OPENING SEGMENT-
OH COME ON! It’s been A WHOLE WEEK and Lashley hasn’t gotten the belt back? This means that either he didn’t care enough to ask for it back, which buries the title, or that he did ask Roode for it back and Roode has refused to give it, which would make Roode a heel. Actually, now that I think about it just the fact that Lashley let Roode walk away with the belt last week completely buries it.
Roode calls out Lashley and tells him that he is “man enough” to give the title back. Well why didn’t you do it last week, then? Roode says he wants his return match tonight. Well if you wanted the match so badly, why didn’t you go to TNA Management and tell them that and ask them to book it?
Roode wants the match right now and Lashley is fine with that, too, so they call for a referee, but Austin Aries comes out instead. He cuts a promo about cashing in his Money in the Bank Feast or Fired case. It was short, but it still felt like it took FOREVER. Then MVP came out and cut a good heel promo, trying to goad Lashley into giving him a title shot. Lashley offers to defend the belt in a four way tonight.

LOCKDOWN COMMERCIAL- apparently Lockdown is next week (so the gimmick match streak will continue). Because that’s not something you want to build up or anything, right? It will feature the Beatdown Clan taking on a team led by Kurt Angle in Lethal Lockdown. Who is on Kurt’s team? They didn’t tell us!

KURT ANGLE PROMO- he announces that he is looking for teammates, and he’ll find them by the end of the night. Of course, the fact that we just saw the commercial already gives away who is on his team (if I bothered to pause it during the clips and find out who- I think I remember seeing Gunner), thus killing the suspense of Kurt’s search tonight.
This is one of those areas where the whole “pretend we’re live during the show, but on commercials within the show” thing really falls apart for me. If the show is not live, why would TNA air footage of Kurt’s promo here rather than using this time to squeeze in part of one of the matches that is interrupted by a commercial? They’ve already made their announcement of the match in that there commercial that we just saw.

TNA KNOCKOUTS TITLE MATCH: Taryn Terrell(c) vs. Madison Rayne vs. Gail Kim- 6/10 (great for the time it got).
Madison has not won a match since October 8th. Since that time she has:
10/15- Lost a title match
10/29- Lost a tag team because she turned on her own partner
11/12- Lost a match to the current champion, Taryn
1/7- lost a title match to Taryn
WHY IS SHE GETTING A TITLE SHOT?!
You want to know why the X-Division Title has gone to absolute sh*t in the past few years and why the women’s and tag team titles haven’t been far behind? It’s because TNA insists on just throwing title matches and #1 contendership matches out there every week instead of taking the time to actually build up contenders as both credible in-ring challengers and as characters the fans can develop a connection with.

TNA plugged Taryn getting pegged in the head with a basketball by Will Ferrell in an upcoming movie, claiming that she “made headlines”… and that is true. Unfortunately, the only news outlet that I have seen that covered the story that mentioned that the Taryn was a TNA wrestler was the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Also, TNA could only get still photos of this, which made them look completely fourth-rate. Can you imagine something similar happening with WWE and them not making sure they had the rights to use the video of the segment on Raw?

Josh Matthews miscalled a regular old neckbreaker as a Diamond Cutter.
The crowd chanted “BETTER THAN THE DIVAS!” and this match certainly was better than anything I’ve seen out of the (non-NXT) Divas in quite a while (probably at least a year)… but then a minute later they were chanting “WE WANT PUPPIES!” so they’re f*cking idiots. “Boo! We hate those crappy WWE Divas who are only hired for their looks! Also, WE WANT TITTIES!”
The match was very good, especially for the time it got. All three of these women are great, but I’ve been really disappointed with the lack of focus on Taryn as the champion. Her rise to the top seemed like a big thing, but since winning the title she has yet to cut a single promo.

LOCKDOWN CARD RUNDOWN- hooray! They’re actually hyping things up in advance! And included in those things are Storm & Abyss defending the tag titles against the Hardys and Kong vs. Havok.

MAGNUS PROMO ON THE STREET- good. It not only set up the situation, but they also took the time to establish why the cameraman was there.

TOMMY DREAMER IS HERE- BOOOO!

SPUD & MANDREWS ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK- Spud is so dumb that he thinks the Empire State Building is the Washington Monument. This actually makes me want to see Tyrus squash him like a bug. These two will have a tag team match against EC III & Tyrus.

TOMMY DREAMER CALLS OUT ERIC YOUNG-
While Tommy was on his way to the ring, Josh Matthews plugged House of Hardcore… and at that point I realized what fantastic little scam Tommy is pulling on TNA. He gets the use of their top stars and gets to plug his promotion on their national TV show, while all they get is… Tommy Dreamer. That’s a rip-off right there.
Thanks the fans and claims to have never lied to them and vows that he never will. Tommy then calls out EY. I predict that he will give him the same speech he gave Dixie about doing the right thing, and then cry on him, just like he did with Dixie.
EY comes out, and he apparently hates Bobby Roode so much that he is wearing Roode’s t-shirt.
Tommy claims that the first two people to offer their hands to him when he came to TNA were Eric Young and Bobby Roode. Really, Tommy? Because I remember you and your EV 2.0 buddies being jumped from behind and having the sh*t beaten out of your by Bobby’s stable, Fortune. Never lied to us, huh?
Well… he gave EY the “do the right thing” speech, but he managed to hold in the waterworks this time. His promo still stunk. I don’t give a sh*t which wrestlers you’ve shared a hotel room with or which wrestlers you hung out at the bar with. I don’t give a sh*t about your off-hours escapades. I give a sh*t about things I see on this TV show. Things that are meant to affect me and to influence my opinions of the characters involved. At this point, if I never hear another Tommy Dreamer promo for the rest of my life, I’ll be perfectly happy with that.
Dreamer alleges that EY turned because Roode wouldn’t give him a title shot. I guess he forgot the whole “Bobby Roode never called me while I was in the hospital” part, which seems a lot more important. On the other hand, though, Tommy did ask the following question: “did you even ask him [for a title shot]?” EY attacks Dreamer after this, and I don’t know if it is because Dreamer has uncovered his shameful secret or because he was outraged that Tommy would think he is that stupid.
Roode made the save for Dreamer, and EY beat up a ring attendant on his way out because he is a heel.

HARDYS PROMO- Matt built up next week’s tag title match and Jeff build up his Monster’s Ball with Abyss tonight. Both were good.

KURT ANGLE & GUNNER BACKSTAGE- Kurt recruits Gunner to be on his team. Um… okay. That's kind of random. When they were promoting the Beatdown Clan facing some babyfaces in a Lethal Lockdown match, I kind of assumed it’d be guys they were feuding with like Roode and Lashley and Aries.

MAGNUS & BRAM IN THE BAR- AWESOME! By far the best segment TNA has done a long time. HUGE props are due to Bram’s delivery. He did a great job of finding this tone that had you 90% sure he was being sincere, but there was that other 10% that was clearly there, and you knew how crazy Bram was, so you knew anything was possible…


MONSTER’S BALL MATCH: Jeff Hardy vs. Abyss- 6.25/10 (but you’ll probably rate it lower if you don’t like the overbooking)
They started off brawling in a location that Josh Matthews described as “the bowels of the Manhattan Center.” Apparently the bowel of the Manhattan Center are just one doorway away from the Grand Ballroom… which is about seven floors up.
Taz claimed to have wrestled in many “FTW Rules Matches.” I can’t remember even hearing of a single match billed as such.
The fans chanted “YOU’VE STILL GOT IT!” at these two, both of whom are on the active roster. Matthews stole Corino’s “crash and burn” catchphrase.
The match had all of the same stuff we’ve seen from Abyss a zillion times over the years, but it did a good job of building up the tag title match, and the Wolves involvement against the Revolution gives them something to do for a while until the face the Hardys for the titles (which I am assuming the Hardys win at some point).

HARDYS PROMO- decent.

RECAP OF THE OPENING SEGMENT- a good idea, I guess, considering that I had completely forgotten about the match at this point (which shouldn’t happen for a match that big).

AUSTIN ARIES PROMO- great.

ETHAN CARTER III & TYRUS vs. ROCKSTAR SPUD & MANDREWS- or not. Apparently Ethan as booking power, so instead of this, we got…

ROCKSTAR SPUD & MANDREWS vs. THE BRO-MANS (w/DJ Zema Ion & Angelina Love)- DUD!
Spud does a testicular claw to both Robbie and Jesse right in front of the referee, but there is no DQ.
Josh felt the need to explain the rules of tag team wrestling to us, but never once did he even attempt to explain what a Lethal Lockdown match is.

ETHAN & TYRUS JUMP THE BRITS AFTER THE MATCH- Tyrus has a TERRIBLE Samoan Spike.
Ethan vows that he will never wrestle against Spud. Then he offers to put Tyrus in a handicap steel cage match against both British midgets next week at Lockdown.

SPUD PROMO- AWESOME! THIS is what Spud needs to be doing.

TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Bobby Lashley(c) vs. Bobby Roode vs. Austin Aries vs. MVP- 7.5/10
Aries is now being billed from Tampa, FL instead of Milwaukee, WI. That’s strange.
The match was great. EY screwed Roode out of winning. Lashley won, but got beaten down buy the BDC afterwards. Kurt and Gunner came out to make the save.

A DIFFERENT LOCKDOWN COMMERCIAL- they are hyping up the fact that if we tune in next week, we can see Jeff Hardy take some kind of crazy bump. Here’s a novel idea: How about we build up the fact that if you tune in next week, you might get to see Jeff and Matt win the TNA World Tag Team Titles?


SHOW-CLOSING SEGMENT- eh.
First Bobby Roode cut a promo. He told EY that “this BS end right now!” Then he challenged him to a match next week. He wanted this to be a cage match so there that there won’t be any outside interference. For those of you keeping track, the LAST TWO YEARS of Lockdown have outside interference in world title matches. Both he and EY talked about wanting to make each other bleed… so why are they having a cage match and not a First Blood match? Actually, this would be a fine time to bring back the “Doomsday Chamber of Blood” match (but with a name that doesn’t suck), as that was a combination of the two: a cage match where you had to make the other guy bleed before you could win.
Aries volunteers to be on Kurt’s team next week. Kurt also tries to recruit Lashley, but he says no.

Throughout the night, Taz and Matthews kept talking about guys “moving up in the rankings” and guys trying to get into the “top five.” Roode’s intro graphic said he was ranked #1 for the World Heavyweight Title. I have no idea what they are talking about. Did they introduce some sort of new title shot ranking system?

A decent show from TNA.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Josh Matthews- “If you’re a champion, do you like matches like this, where you lose your championship advantage?”
Yes. He actually did ask that question.
2. Josh Matthews describes Matt’s standard Twist of Fate and Jeff’s Stunner variation as having “the same effect.”
Not even close. One drives the opponents chin into your shoulder, while the other drives their face into the mat!