By Curtis Shanks, Torch specialist

Welcome to the TNA Impact edition of Under the Microscope. We're here to review all those little observations and tidbits you may have missed. This is not a detailed recap of the show, but a review for those of you that saw the show but didn't actually "watch" it.

After last week, we know that Amazing Red's still got it, Daniels has an unmistakable ass, and the British are coming. But what else is there to notice? Let's see what we can spot. Cue the opening pyro.

First there was Christopher Daniels, then Curry Man, then Suicide, and then Christopher Daniels again. But Christopher "chameleon" Daniels has undergone another ring-name transformation. The name has now been changed to simply "Daniels." The announcers, graphics, and Daniels himself have shortened the moniker to nothing more than a last name. Daniel's real name is Daniel Covell, so this may be a way for TNA to trademark the name and own the rights, as you can not trademark a person's real name.

The theme of this month's Sacrifice PPV is fitting - wrestlers making a sacrifice. To gain entry into the World Title main event, a wrestler must first pledge to make a sacrifice if they are on the losing end. Kurt Angle has put his Godfather role in the Mafia on the line, and we have two more wrestlers still to be named for the match. If sacrifices are the name of the game, may I make a few suggestions TNA? We could make it a five-man match and add Brother Ray (never allowed to reference ECW again), Jay Lethal (drop the Macho Man gimmick already!), and Cody Deaner (just drop your whole character).

Jethro Holliday is back, as he and Eric Young prepared for a second round match in Team 3D's tag tournament. Holliday is of course former WWE wrestler Trevor Murdoch, but can not use that name in TNA as it has been trademarked by WWE. The surprising fact is that TNA has yet to acknowledge Murdoch's WWE past. Whenever a talent comes in who has changed their name due to copyright issues, TNA still manages to throw in a quick reference or two about their past character. The announcers will usually mention something along the lines of "Jethro Holliday, who was formerly known as Trevor Murdoch..." as this is not a violation of a trademark. But there has been zero mention so far by TNA, as they have treated him like a rookie who is just joining the company from Nowhere, USA.

Holliday was back for week number two of his TNA stay and seemed to feel a bit more secure with his position after just one week. During Holliday's match two weeks ago, he donned the exact same wrestling trunks worn during his WWE days. A piece of tape was put across the "Murdoch" on the back, as that name is owned by WWE. Not sure if it was a case of Holliday only owning one pair of trunks, or TNA taking a small jab at WWE, but it was funny. This week, his opponents shouldn't have forgotten who they were facing, as Jethro had a brand new pair of tights with "Holliday" stitched across the back.

A main focus at this year's Sacrifice PPV and the weeks leading up to it have to be the tag title tournament for a shot at Team 3D's gold. A case of deja vu is setting in, as the story is similar to what we saw in the tag division last year when Sacrifice rolled around. Last year's PPV featured another tournament - the Deuces Wild tourney to fill the vacancy created after Kaz and Super Eric were stripped of the titles. At least this year's tournament will be played out on TV with perhaps just the finale shown on PPV. The entire tournament was featured on last year's card, giving us a throw-away PPV with nothing more than some standard seven-minute tag matches. All signs point to the tournament ending at Sacrifice, as the giant check 3D has written out for $100,000 is dated May 24, 2009 - the date of the PPV.

Stop the presses, we have a first on this week's Impact. Raisha Saeed and Awesome Kong were backstage for some promo time hyping the stretcher match later in the show. We got the usual with Saeed droning on and on about Kong's dominance, but then the unthinkable happened and Kong was given the mic. She only uttered one sentence, but this was the first time we had ever heard Kong speak on TNA TV. One sentence is hard to gauge promo skills, but those few words were all I needed to reinforce the fact that I would much rather hear Kong speaking on my TV than Saeed week after week.

Dr. Stevie is in, and Daffney is close by to help. Stevie announced that we will see Daffney in the first ever Knockout's Monster's Ball match at Sacrifice, prompting Abyss to state "that's my match." Abyss is right. There have been five Monster's Ball matches in TNA thus far, and Abyss has competed in all five. Abyss and Matt Morgan won last year, with Abyss winning in singles competition the year before. Abyss wasn't so lucky the first three times, as Monty Brown, Raven, and Samoa Joe were also been victorious in a MB match.

There have been plenty of changed characters and masked personalities in wrestling history, and Jay Lethal referenced one this week. Lethal mentioned former WWF wrestler Savio Vega, who also wrestled as the character Kwang. Kwang debuted in WWF in the mid-90s. The character was a masked ninja managed by Harvey Whippleman, but he never achieved much success. The character was dropped, but Vega was able to remain employed as he appeared as Savio Vega at the first In Your House PPV to rescue Razor Ramon. Vega has current ties to TNA, as he has been working as a backstage agent for the company for the past ten months.

I am getting tired of Jay Lethal's gimmick, but he did evoke some laughter from me for one reference this evening. Lethal was amusing by referring to Daniels as a "shapeshifter." My friend and I have been calling Daniels "the Chameleon," but Lethal's moniker is far more entertaining. I would have to turn in my "nerd card" if I didn't mention the tie-in to the sponsor of this week's show, Star Trek. The TV series Star Trek: Deep Space 9 had a character by the name of Odo, who along with being the chief of security was part of a race of beings called changelings, also known as shapeshifters.

There was a brilliant piece of commentating by Don West during the main event this week. West has been very adamant about the fact that he believes Daniels is the person behind the Suicide mask. He's been very heelish in agreeing with The Guns and Lethal Consequences, and is obsessed with Daniels revealing himself as the character. With Daniels in this week's main event, West says, "Suic..er, I mean Daniels...". The line was delivered so flawlessly that it almost seemed as if West truly made a mistake and got the two characters mixed up. The Microscope has never shied away from making fun of West's commentating, but since he's become a heel character the criticisms have been drastically lessened.

The bleep counter has been seldom-used the past few weeks, but we're still counting. This week's episode gave us three - two from The Guns during their promo against Daniels, and one from Steiner during the main event. TNA isn't necessarily swearing less, Spike TV is just letting more slip by. There were four instances of "ass" yet again not being edited from the broadcast.

Numbers crunched harder than an unprotected chair shot to the head: Remember when the Knockout division was really something special in TNA? Led by Awesome Kong and Gail Kim, the division had great storylines, wrestling, and characters. A lot of the cast is still the same today, but they seemed to have lost steam and some of that excitement factor. While the quality has dropped, the quantity remains high as TNA prominently features Knockout matches and segments routinely on their TV shows and PPVs. So what do the numbers say about women's matches in professional wrestling?

TNA has been around for almost seven years, but the KO division really started in October 2007 when the first champion was crowned. Since that time, TNA has presented 19 PPVs and a total of 34 matches on those PPVs involving the Knockouts (including mixed tag matches). By comparison, WWE's last 19 PPVs have only given us 14 divas match-ups. Of course, things were different before TNA added a KO division, as the 35 PPVs prior had only 8 matches with female talent.

The TNA females have been featured on every PPV since the division started, with many cards consisting of more than one KO match. Twelve times we've seen more than one KO match on a TNA PPV. We've seen this occurrence in WWE as well, although it is a lot less common. Only 19 of the 231 PPVs in WWE history have had more than one match with a female competitor, many of those when Chyna was competing against the males during the Attitude Era.

Curtis Shanks is a self-described wrestling nerd. Who else understands what Matt Striker is talking about all the time. Feedback is welcome, as comments, suggestions and questions can be sent to Curtis at curtisshanks.torch@gmail.com or in the comments section below.

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