TNA Lockdown 2013
TNA Lockdown 2013 (3/10/2013)- San Antonio, TX
TNA X-DIVISION TITLE MATCH: Kenny King(c) vs. Zema Ion vs. Christian York- 7/10
Exactly what an opener should be! Fun, fast-paced, and a bit spotty. The sort of thing that really gets the crowd into a show. They did some cool three way spots including a pretty innovative tower of doom. They had some great nearfalls in here, too. Kenny King botched a corkscrew move of some point and smashed the back of his head into the guardrail, which was extremely scary, but thankfully Kenny seemed to be okay afterwards.
JOSEPH PARK PROMO-okay. Kaz and Daniels send Joseph off to catering, then cut an awesome promo on their own. Major props to Daniels for the Piano Man reference.
JOSEPH PARK vs. JOEY RYAN- 4/10
Joey cuts a great promo dissing the crowd, then Joseph starts to cut a promo saying that â€"San Antonio rocks†but gets jumped from behind by Joey. Excellent way to start off the match! This was your standard fun Joseph Park match except that Joseph didn’t snap this time, and as a result I didn’t think Joey took anywhere near enough damage to be put down.
BULLY & THE HOGANS BACKSTAGE- Bully tells Brooke that he is nervous, then Hulk show up and shoos Brooke away. Hulk then tells Bully that â€"this good little company now has a chance to go on to greatness…†which is pretty much what Hulk has been saying before every big match/show that TNA has had for over three years now, so this phrase now not only doesn’t mean anything, but really comes to symbolize how much of a disappointment the Hogan-Era has become. Hogan then says that there is something special about Bully, that he will be the launching point that will bring TNA to greatness, and that with Bully as World Heavyweight Champion, the company will never be stopped again. This just felt like a pile of bullsh*t.
Then he told Bully to win it for Brooke, win it for him, and make sure that everyone remembers Bully for as long as they live. Bully responds â€"as far as making them remember me… I promise. They will.†By this point pretty much everyone watching at home (even me, who has been quite skeptical of this theory) is screaming â€"HEEL TURN!†because crap like this just telegraphs it!
TNA KNOCKOUTS TITLE MATCH: Velvet Sky(c) vs. Gail Kim- 3.5/10
Gail gets into an argument with Taryn, eventually slapping her. Taryn then spears Gail. Yes, this is escalation of the angle between the two of them, but they are doing it at the expense of Velvet Sky and the Knockouts’ Title, as once again not only is the title secondary to the angle between the challenger and a referee, but the babyface champ who TNA wants to push once again needs help from a referee to retain her title.
ROBBIE E. PROMO- GREAT!
ROBBIE E. vs. ROBBIE T.- 4/10
I would have rated this as a segment but I felt that Robbie E. got too much offense in. This was still very good for what it was, though, and Rob Terry’s new finish (a fireman’s carry into a thrust spinebuster) is cool.
AUSTIN ARIES PROMO- decent. Bobby Roode finally shows up. I’m not going to lie to you: there is a vindictive part of me that wanted Roode to show up at ROH WAR later this month instead of returning to TNA as payback for the Kenny King thing, (and quite frankly, TNA deserves it for how this whole thing came about. How the hell do you forget that the contract of one of your current tag team champions and the guy who recently held your world title for TEN MONTHS STRAIGHT is expiring?!
TNA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Austin Aries & Bobby Roode(c) vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr. & Hernandez vs. Bad Influence (Christopher Daniels & Kazarian)- 8/10
Awesome tag team action. Awesome psychology. An awesome finish. Just an absolutely awesome match!
GAIL JUMPS TARYN BACKSTAGE- good
D’LO GIVES ACES & EIGHTS A PEP TALK- bad, but only because the angle has been so poorly booked. Nothing D’Lo said felt important at all because Aces & Eights haven’t done a damn thing.
KURT ANGLE PROMO- eh.
STEEL CAGE MATCH: Kurt Angle vs. Wes Brisco- 6.5/10
A good match for Wes’ first Pay-Per-View singles match, but you really never felt that Kurt was ever in danger of losing without outside help.
LETHAL LOCKDOWN MATCH: Aces & Eights (Mr. Anderson, Garrett Bischoff, Doc, Mike Knox, & Devon) vs. Sting, Samoa Joe, Magnus, James Storm, & Eric Young)- 6.75/10
They do the standard man advantage stuff until, with his team down a man and all of his teammates getting beaten down, Sting, as usual, takes his sweet time getting down to the ring. He drags two garbage cans full of weapons with him… then takes a bat out of one of them and gets into the ring. The Aces & Eights then all stop beating their guys down and turn towards Sting… and then rush him ONE AT A TIME, WHILE THE OTHERS JUST STAND THEIR AND DO NOTHING, until it is their turn to run into Sting’s baseball bat. You’d think that, in the past three months, someone would have watched a Shield segment and said â€"hey, here is a much better and smarter way to do this,†but apparently not.
Apparently they got rid of the old descending cage roof full of weapons, which is why Sting had to bring them himself… which creates a problem of kayfabe logic because if Sting hadn’t decided to bring weapons with him there would be no weapons for Lethal Lockdown, and if the last guy into the match gets to bring the weapons, it is, as Taz pointed out, extremely unfair (yeah, the other side gets the man advantage in the beginning, but weapons are a much bigger advantage, especially because you can’t win the match until everyone is already in the cage.
As a whole, this match felt very small, which Lethal Lockdown never should. There was nothing riding on it at all, and it all felt extremely formulaic. Heels have the advantage, babyfaces use the weapons to get the advantage and beat down the heels, heels get the advantage back and beat down the babyfaces, then babyfaces get the advantage back and win. There were almost no false finishes, the advantage changed at exactly the same time in all of the different mini-brawls going on… it just didn’t feel like Lethal Lockdown should. Taz was also extremely annoying during this match. It is possible to be a biased heel commentator without being obnoxious, but Taz makes me want to mute the TV.
STEEL CAGE MATCH FOR THE TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Jeff Hardy(c) vs. Bully Ray- 4/10
A en match ending in an absolutely abysmal failure of logic. Early in the match, two Aces & Eights guys came into the cage and Bully and Jeff worked together to beat them up. Then, later in the match, a whole bunch of Aces & Eights guys show up and climb the cage and Bully and Jeff get ready to take them on (Bully even gives Jeff a chain to arm himself with)… and only then does Bully turn on Jeff.
First of all, what the hell was the point of sending guys down there the first time? All it could possibly do was tip the babyfaces off that Aces & Eights were planning something, so if the babyfaces weren’t morons, they could have sent guys down to guard the ring to prevent Aces & Eights from screwing up the all-important main event of TNA’s second biggest Pay-Per-View of the year. Additionally, if you are going to send them out, why not have them give Bully a weapon and have him turn right then. Surely a three to one advantage, plus the use of a weapon, is enough for Aces & Eights to beat Jeff down enough that he can be pinned?
Then, when they send the whole group out, Bully gives Jeff a weapon. WHY? What if, rather than being cautious, Jeff Hardy had decided to take a risk (seems like a Jeff Hardy thing to do, right?) and used this nice weapon with some reach that Bully had given him and started swinging it around and taken out a bunch of Aces & Eights guys before Devon had the chance to get Bully the hammer? Hell… it would probably have bought some time for the babyfaces to come down and maybe make the save.
Speaking of which… WHERE THE HELL WERE THE BABYFACES! You know… the guys who just got done kicking these same Aces & Eights members’ asses less than twenty minutes ago? Where the hell were they when Aces & Eights started to show up and climb the cage?
Anyway, Bully turns heel and hits Jeff with the hammer, knocking him out and winning the TNA World Heavyweight Title in a swerve that just about everyone saw coming because TNA has been telegraphing that something is up with Bully for MONTHS! Bully says that he never loved Brooke and that he fooled everyone and that he is the president of the Aces & Eights, etc. etc. I think that not having Brooke turn was a major mistake here. Will she stink as a heel? Only if they let her talk. Everyone saw the Bully turn coming, but a Brooke turn would have been something surprising, something that made sense with everything else that had gone on in this angle, and, quite frankly, something ballsy. When it comes to angles like this (which TNA loves), they rarely ever try anything outside of the box, and I think a Brooke turn would have done that. Also, I am a HUGE McMahon-Helmsley Regime mark, so there's that, too (not saying that Bully is as good as Hunter and certainly not even suggesting that Brooke will ever be anywhere near as good as Steph, but I think it could work).
The PPV went off the air with Aces & Eights standing triumphant in the cage and the fans throwing trash into the ring, which is probably the reaction that TNA wanted, so I can’t deny that this worked, but I think that throwing the main event of Lockdown away for this was a mistake. TNA is only doing four Pay-Per-Views a year now, so if they want fans to buy them, they need to build up to them well (and most of the build for Lockdown was not good) and even more importantly, they need to deliver in the ring. This show did not. The opener and the tag title match were the only matches on this show that were anything above just â€"good.†That really isn’t worth forty dollars (especially when ROH, DGUSA, and others will give you a lot better for just fifteen). If you want people to buy your Pay-Per-Views, you need to prove to them that your main events can deliver in the ring. This one didn’t even come close. This was the first Pay-Per-View under the new system and it needed to deliver. Instead it was plagued with the same problems that TNA Pay-Per-Views had under the old system: poor match quality, poor hype, and major matches that don’t deliver.
According to Tenay this was the largest crowd in TNA history, but the fact that he didn’t announce a number makes me suspicious. PWTorch has reported it as just under 10,000, which would almost double TNA’s previous record, so congrats to them for that. I suspect that the reason they didn’t just announce it is because they drew just 10,000 people in an arena that can seat over 60,000, but it is still a big milestone for a non-WWE company, and TNA should be proud of that.
Overall, an okay show from TNA. The awesome tag title match balanced out some of the rest of the crap on the undercard, but, in my opinion, this was not a good sign of things to come for TNA Pay-Per-Views. While I have criticized TNA in the past for killing their own gimmick matches (and they have) I felt that they usually did a good job with making all of the different matches at Lockdown feel different, even though they were all inside a cage, so I am disappointed to see the "all cage matches" concept gone.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Tenay says that this is Bully’s first shot at the TNA World Heavyweight Title. You’d think that â€"the Professor†would have done some research before the show, but apparently not. I’m sure that most people who have been following TNA remember Bully being involved in a four way at Against All Odds last year for TNA World Heavyweight Title, and that there are others who are unfortunate enough to remember the four-way from Against All Odds 2009 where he took on Angle, Devon, and Sting for the belt.
TNA X-DIVISION TITLE MATCH: Kenny King(c) vs. Zema Ion vs. Christian York- 7/10
Exactly what an opener should be! Fun, fast-paced, and a bit spotty. The sort of thing that really gets the crowd into a show. They did some cool three way spots including a pretty innovative tower of doom. They had some great nearfalls in here, too. Kenny King botched a corkscrew move of some point and smashed the back of his head into the guardrail, which was extremely scary, but thankfully Kenny seemed to be okay afterwards.
JOSEPH PARK PROMO-okay. Kaz and Daniels send Joseph off to catering, then cut an awesome promo on their own. Major props to Daniels for the Piano Man reference.
JOSEPH PARK vs. JOEY RYAN- 4/10
Joey cuts a great promo dissing the crowd, then Joseph starts to cut a promo saying that â€"San Antonio rocks†but gets jumped from behind by Joey. Excellent way to start off the match! This was your standard fun Joseph Park match except that Joseph didn’t snap this time, and as a result I didn’t think Joey took anywhere near enough damage to be put down.
BULLY & THE HOGANS BACKSTAGE- Bully tells Brooke that he is nervous, then Hulk show up and shoos Brooke away. Hulk then tells Bully that â€"this good little company now has a chance to go on to greatness…†which is pretty much what Hulk has been saying before every big match/show that TNA has had for over three years now, so this phrase now not only doesn’t mean anything, but really comes to symbolize how much of a disappointment the Hogan-Era has become. Hogan then says that there is something special about Bully, that he will be the launching point that will bring TNA to greatness, and that with Bully as World Heavyweight Champion, the company will never be stopped again. This just felt like a pile of bullsh*t.
Then he told Bully to win it for Brooke, win it for him, and make sure that everyone remembers Bully for as long as they live. Bully responds â€"as far as making them remember me… I promise. They will.†By this point pretty much everyone watching at home (even me, who has been quite skeptical of this theory) is screaming â€"HEEL TURN!†because crap like this just telegraphs it!
TNA KNOCKOUTS TITLE MATCH: Velvet Sky(c) vs. Gail Kim- 3.5/10
Gail gets into an argument with Taryn, eventually slapping her. Taryn then spears Gail. Yes, this is escalation of the angle between the two of them, but they are doing it at the expense of Velvet Sky and the Knockouts’ Title, as once again not only is the title secondary to the angle between the challenger and a referee, but the babyface champ who TNA wants to push once again needs help from a referee to retain her title.
ROBBIE E. PROMO- GREAT!
ROBBIE E. vs. ROBBIE T.- 4/10
I would have rated this as a segment but I felt that Robbie E. got too much offense in. This was still very good for what it was, though, and Rob Terry’s new finish (a fireman’s carry into a thrust spinebuster) is cool.
AUSTIN ARIES PROMO- decent. Bobby Roode finally shows up. I’m not going to lie to you: there is a vindictive part of me that wanted Roode to show up at ROH WAR later this month instead of returning to TNA as payback for the Kenny King thing, (and quite frankly, TNA deserves it for how this whole thing came about. How the hell do you forget that the contract of one of your current tag team champions and the guy who recently held your world title for TEN MONTHS STRAIGHT is expiring?!
TNA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Austin Aries & Bobby Roode(c) vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr. & Hernandez vs. Bad Influence (Christopher Daniels & Kazarian)- 8/10
Awesome tag team action. Awesome psychology. An awesome finish. Just an absolutely awesome match!
GAIL JUMPS TARYN BACKSTAGE- good
D’LO GIVES ACES & EIGHTS A PEP TALK- bad, but only because the angle has been so poorly booked. Nothing D’Lo said felt important at all because Aces & Eights haven’t done a damn thing.
KURT ANGLE PROMO- eh.
STEEL CAGE MATCH: Kurt Angle vs. Wes Brisco- 6.5/10
A good match for Wes’ first Pay-Per-View singles match, but you really never felt that Kurt was ever in danger of losing without outside help.
LETHAL LOCKDOWN MATCH: Aces & Eights (Mr. Anderson, Garrett Bischoff, Doc, Mike Knox, & Devon) vs. Sting, Samoa Joe, Magnus, James Storm, & Eric Young)- 6.75/10
They do the standard man advantage stuff until, with his team down a man and all of his teammates getting beaten down, Sting, as usual, takes his sweet time getting down to the ring. He drags two garbage cans full of weapons with him… then takes a bat out of one of them and gets into the ring. The Aces & Eights then all stop beating their guys down and turn towards Sting… and then rush him ONE AT A TIME, WHILE THE OTHERS JUST STAND THEIR AND DO NOTHING, until it is their turn to run into Sting’s baseball bat. You’d think that, in the past three months, someone would have watched a Shield segment and said â€"hey, here is a much better and smarter way to do this,†but apparently not.
Apparently they got rid of the old descending cage roof full of weapons, which is why Sting had to bring them himself… which creates a problem of kayfabe logic because if Sting hadn’t decided to bring weapons with him there would be no weapons for Lethal Lockdown, and if the last guy into the match gets to bring the weapons, it is, as Taz pointed out, extremely unfair (yeah, the other side gets the man advantage in the beginning, but weapons are a much bigger advantage, especially because you can’t win the match until everyone is already in the cage.
As a whole, this match felt very small, which Lethal Lockdown never should. There was nothing riding on it at all, and it all felt extremely formulaic. Heels have the advantage, babyfaces use the weapons to get the advantage and beat down the heels, heels get the advantage back and beat down the babyfaces, then babyfaces get the advantage back and win. There were almost no false finishes, the advantage changed at exactly the same time in all of the different mini-brawls going on… it just didn’t feel like Lethal Lockdown should. Taz was also extremely annoying during this match. It is possible to be a biased heel commentator without being obnoxious, but Taz makes me want to mute the TV.
STEEL CAGE MATCH FOR THE TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Jeff Hardy(c) vs. Bully Ray- 4/10
A en match ending in an absolutely abysmal failure of logic. Early in the match, two Aces & Eights guys came into the cage and Bully and Jeff worked together to beat them up. Then, later in the match, a whole bunch of Aces & Eights guys show up and climb the cage and Bully and Jeff get ready to take them on (Bully even gives Jeff a chain to arm himself with)… and only then does Bully turn on Jeff.
First of all, what the hell was the point of sending guys down there the first time? All it could possibly do was tip the babyfaces off that Aces & Eights were planning something, so if the babyfaces weren’t morons, they could have sent guys down to guard the ring to prevent Aces & Eights from screwing up the all-important main event of TNA’s second biggest Pay-Per-View of the year. Additionally, if you are going to send them out, why not have them give Bully a weapon and have him turn right then. Surely a three to one advantage, plus the use of a weapon, is enough for Aces & Eights to beat Jeff down enough that he can be pinned?
Then, when they send the whole group out, Bully gives Jeff a weapon. WHY? What if, rather than being cautious, Jeff Hardy had decided to take a risk (seems like a Jeff Hardy thing to do, right?) and used this nice weapon with some reach that Bully had given him and started swinging it around and taken out a bunch of Aces & Eights guys before Devon had the chance to get Bully the hammer? Hell… it would probably have bought some time for the babyfaces to come down and maybe make the save.
Speaking of which… WHERE THE HELL WERE THE BABYFACES! You know… the guys who just got done kicking these same Aces & Eights members’ asses less than twenty minutes ago? Where the hell were they when Aces & Eights started to show up and climb the cage?
Anyway, Bully turns heel and hits Jeff with the hammer, knocking him out and winning the TNA World Heavyweight Title in a swerve that just about everyone saw coming because TNA has been telegraphing that something is up with Bully for MONTHS! Bully says that he never loved Brooke and that he fooled everyone and that he is the president of the Aces & Eights, etc. etc. I think that not having Brooke turn was a major mistake here. Will she stink as a heel? Only if they let her talk. Everyone saw the Bully turn coming, but a Brooke turn would have been something surprising, something that made sense with everything else that had gone on in this angle, and, quite frankly, something ballsy. When it comes to angles like this (which TNA loves), they rarely ever try anything outside of the box, and I think a Brooke turn would have done that. Also, I am a HUGE McMahon-Helmsley Regime mark, so there's that, too (not saying that Bully is as good as Hunter and certainly not even suggesting that Brooke will ever be anywhere near as good as Steph, but I think it could work).
The PPV went off the air with Aces & Eights standing triumphant in the cage and the fans throwing trash into the ring, which is probably the reaction that TNA wanted, so I can’t deny that this worked, but I think that throwing the main event of Lockdown away for this was a mistake. TNA is only doing four Pay-Per-Views a year now, so if they want fans to buy them, they need to build up to them well (and most of the build for Lockdown was not good) and even more importantly, they need to deliver in the ring. This show did not. The opener and the tag title match were the only matches on this show that were anything above just â€"good.†That really isn’t worth forty dollars (especially when ROH, DGUSA, and others will give you a lot better for just fifteen). If you want people to buy your Pay-Per-Views, you need to prove to them that your main events can deliver in the ring. This one didn’t even come close. This was the first Pay-Per-View under the new system and it needed to deliver. Instead it was plagued with the same problems that TNA Pay-Per-Views had under the old system: poor match quality, poor hype, and major matches that don’t deliver.
According to Tenay this was the largest crowd in TNA history, but the fact that he didn’t announce a number makes me suspicious. PWTorch has reported it as just under 10,000, which would almost double TNA’s previous record, so congrats to them for that. I suspect that the reason they didn’t just announce it is because they drew just 10,000 people in an arena that can seat over 60,000, but it is still a big milestone for a non-WWE company, and TNA should be proud of that.
Overall, an okay show from TNA. The awesome tag title match balanced out some of the rest of the crap on the undercard, but, in my opinion, this was not a good sign of things to come for TNA Pay-Per-Views. While I have criticized TNA in the past for killing their own gimmick matches (and they have) I felt that they usually did a good job with making all of the different matches at Lockdown feel different, even though they were all inside a cage, so I am disappointed to see the "all cage matches" concept gone.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Tenay says that this is Bully’s first shot at the TNA World Heavyweight Title. You’d think that â€"the Professor†would have done some research before the show, but apparently not. I’m sure that most people who have been following TNA remember Bully being involved in a four way at Against All Odds last year for TNA World Heavyweight Title, and that there are others who are unfortunate enough to remember the four-way from Against All Odds 2009 where he took on Angle, Devon, and Sting for the belt.