OPENING VIDEO PACKAGE- I thought it was way too over the top, which is weird because this was exactly the sort of opening video I used to love from the TNA PPVs from 2005-2009.
Josh claims that he and Taz are at ringside this week, rather than in Nashville. Then, two minutes later, they showed Taz and Josh in the studio in Nashville. It’s just one of those things that makes you wonder whether anyone in TNA actually watches the finished product before sending it off to the TV station, which is the TV equivalent of simple proofreading.
The way the cage was set up and with the bar going around it, combined with the lighting, made it look like there were four ropes, which made me do a double-take several times during the show.
SIX SIDES OF STEEL MATCH FOR THE TNA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES: James Storm & Abyss(c) (w/James Storm’s Revolution) vs. The Hardys- 3/10
Two minutes into the match and Manik has already gotten into the cage, making the damn cage pointless. You’d think that someone in power in what was for a long time the second-biggest promotion in the North America would have heard the phrase “nobody in, nobody out.” Fortunately, the Hardys had some handcuffs in their pockets, so they cuffed him to the cage… except he was still inside the f*cking ring, so he could still easily attack any Hardy that came near him.
As it turns out, you don’t even need to be in the ring to interfere, because the camera hole is big enough that Khoya easily pulled Matt through it. This had me very confused because earlier Josh had told us that if Storm had escaped the cage, he and Abyss would have retained the titles. If the rules are that you need two guys to escape, Josh should have told us that.
Ah. A clarification by Taz: In order to win by escaping, you must go either over the sides or through the door. Through the sides is not okay. Also, you apparently have to do so under your own power. This last part at least seems to contradict the big finish from the main event of Lockdown 2012 where Bobby Roode retained the title because he fell out the door after James Storm superkicked him.
Sanada gave Jeff the mist through the cage, leading to Jeff falling off the top rope, then eating a superkick from Storm for the pin. As I’m sure you can tell by both my rating and by everything I’ve written here so far, I hated this. The action was tepid at best, and all of the interferences, capped off with Sanada using the mist right through the fence made the cage feel completely irrelevant. It just completely killed any excitement I had for this show because they just told me that the cage, which is what this whole show is built upon, doesn’t mean sh*t. This will be no different than any other match on any other episode of Impact. This is how you completely kill a gimmick.
POST-MATCH ANGLE- Khoya puts Matt through a table on the outside then they bring a table inside the ring for Jeff. Abyss easily breaks the chain on the handcuffs, which makes you wonder why he never did it during the match. Manik went to put Jeff through a table with a diving splash from the second rope, but Jeff rolled out of the way. Jeff then beat up Abyss and Storm all by himself, then tried to climb out of the cage, but wound up falling on his nuts on the door when Abyss pushed it… but the way Jeff took the bump made it quite clear that he fell that way on purpose, because he had to turn ninety degrees in order to crotch himself. Then Storm climbed up to the top of the cage, and hit Jeff in the head with a cowbell causing Jeff to fall very far and land on his shoulder on the ringsteps.
That bump looked like it hurt like a mother*cker and props to Jeff for being crazy enough to take it… but I feel really bad because I just didn’t care. First the match made the cage feel like it didn’t matter, then they launched into this angle with the heels- who had just won the match by cheating- attacking the babyfaces afterwards for no good reason and with no real pause of any sort between the match and the angle, and that made the whole match feel like it didn’t matter, and so when Jeff took this big bump, I just didn’t care because it felt like nothing they did mattered.
At least they did a good job of selling this Jeff’s bump as being a big deal by showing a bunch of replays and showing us people attending to Jeff at ringside.
MVP GIVES THE BEATDOWN CLAN A PEP TALK- he apparently has an offer that Kurt won’t be able to refuse.
During the commercial break, Destination America aired a commercial for next week’s Impact, advertising matches between the BDC and Kurt & his pals, and stuff with Ethan & Tyrus facing off against Spud and it’s just the same sh*t over and over again… except that tonight is LOCKDOWN! Next week isn’t supposed to be the same sh*t as last week. This commercial broke any confidence I had that tonight’s show would matter in any way. It’s not TNA Lockdown anymore. It’s TNA OOOH! OOOOH! Look At Us! Everyone Look At Us! We Have CAGE MATCHES! Everyone Watch Our Show Because We Have Cage Matches. Don’t You Want To See Some Cage Matches? They’re The Biggest, Most Historic Match In Wrestling And We Have A Whole Show Full Of Them, So You Should Really Watch It!.
This is their fifth week on Destination America and they have yet to do a show without a single gimmick match. They just throw gimmick matches out there because they think that gimmick matches always draw, but they have completely failed to realize that gimmick matches draw when they are SPECIAL, and if you just throw them out there for no reason and make them not mean anything, they won’t draw. And this has been the case in TNA for YEARS… and yet after all of this time, they still haven’t learned.
Oh. The commercial also hyped up the return of a TNA legend. I have no idea who this is, but I don’t give a crap, and that’s sad because this appears to be an actual mystery here.
MVP MAKES HIS OFFER- huge waste of time.
MVP is in the ring with Kenny King, and Eric Young (who definitely isn’t a member of the BDC even though they have all the same enemies and they hang out with each other all the time). He puts over the Six Sides of Steel as being dangerous- possibly career ending. Then he calls Kurt out (who comes out with Gunner and Aries) to make his proposal. His proposal is… if the babyfaces want to back out of this match, the BDC will be kind enough to let them do that.
So… did the babyfaces back out like cowardly yellow-bellied chicken ‘fraidy-cats?
Of course not. And there is no one in the world who thought that they would, so what was the point of all of this?!
Kurt cuts a dull promo, then declares that he wants to kick the BDC’s asses right now, so the babyfaces rush the cage and these guys brawl. Joe and Ki come out to give the heels a numbers advantage and they trap Gunner’s arm in the cage door and hit the door with a chair. The heels already had a numbers advantage, so this segment didn’t even do anything. It was just a gigantic waste of time. Complete and total filler, and that has no place on a show like Lockdown.
THE DOCTOR CHECKS ON GUNNER- the doctor says he shouldn’t wrestle, Gunner says he wants to start the match. Kurt and Aries are perfectly fine with this. Kurt says he’s going to go try to recruit Lashley again. I’m guessing he’ll probably be successful. Do you want to know how I know? Well, do you remember that commercial from before about next week’s show? IT HAD FOOTAGE OF LASHLEY RUNNING WILD ON THE HEELS IN A LETHAL LOCKDOWN MATCH! That’s right! The dumbsh*ts aired a commercial THAT SPOILED THEIR OWN F*CKING SHOW!
SIX SIDES OF STEEL MATCH: Awesome Kong vs. Havok- 4.75/10
Great video package to build this up.
Because this is a steel cage match, they started it off by brawling all around ringside. Josh made sure to tell us that the match wouldn’t start until both women were in the ring… and just as poor Josh finished saying this, the timekeeper rang the bell to start the match (and they really should have had Josh re-record that bit so he doesn’t come off looking stupid).
Anyway, they did stuff. There were some decent big-woman spots, but on the whole, I was extremely disappointed by how short this was.
FOOTAGE OF VELVET & ANGELINA FROM TWO WEEKS AGO- Velvet tells Angelina that she got fired in Feast or Fired because of that whole stupid thing with Robbie. And apparently Angelina secretly hated Velvet the whole time and is happy that she is fired. They really should have aired this last week. You know… before Angelina came out with the Bro-Mans like nothing had happened.
SIX SIDES OF STEEL: Bobby Roode vs. Eric Young- 6.75/10
FINALLY! A match that feels like a cagematch.
MVP came down and handed EY a chair through the camera-hole. At this point Josh Matthews suggested closing these holes because the purpose of the cage is to keep people out. In other words, the cage is COMPLETELY FAILING at its assigned purpose.
These two did a great job with the time they had, but like with the previous match, it felt way too short.
KURT TRIES TO RECRUIT LASHLEY- the delivery felt so unnatural and scripted. Lashley doesn’t want to join Kurt because… umm… I’m not really sure why. Lashley seems like he’s being a dick here.
TNA TOP FIVE RANKINGS FOR THE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE:
Champion- Lashley
1. Bobby Roode
2. MVP
3. Eric Young
4. Low Ki
5. EC III
What… what are these? What do they mean? And how the hell are EC III and Low Ki on the list but Austin Aries and Kurt Angle are not?
HANDICAP SIX SIDES OF STEEL MATCH: Rockstar Spud & Mandrews vs. Tyrus (w/Ethan Carter III)- 4.25/10
The babyfaces with the man advantage jump the heel before he is ready. Then Tyrus proceeded to beat the sh*t out of them, and he looked the like cool guy I wanted to root for. This was another match where the cage felt totally irrelevant (aside from Spud’s dive which probably could have worked almost as well off of the ropes).
Josh Matthews referred to Tyrus as EC III’s “heavy,” and then Tyrus immediately hit the Big Ending. Huh.
OH SH*T THE BACK OF MANDREWS HEAD FELL RIGHT ON THE EDGE OF THE STEPS! Miraculously, he seems to be not only okay, but not even bleeding.
POST-MATCH ANGLE- EC III is going to shave Spud, but Jeremy Borash snuck over and cut the cord, so EC II was left wondering why his clippers weren’t working. He figured it out, then chased JB backstage. This felt way too cartoonish.
BOBBY ROODE PROMO- Not going lie… I’m having a hard time feeling sympathy for Roode while he says that he’ll never forgive his former BFF for costing him the world title because Roode himself did the same thing to James Storm.
Also, the duration of his friendship with EY has now been retconned to fifteen years instead of the twelve they’ve been saying for the past few weeks.
BROOKE-ROBBIE CRAP- apparently these two had a dizzy bat race. Yes. Like that rlay race that elementary school kids to. Brooke, the babyface, had to hit Roobie in the testicles with a baseball bat to win because she’s not good enough to win on her own. So why should I cheer for her?
LETHAL LOCKDOWN MATCH: The Beatdown Clan vs. Kurt Angle, Austin Aries, Gunner, & Lashley?- 5/10
Unlike previous Lethal Lockdown matches, “all weapons are legal the entire match.” I’m guess that means that we also won’t have a roof.
Kurt never found a fourth guy. We were told that everyone was in the match and that we had entered the match beyond. Meaning that Lashley isn’t part of the match. So, naturally, when he shows up, the referee just opened the cage door to let Bobby stroll right on in. Because that’s what cages are for. To have doors that open up to let anyone who wants to waltz right in.
So Lashley gets in the cage, and they couldn’t just have him run wild for the babyfaces. No. That would be silly. This is TNA after all, so they HAD to do a swerve where he teased joining the BDC, and I would be surprised if this fooled more than ten people.
They did stuff with weapons all match. Then they did the finish, which saw Angle, Gunner, and Aries each lock one of the heels in their signature submission, while MVP just stared dumbly. Logic would dictate that the smart thing for him to do would be t try to break these submissions up, but instead he just stared around looking for Lashley so they could do their spot, which consisted of MVP giving Lashley a low blow purely so that Lashley could no-sell it and spear MVP for the win. I guess. I thought Bobby wasn’t in the match.
Another bad show from TNA, a completely pointless waste of what has, for years, been their second-biggest show of the year. Everything was disappointing, and, to be quite honest, the pointless filler on this show and the lack of anything important happening just makes me think that they really have no idea where they’re going with anything
Hidden text.
, so they're just either dragging feuds out with random ideas or they're just doing changes and gimmick matches purely for the save of doing changes and gimmick matches. Since they have been on Destination America, the only characters I care about in any way at all are the Taryn and the Wolves.STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Josh Matthews- “A lot of history between the Revolution and the Hardys.”
What history? They only started feuding a month ago! (And yes, I know that Michael Cole does this all the time and I never call him out on it, but that’s just how Cole is and that’s the way that Vince wants it. Josh Matthews no longer has those restrictions, so I’d expect him to not say stupid sh*t like this.)