all over again!)... so what was the point of him fighting back? All it did was kill the MVP-faction beatdown!

DIXIE & FRIENDS BACKSTAGE- Oh! Would you look at that. Bully is ALREADY up and chasing after Dixie's limo (despite having just been put through a table and beaten down by MVP's faction... and this is all while having those bruised ribs Taz reminded us about).
Oh. Now he's selling it. It still would have been much better to just not do this segment.

FALLS COUNT ANYWHERE MATCH: Willow vs. Magnus (w/Bram)- 4.25/10
Tenay fits in both "unpredictable" and "ultra-aggressive" into his description of Willow, but this time he is smart enough to do it over the course of an entire paragraph rather than just calling him "the ultra-aggressive, unpredictable alter-ego of Jeff Hardy."
Magnus is winning in the beginning. Bram tires to give him a weapon, but Magnus refuses to use it, even though doing so would be perfectly legal.
Magnus gets the advantage again and Bram gives him the crowbar again and orders him to "cave his head in!" Magnus only hits Willow in the stomach. After more shouting from Bram, he lines up a head-shot, but them stops himself and goes to argue with Bram, which lets Jeff recover and win with a Twist of Fate. They told their story well and the action was good for the time it got, but I am still wondering why Magnus is afraid of hitting someone in the head with a weapon all of a sudden.

GUNNER & SAM SHAW IN THE INSANE ASYLUM- bad.
Of all of the hours in the week to visit Sam Shaw in the mental asylum why did Gunner schedule this DURING IMPACT?!
Gunner wants Shaw to talk to him and says that he isn't going anywhere until Shaw does. Shaw says that Gunner can't possibly understand what it is like in there. Gunner says that he can. I swear to G-d if they start talking about Gunner having PTSD I will throw something. HE WAS IN THE MILITARY! WE GET IT!
Another major problem I have with this is that it seems like such a huge step backwards for Gunner. He has a feud with James Storm that was the only good thing the company had going the entire spring, and now that it's over, Storm is working with former world champion Ken Anderson while Gunner, who won the feud, is put in an undercard angle with a character who is so clearly a dead end. If you want to build Gunner up as a star, this is NOT what he should be doing heading into Slammiversary!

EDDIE EDWARDS IS BACK AT THE IMPACT ZONE- and he is still selling his stomach, because he knows what he is doing!

SHAW & GUNNER PART 2-
*CRASH*
Yup. Gunner talks about a buddy of his from the military who wound up with PTSD and Gunner got him committed to a mental institution for treatment. Because of this, Gunner says, he knows what Sam Shaw is going through. Right. Because all mental disorders are exactly the same, and having a friend who had one is exactly the same as having one!
Shaw asks "how do you expect me to trust you?" so Gunner suggests that they try to remove the straight jacket. Yeah. That's a good idea. I'm sure this crazy man with a history of violence won't be a danger to any hospital staff at all. THEY PUT HIM IN THE STRAIGHT JACKET FOR A REASON, DUMBASS!

EDDIE EDWARDS & KENNY KING BRAWL- GREAT!
Eddie DEMANDS that MVP's faction come out and fight him. Kenny King does, and they brawl. I actually liked Eddie no-selling the shoulders to the ribs early on here. It felt like babyface fire instead of just forgetting to sell (compare that to EY last week), but he made sure to sell it when Kenny dropped him chest-first on the guardrail. Eddie also did a great job selling how pissed he was by using tactics that a babyface like him would never otherwise use, like choking and fish-hooking. Kenny comes out on top by using weapons.

KEN ANDERSON & JAMES STORM IN A BAR- PART 2- Anderson, the babyface, is cheating in a drinking contest... with a hundred dollars on the line, to boot. Why the hell should I root for this guy when James Storm is the one being wronged here?

MVP TALKS TO BRIAN HEBNER- he wants Hebner to cheat for him.

STORM & ANDERSON IN A BAR, PART 3- HORRIBLE!
Yup. We now have confirmation that Ken Anderson is a cheater. Rather than do the normal babyface thing, which would be to challenge the heel to a fight and face him on a level playing field like a man (which, from the first segment they did, Storm seemed perfectly happy to engage in), Anderson skipped out on work and wasted tons of his own money on a dishonest plan to DRUG James Storm before sneak-attacking him. WHAT A F*CKING PUSSY!
Mike Tenay, the babyface announcer, has no problem with any of this.

EY PROMO- GREAT babyface promo!

ERIC YOUNG vs. BOBBY LASHLEY- 5/10
Another sh*t finish. I get what they're going for, but as a fan, I now have absolutely no faith that any of these matches will be clean, which makes me not want to buy the PPV. After the match the heels neat EY down. Aries tries to make the save but gets beaten up. We know that both Bully Ray and Eddie Edwards are in the building, but neither guy came out to help.

For the most part, I actually enjoyed this week's Impact. While many of the plot-holes with this whole angle remain, and they opened up some more logic problems with the Dixie stuff,they did a good job of getting MVP's stable over as heels. Actually, at this point I am a little concerned because there are now FIVE babyfaces lined up to fight them (Bully, Davey, Eddie, Aries, and EY), but only three heels in the stable (four if Bram turns out to be involved, but that would likely put Magnus in opposition to them as well). If they can solve some of the underlying logic holes and maybe give us some reason to believe that every match won't end in bullsh*t, they might have a good feud on their hands.
The undercard, though... UCH! Horrible backwards-ass angles and matches that are WAY too short. No undercard match went longer than 5:30. NOT good.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Tenay- "To me, the only way to combat the numbers of MVP, Lashley, and King is to fight together just like Austin Aries and Eric Young did earlier tonight."
What Mike doesn't bother to say is that the Wolves tried the exact same thing and got their asses kicked, so it really doesn't always work.