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Thursday Night TV Reax - SS/Impact: "X Division, we hardly knew ya after Abyss beat up the only two representatives who showed up" Jul 4, 2009 - 12:02:22 PM
Terrie Neilson of Las Vegas, Nev. (8.0): Best: Morrison vs. Haas. Worst: Raw replay. This was simply a fun show. Santino is beginning to make a transition to serious wrestler, but so far it's not so sudden that the crowd won't believe it. Morrison and Haas had a very decent match, but it was too short to mean much even if Haas isn't getting a noticeable push. I'm a little surprised that Zack Ryder got the win over Tyler Reks. Zack's already lost before and is still early enough in the gimmick that a loss against a newbie won't hurt as much. Would have made for a better early feud if Zack took it for the team. Meanwhile, Tyler wasn't too bad; he was better than Sheamus on his first night. Striker plugged Corey Hart (borrowed for Ryder's entrance) and Jim Johnston (WWE's resident composer) into his references, but missed adding in Dick Dale (Reks's entrance). Christian got a nice video package, but I could do without the Raw replay this time since none of the parties involved was on Superstars. Punk vs. Edge was fine as a match, but I swear if I keep scratching my head over what's going on with Punk character wise, I'm going to scratch myself a bald spot! Is this how a tweener should look?
-- 7/2 TNA Impact Reax
Terrie Neilson of Las Vegas, Nev. (3.0): Best: Deaner vs. Red (minus commentary). Worst: the return of NWO; the return of Kurt's hair. You know it's a bad night when the best thing on a show (for me at least) is the ONE major segment not touched in any way by someone in WWE, WCW, or original ECW (excluding the commentators). TNA might as well just pack up and move to Beverly a/k/a Monday night, and start the Monday Night Wars all over again. The Deaner-Red match was fun, but entirely too short when put in context of the rest of the show. I also could have really done without the sexist remarks pointed toward ODB. X Division, we hardly knew ya after Abyss beat up the only two representatives who showed up. Where is Suicide, the X Division champ? I would have accepted even a little blurb from Tenay and West suggesting that he is defending it somewhere globally. At least there would be some amount of making the title even remotely important in absentia. I'm still interested in Sarita (the only other non-tainted segment), but getting the sinking feeling that the focus on Victoria-Tara will upstage the debut. The Rhino-Neal storyline has turned from what could have been a feel good story to a mess no one cares about. And it's taking Eric Young with it. Eric's just a heel now, so now what? The whole Lauren kidnapping angle is just over-the-top bad. What makes it worse is that the interview segments look like they were taped out of sequence. There was no sense all show long that Lauren felt watched or in any sort of danger. Unless the Taz reveal incorporates a subversion reveal, they blew Joe's heel turn. 3D is moving on to British Invasion; I can dig that. If TNA's tag division brags so much depth, where is everybody? I have a really bad feeling about the Beer Money-Booker/Steiner tag title match. Steiner really needs to go; I could see a noticeable edit where it looked like he had trouble standing up. Could that be the boos I was hearing then? One thing Don West said to Jethro Holliday (the former Trevor Murdoch) feels so true about TNA in its current direction. Trevor, he's right, and maybe more than just you should get out of Dodge.
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