Decent opener. I think it was a bad idea to put these two teams together, simply because we JUST saw this feud have a blow-off, and matching these two teams up again just makes it feel like nothing is going anywhere. They could have done the bit with Storm and Khoya against any opponent.
HARDYS PROMO- good.
ERIC YOUNG PROMO- not good.
ERIC YOUNG PROMO- He cut basically the same promo as before, so why waste time with the first one?
EY is now wearing Kurt Angle’s t-shirt, so I guess EY’s gimmick is that he always wears his enemy’s merch. Kurt Angle came out and this whole thing was just HORRIBLY STUPID!
BDC, SPUD, & ANDERSON BACKSTAGE- I didn’t even recognize Spud. Spud completely failed to stand up for himself, putting him back where he was as a stooge heel, except now he’s supposed to be a champion babyface. This felt like a HUGE step backwards.
ULTIMATE X QUALIFYING MATCH: Mr. Anderson & Rockstar Spud vs. The BDC (Kenny King & Low Ki)- 5.5/10
Good babyfaces vs. heels stuff.
EC III & BRAM PROMO- Ethan’s reaction to Bram saved this from being terrible and actually made it great!
BDC BACKSTAGE- decent
ULTIMATE X QUALIFYING MATCH: Tigre Uno & Jay Rios vs. Bram & Ethan Carter III (w/Tyrus)- 4.5/10
KURT ANGLE PROMO- okay
KNOCKOUTS SEGMENT-
Apparently neither Christie Hemme nor Josh Matthews watch NXT, because I’d take everyone on that roster over every one of the Knockouts aside from Gail and maybe Taryn.
Why is Kong not out here? Does she not count?
Next week is an all Knockouts show. With five women on the roster? What are they going to do? Two Ironwoman matches?
Anyway, this soon devolved into lame and boring arguing. I hated this even more because Gail was the one giving the whole babyface speech and not babyface champion Taryn. All of this felt lame and scripted- like you knew the general direction everyone would take their promo in before they grabbed the mic- aside from Brooke, but that’s only because her excited jumping up and down a whole THREE MINUTES after Christie had announced the al-knockouts show made it seem like she’s just really slow and finally figured out what that meant. And she was SOOOOO annoying here that I never want to hear her speak again. In fact, the only lines here that felt in any way real was Christy mocking Brooke, and the very beginning of Taryn’s promo.
Apparently there will be a four-way #1 contendership match next week. Okay… and how are you going to fill the rest of the two hours without anyone else on the roster? Oh. Okay. New Knockouts? How about maybe introducing them to us so that we can maybe give a sh*t about them. Because if you don’t, this just turns into One Night Only: Knockouts Knockdown VIII or whatever number they’re up to at this point.
Also, it will be Taryn vs. Kong in the main event, for the title.
Why not do Gail (who won a match recently) against Madison (who at least hasn’t lost in a while) for the #1 contendership. Including both Gail and Angelina in this match makes their match last week completely pointless (in other words, devaluing wins and losses), and including Brooke, who get her ass utterly destroyed by Kong a few weeks ago is even worse. If you make Gail vs. Madison the #1 contendership match, you can do Brooke vs. Angelina as a singles match so that you won’t need to bring in so many outsiders and thus won’t expose quite how small the division is.
Hidden text.
Kong comes out and things devolve into a predictable schmoz, ending in Taryn standing tall after diving onto the whole pile on the outside.They keep pushing this “Taryn NEEDS to beat Kong to validate herself,” but they have never once HAD TARYN SAY THAT.
BRO-MANS BACKSTAGE- this was good in theory, but Jesse telling Robbie “how about you just don’t mess up again” would have been a lot better if we had actually SEEN Robbie being distraught over… whatever it is he is distraught over right now- was it a loss to Brooke or something?- and having that cost him or his team matches. They’ve jumped from Point A directly to Point D without showing the necessary progression from A to B to C and then to D. And this is even worse because A happened a month ago (at least), and nothing has been mentioned since then.
ARIES, ROODE & ROBBIE E.- why do Aries and Roode need to rely on mind games to beat a pair of jobbers?
ULTIMATE X QUALIFYING MATCH: Bro-Mans vs. Austin Aries & Bobby Roode- 4/10
Josh brought up Aries & Roode’s “Dirty Heels” team name, which was dumb because not only is that a dumb team name, but no one ever called them that on TV.
And now Bro-Mans can’t get along in any way at all after just ONE SEGMENT. Then they break up after losing the match. Zema Ion comes out to try to break it up, which just makes you wonder where he was DURING THE MATCH?
Josh says that Jesse and Robbie both joined TNA around the same time. They debuted OVER TWO YEARS APART!
HOMICIDE & ANGLE BRAWL- Apparently these two were supposed to have an actual match tonight. Maybe we could have gotten a graphic for that? I just assumed that BDC were going to assault Kurt because they want the title and that Kurt cut his promo because he was watching the monitor backstage and saw their promo.
Josh kept telling us that this was “not sanctioned,” so why did no one try to break it up? Kurt gets Cide in the Angle Lock, but the BDC come out and beat the sh*t out of him. It then took entirely too long for The Rising to come out and make the “save” such as it was, which really just left MVP alone in the ring with a steel chair and a downed Kurt Angle… and then Eric Young made the save, because one speech from Kurt Angle turned a crazy man into a babyface again. This SUCKED!
THE DOLLHOUSE DEBUT NEXT WEEK- a good night to do that.
JOSH PLUGS NEXT WEEK’S SHOW- WAITAMINUTE!
Isn’t next week supposed to be a Knockouts-only show? Then why is Kurt vs. EY next week? Also, what makes this Knockouts show “unprecedented?” They already did an all-Knockouts show (a New Year’s Eve show in 2009, IIRC) and if Kurt vs. EY is next week, then it’s not even an all-Knockouts show, so what’s so special about that?
KNOCKOUTS COMMERCIAL- a pointless recap of stuff we already knew. They should have just given us a segment with Mickie and Magnus to hype up whatever Mickie’s announcement will be
ULTIMATE X MATCH FOR THE VACANT TNA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES: The Hardys vs. Austin Aries & Bobby Roode vs. The BDC (Low Ki & Kenny King) vs. Bram & Ethan Carter III (w/Tyrus)- 6.75/10
Didn’t The Rising say that their goal was to stop the BDC from using group tactics to control the titles? So why didn’t they come out when Homicide interfered to help the BDC?
The match was good, but nothing great.
Josh said that this match was a testament to the “young and hungry roster of Impact Wrestling.”
Austin Aries- 37
Bobby Roode- 38
EC III- 32
Tyrus- 42
Matt Hardy- 40
Jeff Hardy- 37
Low Ki- 35
Kenny King- 33
EIGHT OF THE NINE PEOPLE IN THE RING ARE OVER AGE 32! (Bram is 28)
And just for some more sh*ts and giggles:
EY- 35
Kurt Angle- 46
Bobby Lashley- 38
Gail Kim- 38
Awesome Kong- 37
James Storm- 37
Abyss- 41
Ken Anderson- 39
MVP- 41
Homicide- 38
Rockstar Spud- 32
Davey Richards- 32
Yeah… not quite what I’d call “young.”
Anyway, this was an okay show from TNA. The tag title stuff was handled decently well, but I really didn’t like the other stuff at all.