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By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

IMPACT HITS

Strap Match: The problem with this match was that it sometimes felt too scripted, and of course there was a referee bump and rampant interference. However, I still enjoyed most of the match. The Motor City Machine Guns are always fun to watch in the ring. They did some very innovative moves, both one on one and double team, with the straps. The match went 8 minutes, which was a good length for this type of gimmick match. Any more and the strap action would likely ware thin. It was good to see Beer Money Inc. pick up the win and continue their whipping rampage through TNA. But, the Guns looked very strong. Could we be heading for a Guns vs. Beer vs. LAX triple threat at the next PPV? Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

Tables Match Effort: Kurt Angle, Brother Ray, Brother Devon, Christian Cage, Rhino and AJ Styles worked hard to put on an entertaining tables elimination match. The match went 15 minutes and while it was interrupted by a commercial break, we still got to see a good amount of action. The action was crazy and haphazard, but it was good. There were some nice spots and some nice table teases, like when Rhino moved the table out of the way to save Styles from crashing through it. It wasn’t a great match, but it was a good brawl with some nice table action. The wrestlers worked hard, but unfortunately, the TNA booking got in the way of the enjoyment of the match (more later).

IMPACT MISSES

Booker and Joe: Last week, I enjoyed the interplay between Booker T and Samoa Joe. But, it didn’t work for me this week. Wasn’t there a challenge and an acceptance last week? Now they do it again, adding stipulations. Booker vs. Joe I didn’t end up being a real match. Now, Booker vs. Joe II won’t either as it is some kind of steel cage match with weapons. The beginning of the show, with the challenge and counter challenge was too convoluted. Booker got the best of Joe verbally during the segment, which isn’t good considering he is the heel. In their final encounter, Joe got some verbal revenge so it could have been worse. Once again, TNA is watering down this feud by having Sting involved. The ridiculous questions surrounding Sting hurt the product, when the fans are thinking that there are obvious answers to those questions. TNA did a good job of starting the hype for this PPV Main Event, but week two went downhill.

Prince Justice Brotherhood: I am not looking forward to the upcoming weeks of writing this column, as I fear each week I will have the urge to include this Super Zero team as a Miss. Super Eric is a standard bland super hero. Curry Man speaks English with a Japanese accent. Shark Boy is a lame imitation of Steve Austin. I believe that is the entire extent of their character development. I will admit that their cheesy catch phrase is slightly amusing, but when these guys are on screen, I feel like turning off the t.v. That is not good for TNA.

Knockout Title Matches: Sneaking up behind your opponent to score a surprise win is a heel move, especially when the victor is the Champion and the challenger seldom wins any matches. Velvet Sky had a reasonable complaint, but the announcers treated her like the heel. I know she is the heel, but TNA doesn’t always (really seldom) know how to write their heels to act like heels and their babyfaces to act like babyfaces. That was strike 1. Strike 2 was when Taylor Wilde won match #2 with the ugliest looking inside cradle in wrestling history. The ultimate actual match was solid, but ended with a disqualification. Angelina Love doesn’t think too highly of her partner, because Sky might have kicked out and still won the match. That was strike 3. Actually, there were other strikes before that, like when the ring announcer announced the first match as a record 5 seconds. Even worse was when he announced that the second pin fall was a record back to back pin falls in 25 seconds. Does he have this stuff on paper in front of him, just in case a record happens, so he will know the old record has been broken? That came off as way too scripted. ODB is getting tired. I winced when Mike Tenay pointed out that she was eating a turkey leg and Don West said, “why wouldn’t she?” That was all just bad.

Sheik Abdulah Bashir: You have got to be kidding me. Daivari has some name recognition and could be doing something other than just an angry Arab character. This is the same character that his old buddy Muhammad Hassan played in WWE. It didn’t work then, and I don’t see why it would work now. It is just so simple minded thinking on TNA’ s part. I expect this from WWE, but would hope TNA would try to do something different.

So Cal Val: Ok. She is officially the stupidest person in the world. Just watch the replay of what happened last week! Shouldn’t someone tell her what happened? This is just stupid and TNA is asking me to turn off my brain for this angle, but I refuse.

Tables Match Booking: As mentioned above, the tables elimination match had good action, but the booking was terrible. Why does there have to be this much interference and referee incompetence? We saw it in the strap match, then again in the Main Event. After being eliminated, Devon returned to the ring to help eliminate Christian. This was behind the referee’s back, but would it have mattered? Devon was being sneaky in order to not get caught, but later in the match Johnny Devine interfered right in front of the referee and nothing happened. So there were some inconsistencies in how the interference happened. When Christian went through the table, the ring announcer announced he had been eliminated right away, before the referee had turned around to make the elimination official. Then when Styles went through the table, the referee who had been knocked out (what a surprise) had to come to in order to make the call. In one case the ring announcer made the call, in the next case it was the referee. Again, there were consistency issues. Of course, no Kurt Angle match can end without a Frank Trigg appearance. There was interference three different times, by three different wrestlers, plus a knocked out referee. There is always too much of that type of crap going on in big TNA matches.

Hyping Next Week: One of the strengths of last week’s Impact is that it did a great job of hyping this week’s Impact, with multiple matches and other segments announced ahead of time. Instead of building on that and doing the same for next week, they hardly mentioned next week at all. No matches were announced. The only announced segment was part 2 of Karen’s Angle with special guest Kaz, which isn’t going to get anyone interested in tuning in (Karen’s Angle was bad by the way, just more of what we’ve seen from Tenay many times in the past, but at least she has a job). There is some vague notion that we will get some answers from Sting at some point, but as I said above, I’m not sure any fan is actually looking for those answers. Normally I wouldn’t make a big deal about not hyping next week, but after TNA did such a good job last week, I was disappointed with their effort this week.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and TNA Impact each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

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