TNA Turning Point 2006

TNA Turning Point 2006 (12/10/2006)- Orlando, FL

PRE-SHOW:
BOBBY ROODE & MS. BROOKS PROMO- Traci’s �"assets” line would have been a lot better if Roode hadn’t already used it. Traci says she will do �"anything and everything” to win, including strip naked. As much as I would enjoy seeing Traci Brooks naked, would doing so violate the rules of a bikini contest, and thus cause her to lose by DQ or something?

HANDICAP MATCH: Ron �"The Truth” Killings & Lance Hoyt vs. Seratonin- 4/10
So at this point Seratonin’s gimmick appears to be three guys who dress in a wacky, alternative manner, and are so bad that they can’t event win handicap matches, and then Raven will often come and beat them up even more afterwards. If only the guy who takes the pin is going to get beaten, why not just have it be a regular match so that they can save face just a little bit.

BACKSTAGE SEGMENT WITH JERRY LYNN & CHRIS SABIN- Sabin calls Lynn old and questions his ability to referee tonight’s match competently. Lynn responds by saying that he was having X-Division-style matches while Sabin was still in diapers, which is scarily close to true.

SAMOA JOE PROMO- good

NAMELESS BLONDE INTERVIEW IN THE PARKING LOT- A car which she identifies as Kurt Angle’s has just pulled up, but she tells us no one has gotten out yet. She walks over to it and opens the door, and we don’t see who is inside, but one of them hands her a sledgehammer and, in a very Triple H-ish voice, tells her to hold it. Didn’t these idiots learn from how poorly Cookie-Gate was received by wrestling fans? No one wants to see you take stupid shots at WWE, especially if you are wasting PPV time to do so!

MAIN SHOW:
PAPARAZZI CHALLENGE SERIES ELIMINATION MATCH: Austin Starr vs. Alex Shelley vs. Senshi vs. Jay Lethal vs. Sonjay Dutt- 6.25/10
Mike Tenay: �"Now this PCS, this doesn’t have anything to do with the BCS, does it?”
You know, Mike, the joke becomes less funny when you explain it, and this one needed all the help it could get, so you’re not doing it any favors here.


ERIC YOUNG PROMO- JB implies that EY should combat Traci’s promise to strip nude by showing everyone his testicles.

BIKINI CONTEST: Eric Young vs. Ms. Brooks (w/Robert Roode)- DUD!
Traci is actually wearing lingerie, so that is a DQ in my book. I only bring this up (aside from the comedic purposes) is because EY was actually DQed for not wearing a bikini… then he took of his boxers and revealed himself to be wearing panties, and was somehow un-DQed, despite these, too, not being a bikini. Roode tries to attack EY afterwards and fails.
Roode then grabs a mic and yells at Traci for losing because her loss �"doesn’t put money in my pocket.” Isn’t she the manager and he the wrestler? How does her win give him any money? Roode then orders Traci to do whatever it takes to get EY to sign a contract with Robert Roode Inc. so that the fans will cheer for him like they do for EY.

Tenay then sends us backstage to Leticia (apparently the blonde does have a name), who is waiting outside the locker room of some group called �"dumb to the Xtreme.” Leticia tells us that it is the locker room of �"Paul Levesque and Michael Hickenbottom.” Then a fat male stripper (who looked disturbingly like an Asian Scott D’Amore) shows up and chases her off before asking the cameraman where catering is. What the hell did TNA hope to accomplish with this?

TNA X-DIVISION TITLE MATCH WITH JERRY LYNN AS SPECIAL GUEST REFEREE: Christopher Daniels(c) vs. Chris Sabin- 7/10

THE AFTERMATH- Lynn demands that Sabin shake Daniels hand after the match, but Daniels, the babyface veteran, starts to yell at Jerry and says that he doesn’t need Sabin to show him respect because he is the champion. Where the hell did that come from? Lynn then slaps Daniels.

BASEBRAWL SEGMENT- Cornette brings out first AJ Pierzynski & Dale Torborg of the White Sox (Torborg was the KISS Demon in WCW), and then David Eckstein of the St. Louis Cardinals (and his brother). Pierzynski looks like a dork, holding a replica X-Division Title. Eckstein plugs his book and says that his favorite wrestlers are Ron Killings and Lance Hoyt. The guys from the White Sox start ripping pages out of Eckstein’s book and Pierzynski says that this is his ring because last year at Turning Point the White Sox apparently won this replica X-Division Title (in reality, nothing of the sort happened. Torborg teamed up with Sabin and Sonjay to beat the Diamonds in the Rough, and Pierzynski was at ringside). Pierzynski cuts a heel promo and Torborg takes a cheap shot at Eckstein’s brother. They go to beat up Eckstein, but Lance Hoyt makes the save.

RHINO PROMO- eh. AJ jumps him during the promo, leading into…

AJ STYLES vs. RHINO- 6/10
They brawl all over the place, then brawl in the ring before AJ fakes a leg injury (which got everyone to bite, so good job by AJ), then sneaks back in the ring and rolls Rhino up from behind for the win. Major props to AJ here both for his selling (or more appropriately, his fake selling), and for some of the crazy bumps he took.

MORE IDIOCY BACKSTAGE- A horrifically bad Vince McMahon impersonator is walking around carrying a bird in a cage. He asks Leticia where his son-in-law, �"the big fat oily guy” is. Leticia asks him why he is holding a bird in a cage, and he tells her that it is a c**k, because he likes c**k. �"Didn’t you see that sketch on TV?” he asks. Leticia says that she didn’t, so he fires her. Leticia shakes her head and says �"only in TNA,” which is kind of fitting. Only in TNA could they possibly waste this much time trying to pretend that they are in WWE’s league when they are so obviously not. Also only in TNA can someone who doesn’t run the company fire people (which has happened in TNA. In fact, Bobby Roode has been threatening for fire EY for over a month now, despite having no authority at all).
We go back to the announcers and we see Mike and Don glance at each other and smirk, and Tenay says �"what can you say about Turning Point? Controversial and unpredictable.”
I guess you could say that, although I think people would be much more likely to say �"full of stupid, pointless filler.”
AJ & Rhino then came brawling out from backstage and were separated by security.

KONNAN PROMO- He called Gail Kim Lucy Liu. That was funny.

FLAG MATCH: America’s Most Wanted (w/Gail Kim) vs. LAX (w/Konnan)- 7/10
So the rules her were a combination of capture the flag at King of the Mountain. You first had to capture the flag, then you had to climb a ladder and hang it up. And because Vince Russo is booking this, the flags are, of course, on poles, so it is both a pointless ladder match AND an object on a pole match.
Lots of dives and great spots here, but one facet of the rules that they didn’t explain was that you’re flag had to be hung up across the entire hanging apparatus. Because of this, when Homicide and Harris went to hang their flags up and the exact same time, everyone was confused as to why 1) there was no draw, and 2) why they didn’t try to stop each other.
Gail got a chance to shine here, and Petey got to run in to help the babyfaces. The finish was the aforementioned double hanging spot, which ended when Storm climbed up behind Homicide and hit him in the back of the heat with a beer bottle, but some of the glass got in Harris’ eye, so he fell down and sold it, too, allowing Hernandez to hang the Mexican flag. Petey and Gail yell at Storm blaming him for the fact that some glass accidentally ricocheted into Harris’ eyes, and they blocked Storm’s attempts to apologize, which made them seem like the heels. Apparently someone realized this very quickly, because James Storm soon cut a promo saying that Harris had �"quit, like he always does,” and demands that Harris apologize to him and every other American by Impact on Thursday. So they just broke AMW up out of nowhere in about four minutes. FAIL!

VKM IN-RING STUPIDITY- Tenay says that on Impact, VKM had promised a Dumb to the Xtreme �"skit” at Turning Point… which means that they thought this idiocy would actually SELL PPV BUYS!
VKM shows up as a poor D-X imitation. They then bring out a four-member Spirit Squad, dressed in maroon, to which Tenay remarks �"don’t they usually wear green cheerleading outfits?” So he is willing to explain the obvious fact that this is a parody of the Spirit Squad, but never once in the past few months has bothered to try to clue anyone in on who these �"Paul Levesque” and �"Michael Hickenbottom” characters are… because I guess in Tenay’s mind every single fan is on the internet and knows everyone’s shoot names, but none of them can recognize that these male cheerleaders are supposed to be a parody of the Spirit Squad.
The Spirit Squad hit the ring and take bumps when VKM direct crotch chops at them. Then bring out the �"fat oily guy” male stripper (you know, to play off of that one time when Big Dick Johnson appeared on Raw in a DX segment a few months before this).
BG James then grabs a mic and says �"sometimes in our business, people have trouble differentiating between parody and reality TV. Let us draw the line tonight. What you just saw was parody, and what’s next is reality TV.”
Thanks, BG. The fact that you are worried whether or not we, the viewers, are smart enough to figure that out for ourselves kind of offends me.
They then take off their skin-masks and wigs and BG says �"you see, I ain’t Paul Levesque. Surprise, surprise. And he damn sure ain’t Michael Hickenbottom.” And I thought: �"you’re right. Those guys are much more talented than you are!"
He continues saying that these parodies were just �"good humor.” No, BG. There was nothing "good" about this supposed humor.
He then claims that someone in the WWE hierarchy he likes to refer to as �"the offensive coordinator” (and I have no idea who this is referring to) told them that Vince didn’t care what they were doing, but recently Vince had a change of heart and wanted them to stop doing what they were doing. He then says �"that’s the same damn thing we wanted.” Now I’m really confused. If VKM wanted to stop what they were doing, why not just… you know… stop?
He brings up D-X’s invasion of CNN Center and the WCW house show and that time they wrote WCW sucks in skywriting (which BG claims was all CGI), and tells Vince that if wants to �"sue us for parody, then this is the one to do it for.” He then offers Vince one million dollars to them have a shoot fight with Shawn and Hunter.
Umm… I’m confused about what part of this Vince could sue them for. He doesn’t own the rights to the term �"million dollar challenge” and the person they are actually ripping off here is Bischoff, not Vince.
He then assures everyone that �"this ain’t a damn wrestling match. No angles. No spots. No finish!” Right. Because wrestling is all fake a predetermined, so why should I give a damn who wins the fake world title match for some prop belt that is up next? Or why should I care whether Samoa Joe or Kurt Angle win their big rematch tonight, because the finish is predetermined and it is the rematch of another match that had a predetermined finish? Way to sh*t on the rest of the card, there, BG!
He closes it off by declaring �"Vince McMahon, you accept our challenge, or you prove to the world that you are a gutless piece of sh*t!” Now I’m even more confused. I thought that challenge was to fight Shawn and Hunter. How does Vince forcing Shawn and Hunter to fight for him prove that Vince isn’t a coward? Or is the challenge for Vince? And if it is, how is Vince, who is 61, a coward for not accepting a 2-on-1 fight against two men who are 43 and 37?
As they walk off, Don West apologizes for BG cursing, but he should have apologized for this whole atrocious segment. This actually went just a bit short of ten minutes, but it felt like at least twenty. There was exactly one funny moment during this whole thing, which was when he made an Iran Contra joke (claiming that was wear Vince got the military equipment from). It was long, boring, and horribly counter-productive. Who does this help? It’s not going to make them any money, it probably won’t attract any new fans, and, like CookieGate, it is liable to actually turn fans off. They spent all of the TV time they wasted on this and all of the PPV time in order to get themselves ABSOLUTELY NOTHING (along with screaming �"wrestling is fake!” right before two huge matches).

CHRISTIAN PROMO- okay.

NWA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Abyss(c) (w/James Mitchell) vs. Sting vs. Christian Cage (w/Tomko)- 6.75/10

KURT ANGLE PROMO- good

KURT ANGLE vs. SAMOA JOE- 8.25/10
An awesome match ruined by an idiotically overbooked finished. After an outstanding exchange of submissions and near-taps, we get a horribly contrived-looking ref bump. Joe locks in the Coquina Clutch and Kurt taps out. The ref is out, so he doesn’t see it, and when Joe lets Kurt go to go check on the ref, Kurt hits Joe with a low blow, then goes to get a chair. Kurt tries to hit Joe with the chair, but Joe ducks and Kurt does the spot where the chair bounces off the ropes and hits him in the face. Joe locks in the Coquina Clutch again and Kurt taps.
1) Why the hell are they turning Kurt heel. He hasn’t even been with the company for three months, and his only feud has been with the tweener Joe. WHAT THE F*CK?!
2) If, for some reason, you absolutely had to turn Kurt heel here and you want to build to a third match, just have Joe win clean and have Kurt snub him on the handshake or kick him in the balls during the handshake or something like that. Having Kurt cheat here not only leaves us with an annoying, unwanted dirty finish, but having go over this way just makes Kurt look like he is bad at cheating, which is not what you want when you are turning someone heel!

Overall, a good show from TNA with some completely idiotic filler. Fast forward through the VKM crap, the baseball segment, and the bikini contest and you’ll enjoy the show a lot more.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. As Sting is walking out of the entrance tunnel, Tenay says �"you see the appearance of challenger number two.” Yeah, I know that, Mike, because, as you just noted, I CAN SEE IT!