PWTorch is customized for your mobile phone such as your Blackberry. Just enter www.pwtorch.com on your phone's browser and choose the "Mobile" option. Samsung Omnia II users, download our free Widget. Apple iPhone users, download our free PWTorch App (search "pwtorch")
HITS & MISSES - TNA IMPACT 11/26: Tournament format, Wrestling Show featuring wrestling, No Turkey Suits!, Knockouts Battle Royal
Nov 28, 2009 - 4:30:55 PM
Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families, it's time for your weekly dose of Impact Hits & Misses. Last week's episode showed us that Mick Foley is obsessed with Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash promised that Hogan wasn't coming alone, and Hulk Hogan was either mentioned or on TV about every five minutes. Oh yeah, there was some wrestling thrown in too. Here's the Thanksgiving weekend review of this week's Impact.
IMPACT HITS
First Round Matches of TNA Challenge Series: It's nice to have a tournament every once in a while on TV to stir up some interest in new match-ups. Although I didn't like the concept of the wrestlers competing for a title shot in their respective divisions (I mean, who wouldn't want a World Title shot no matter what division you normally compete in), but all four of the first matches were just flat-out strong TV matches. The Bobby Lashley vs. Abyss match continued the injury of Abyss' neck from last week and actually made Lashley look - gasp - decent in the ring. Desmond Wolfe pretty much dominated Suicide, as he should have. The Kurt Angle vs. D'Angelo Dinero match made Angle look good and didn't completely bury Dinero in the meantime, especially with the handshake at the end. Robert Roode vs. Homicide was a good TV match and that was about it. All in all though, they made for some fun TV to watch.
A Wrestling Show That Featured Wrestling: It's been a constant complaint of mine that TNA Impact has had way too many backstage, in-ring, or other segments that didn't show enough of the actual wrestling. This week, mostly due to the tournament, we had seven singles matches and one battle royal in two hours. And at the same time, TNA managed to get a few interviews and other segments in and still have a good wrestling show. Someone in TNA needs to pay attention to this week's format, because whatever it was, it worked.
NO TURKEY SUIT!!!: The past few years of Thanksgiving specials have seen some special match that always resulted in someone being forced to wear a turkey suit and be declared the "turkey of the year." I, for one, am very glad to see this go away. Now can someone please pass that same memo to WWE with the Gobbledy-Gooker?
IMPACT MISSES
Second Round Matches of TNA Challenge Series: As much fun as the first batch of matches were, the second round matches were boring and bland. The Lashley-Wolfe match had an extremely lame DQ finish with Wolfe not breaking the hold. A true heel would have continued the beat-down a lot longer than Wolfe did, and at the same time made Lashley's victory in the tourney later that night seem more important. And once Wolfe was out of the tournament, everyone in the building could have seen Wolfe's interference in the Angle-Roode match. But in the end we wound up with two matches that made for a good excuse of the fast-forward button on the DVR.
Knockouts Battle Royal: Let's history check here, Tara has just recently come off the biggest win of her career by defeating Awesome Kong in the Six Sides Of Steel. Have we mentioned that on TV ANYTIME recently? Didn't think so. At the same time, practically no one else in the Knockouts division has been established as a credible threat to ODB's title reign, so Tara's win was pretty much expected. And ODB as ringside ref only established a minor bit of tension between the champion and the new number one contender.
A.J Styles and Daniels Continues To Fall Flat: We know these two can go in the ring, that's been established. And yes, last week Daniels scored a pinfall victory in tag team action over Styles. But just a few weeks ago, Styles pinned Daniels clean in the middle of the ring. Daniels still hasn't been established as a credible threat to A.J.'s World Title belt, and the tension between them seems just artificial. Even their in-ring interview didn't do much to make their one-on-one PPV match seem special. Send feedback on this article to pwtorch@gmail.com and we'll regularly publish reader feedback in the "Torch Feedback" category on the Main Listing.
