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At Tuesday night’s Impact TV taping in Bethlehem, Pa., TNA taped matches for their “One Night Only” PPV airing on Friday and their Xplosion international show.
TNA Impact TV Taping Report
January 5, 2016
Bethlehem, Pa.
Report by Randy Boone of Kunkletown, Pa.
After the Impact taping, TNA taped a handful of extra matches…
One Night Only Results
(1) Eddie Edwards pinned Davey Richards after a good match. No rhyme or reason given for why the match-up took place.
(2) Tigre Uno pinned Rockstar Spud.
Xplosion Results
(1) Eli Drake beat Robbie E. with a crotch kick behind the ref’s back followed by the pinfall.
(2) Mahabali Shera pinned Jessie Godderz. This got the only “boring” chant of the night. Shera is not good in the ring.
(3) Jade pinned Madison Rayne after a plodding match.
This concluded the four-hour TV taping. The crowd was super hot for the first three hours (Impact) and then was really drained. It will be interesting to see what the enthusiasm level is like over the next four nights of tapings.
I’d say the crowd was about 500, and they were very hot for the Impact taping. (The show took place two hours before it aired on Pop.) Jeremy Borash ought to get an MVP award for trying to keep everyone up for all four hours.
No big, discernible changes were evident for TNA, and they didn’t play the new Billy Corgan theme at the arena, even though it was released online earlier in the week. Of note, no cable companies in the Bethlehem area carry Pop; it’s only available on Direct TV or Dish.
Impact TV taping notes
JB, Josh Matthews, The Pope, and Christy Hemme were out first to start the night. Christy seemed genuinely excited and was taking pics of others all night from ringside.
Dixie Carter was out next (first on TV) to thank everyone and welcome them to Pop TV. ECIII came out to interrupt Dixie, and he was interrupted by Matt Hardy, who was interrupted and attacked by Eric Young. Lashley was out next, and there was a shmoz, culminating in a chair shot to Hardy’s back via E.Y., which Hardy sold all night. The older Matt Hardy and Sean Waltman get, the more they look alike. Just an observation.
Lashley vs. ECIII was set up for the first championship semi-final. ECIII won by pinfall, partially due to Tyrus’s interference. Very clunky match live.
Kurt Angle came out next to a huge ovation. Angle is becoming like Hulk Hogan when it comes to milking cheers. He seems genuinely touched by it all, though. Angle called out Drew Galloway to be his opponent for One Night Only. They were interrupted by Jessie Godderz, who was interrupted by Eli Drake. After some back and forth, they set up Kurt & Drew versus Jessie & Eli for ONO.
E.Y. vs. Matt Hardy was up next in the second semi-final. E.Y. had some really sloppy kick-outs of the variety where his shoulders were actually down for about 3.5 seconds. E.Y. hit a piledriver on the floor, Jeff Hardy ran out, and Matt won with a clean pin.
Bobby Roode came out for the King of the Mountain challenge. His opponent was… Bram. Zero reaction. Bram comes out, his music stops, and he says, “Cut my music!” Funny. Roode wins, then E.Y. runs in to double-team Roode with Bram until… James Storm hits the ring and Beer Money re-unites!
Next up: The Dollhouse vs. The Beautiful People. This was super short and had the best wrestling of the night, in my opinion. It got one of only two “This is awesome” chants, which is ironic, because after Gail Kim got the pin, Awesome Kong ran in to beat down the BPs with The Dollhouse.
And “The Miracle” is… Mike Bennett, as introduced by Maria. Surprise, surprise. Bennett called out Matt Hardy.
Next up: the championship final. Jeff Hardy and Tyrus agreed to let their charges fight one-on-one, so they both headed to the back. After about ten minutes, ECIII won by clean pinfall in the middle of the ring. Decent match.
After Impact went off the air, ECIII thanked the fans for being so hot all night and told us to stick around for more matches, which led to the Xplosion and ONO taping.
Final Thoughts
There’s still an identity crisis in the company. “TNA” and “Impact Wrestling” seem to be used interchangeably by everybody.
The booking was strange for TNA in two regards. (1) Every match ended in a pinfall. No submissions, no DQs, no count-outs. On the bright side of that, no matches were even remotely over-booked. No real outside interference, save a bit from Tyrus, no big ref bumps, etc. In fact, had something like that happened in the third or fourth hour, it would have really felt novel. (2) No storylines were laid out at all. The only matches that seemed to have a point were the tournament matches. Other than that, there was zero sense of why one wrestler was wrestling another. The Wolves wrestling each other for no apparent reason was particularly weird.
JB called The Sands in Bethlehem “the new home of Impact Wrestling,” and both he and Christie Hemme called The Sands “The new Impact Zone.” Christie even made note that it used to be in Orlando, and “now it’s in Pennsylvania.”
All in all, a fun night where we were guaranteed to see history in the form of a new champion. A real bargain for $25 and $10 (5th row and back).
Before the tournament even started you knew it was going to be ECIII against Matt Hardy, however they should have kept the belt on Hardy. Giving the belt back to ECIII made no sense.