By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

IMPACT HITS

The Beautiful People: This is the most I've enjoyed the Beautiful People in quite awhile. Angelina Love and Velvet Sky both delivered on the mic. They had some good lines about Lauren in HD, and I loved the line about ODB OD'ing on stupid pills. Luckily Cutie Kip was kept in the background and the real stars of the group were allowed to shine. Their match with Christe Hemme and ODB was pretty good as well. Lets have more of this Beautiful People, and less of the one we've seen lately.

Machine Guns vs. Foreign Guys: TNA needs to stop just randomly having foreign wrestlers show up for no apparent reason. Tanahashi might be a big star in Japan and Volador might be a big star in Mexico, but the vast vast vast majority of American wrestling fans don't know who they are. Why were they in this match? Why were they teaming together? Will they ever be seen again in TNA? This is a lot of negative stuff for a Hit, so I will say that while the match was too short (more negativity), it was fun to watch. Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin were at least allowed to win a match which was good considering that TNA is suddenly acting like they are a big deal. The match had a lot of high energy and some really nice spots. It had good fast paced action. I wish it had been given twice as long as it was, but it was good while it lasted.

New Impact Zone: The new look for the Impact Zone was pretty good. It needed a face lift and doing it now that they are in HD makes sense. It is always smart to freshen up the look of the set every once in awhile, especially when you broadcast from the same arena just about every week. I am particularly glad that they got rid of the two opposing entrance ramps. That was just silly. But, they kept separate entrance tunnels leading to the one ramp which is good to help the fans keep track of who is a babyface and who is a heel.

IMPACT MISSES

Opening Segment: The start of Impact was actually going good for awhile. AJ Styles gave a good promo about what happened last week, challenging the TNA roster to have the balls to join with him and Samoa Joe to stand against the Main Event Mafia. However, the segment quickly went down hill from there. It turned cheesy as a group of jobbers came out to join with the TNA Originals. Jay Lethal got beat by Sheik Abdual Bashir in less than two minutes last week, and I'm supposed to get excited about seeing him? Petey Williams has hardly been on lately. Eric Young has always been a joke. This was not good. The bit with the Motor City Machineguns didn't make a lot of sense. Last week they were treated like babyfaces, now they were acting like heels. I was confused. Things didn't get better when the MEM came out. Is Kevin Nash still talking about Scott Hall from 10 months ago? Give it a rest already. Then we got the big tease about a possible fifth member of the group. None of it made me want to watch the rest of the show. It wasn't all bad, and it started off well, but it turned into a Miss in the end.

Roxxi and Taylor: I just don't like this cursing Roxxi. I wasn't thrilled with seeing Taylor Wilde wielding a pipe. They were acting like total heels the way they attacked Awesome Kong and Raisha Saeed from behind in their locker room. Kong's victory over Wilde was pretty clean. I know that they have been feuding for awhile, but taking matters to this extreme seemed, well extreme. This is not how a former babyface champion should be acting.

Rushing Storylines: Impact featured two storylines that could have played out over a few weeks if not more this week. One was played out in its entirety. The other had several steps (if not all of the steps) played out this week. The first storyline was the addition of Scott Steiner as the newest member of the MEM. Early in the show, they hinted at having a fifth member. There was a little speculation from the announcers about who that member could be, then at the end it turned out to be Steiner. An entire month long angle crammed into one Impact. The other was the relationship of the Motor City Machineguns to the TNA Originals. Early in the show, Shelley and Sabin refused to join with Styles and Joe. Later, they apologized to Joe and said they were in, but Joe was skeptical. Then, they came to the aid of Eric Young after his match with James Storm to prove themselves. They then celebrated with Joe and Styles after their tag team victory over Nash and Booker T. Then they came to their aid at the end and took the beating from MEM. The only possible step that was left out of week 1 of their storyline was them turning heel on the Originals. I assume that will be week 2.

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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