BRM Reviews the 10/13/2011 Impact (bad)

[Big Red Machine]

KURT ANGLE & BOBBY ROODE SEGMENT- snore. Generic stuff from Kurt followed by generic stuff from Roode. Roode asks Angle for a 1-on-1 match with no funny business from Immortal and no cheating. Kurt agrees, and everyone believes him. Do you people not remember what happened at Hardcore Justice? Ah, hell. Who am I kidding? The people writing the show probably actually have forgotten.

AJ STYLES & ROB VAN DAM vs. JERRY LYNN & CHRISTOPHER DANIELS- 6/10- GREAT for a 6 minute match.

SAMOA JOE vs. MATT MORGAN- No rating- good segment (aside from Crimson’s selling. He limps down the ramp, then runs around the ring- WTF?)

MEXICAN AMERICA & INK INC SEGMENT- eh. But it got CVE over, so I guess it worked.

KID KASH & AUSTIN ARIES vs. BRIAN KENDRICK & JESSE SORENSEN- 5/10.

KNOCKOUTS SEGMENT- dull. A lame excuse for a brawl. We get the Karen-Velvet stuff, but this isn’t the right time for it. Have Karen cost Velvet the win on PPV, then do this next week. This segment made all of the other women look secondary, which isn’t what you want going into your 4 way title match. Making this even worse was the fact that when you compared the brawl between Velvet and Madison to the brawl between Mickie and Winter (the two women in this match with the least focus on them… which is ridiculous in and of itself because Winter is the champ), the Mickie-Winter brawl looked like a match I want to see. The Velvet-Madison brawl was just a lot of rolling around on the ground, which gets old after about 20 seconds.

BUBBA PROMO- okay.

AJ PROMO & GETTING JUMPED BY DANIELS- the promo was good, getting jumped was eh.

MR. ANDERSON vs. SCOTT STEINER with BULLY RAY AS SPECIAL GUEST ENFORCER- DUD! THIS SUCKED! We got some weak looking ring-work, followed by Abyss, who is in no way involved in the Anderson-Bully Ray feud (other than being a member of Immortal… but that isn’t relevant because he hasn’t been on TV for a while) comes out to help Steiner cheat WHILE STEINER HAS THE ADVANTAGE, screws up in an obvious way, and Anderson escapes, having gotten a clothesline in on Bully Ray, robbing Bully Ray of all of his heat! In fact, getting clotheslined was the only thing that Bully Ray did in this match. Him being the “special enforcer” was completely irrelevant. He could have just come out as Steiner’s manager and nothing would have changed! So basically, we had a short, pointless almost-gimmick match where the almost-gimmick was completely irrelevant, with a screwy finish, and the babyface escaping (and getting a shot in on his nemesis), then Anderson, the self-professed asshole who doesn’t care about anyone but himself, comes back out to make the save for a guy who just tried to screw him out of a match, only to then get put through a table. So basically, they threw away a feud that has been building for four months and has its blowoff IN THREE DAYS under the bus in favor of a barely mentioned angle with a faulty basis… then made the payoff to that angle look unimportant by making it nothing but an excuse for one more little thing in the previously neutered angle (with some character assassination in the process) Yeah. That’s what you want on your go-home show.

KURT ANGLE & JAMES STORM BACKSTAGE- Dumb premise, but James Storm saved the segment.

JARRETT & GUNNER PROMO- would have been better if they hadn’t just gotten beaten up by Anderson.

While hyping up BFG, Tenay told us that Winter’s title defense at BFG will be her first... she won the belt over a month ago. What happened to the 30 days rule?

BOBBY ROODE vs. GUNNER & JEFF JARRETT (w/Karen Jarrett)-5/10. Not acceptable for a main event. The psychology was good, but the match itself wasn’t too exciting, and Gunner was not the legal man when he tapped out.

AFTERMATH- started off good, then went downhill. Fortune is a faction, and they are all good buddies, right? Then where the hell was the rest of the faction when Roode and Storm were getting their asses kicked? Where were AJ and Kaz? Then Jeff Hardy makes the save… I am fine with Jeff making the save (especially against Kurt), but this all but cements the fact that Booby Roode isn’t winning at BFG, and Kurt will feud with Jeff, tossing us right back where Hogan and Bischoff have always been and always wanted to go: to the land where TNA stars mean nothing. Just look at the facts: Since AJ lost the belt, the guys either with the belt or getting title shots have been: Jeff, Anderson, Sting, Kurt, RVD (Morgan, if you’ll all remember, was just a stand-in for Anderson, and Hogan, Bischoff, & co. had no intention of ever using him in a main event spot).
Also, Bully Ray shouldn’t have been the guy to take Jeff’s finisher. He has a match at BFG, he needs heat going into it. It should have been Gunner or Steiner taking the Twist of Fate.

HOGAN-STING CONTRACT SIGNING- TERRIBLE! Hogan’s promo sucked balls. It made him look delusional. Hogan is wrestling a match that he initially didn’t want to because Sting embarrassed him “in front of all of these people who love/support me” – THEY ARE CHANTING “HOGAN SUCKS!” And the “embarrassment” in question that led to Hogan to agree to the match was Sting playing footage of Hogan and Bischoff calling the fans morons! DOES NOT COMPUTE!

Overall, this week’s Impact sucked, but it did touch all of its bases as a go-home show for BFG, as (I believe) every match on the BFG card did get at least some screen time.

Stupid Announcer Quotes:
1. Tenay, moron that he is, describes Jeff making the save as a “shocking return”… HE HAS BEEN ON TV FOR OVER A MONTH NOW!

2. Tenay- “For several years, Sting has asked for just one thing: the chance to fight Hulk Hogan”- Really? Because he really hasn’t expressed this desire until seven months ago. That’s kind of a weird thing to keep bottled up inside of you. And if this was what Sting really wanted, then why did he walk away from the company after BFG last year?