SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
HITS
Barbed Wire Massacre 3 Hype: The situation surrounding this match has to lead to a big old miss. H owever, Impact sure as hell made Barbed Wire Massacre feel like a major event throughout the course of the night with all the video packages they had dedicated to hyping it. It’s uh… just too bad they couldn’t actually air the thing on TV.
Xavier vs. Ishimori: Dezmond Xavier and Taiji Ishimori put on perhaps the best Impact match in months. Even though he lost, Xavier moved up a bit as an act in my eyes. His open-handed slapping of Ishirmori’s face while yelling at him to stay down was simply great. As good as the match was, it would have been cool had Impact given them another 10-20 minutes of action. The buzz they would have created would have been far bigger than everything else they put on the show. Still, this was easily the highlight of a dreadful episode.
MISSES
GWN Bonus Match: Oh man, please don’t remind of me Damien Sandow’s time in TNA. Is there a single person out there who is now going to pay $7.99 a month so they can watch the entirety of Sandow vs. Eddie Edwards? Nobody cared about the Grand Championship for a single second of its entire existence, so airing five minutes of how the belt was won was a complete waste of five minutes.
Chandler Park: Can someone in Impact explain to me why you would hire a talented wrestler to play the role of a crappy wrestler? Why not just hire a crappy wrestler for the Chandler Park role instead? This is a complete waste of Ethan Page and it’s a gimmick that’s just not funny. Joseph Park is a guilty pleasure of mine, but his cousin is the least necessary character in the entire promotion. Much like Judy Winslow from “Family Matters” or Cousin Oliver from “The Brady Bunch,” Chandler should disappear from the show and never be mentioned again.
The Global Championship Match: Once again, Impact devalued their major title by showing footage of it being fought over in front of a couple hundred fans with terrible lighting and ring ropes that somehow shook for days. Why Ed Nordholm is letting Scott D’Amore get away with airing footage from his low budget promotion has been one of the biggest wrestling mysteries in some time. He should maybe consider devoting his time to improving the show that 300,000 people still (somehow) watch.
Barbed Wire Massacre: The match itself was entertaining enough, but the fact that it wasn’t aired on the show it was promoted to air on makes this an automatic miss.
Obligatory Commentary Miss of the Night: On “Killing the Town,” Don Callis said the two biggest complaints he got from fans about Impact were (1) get rid of the six-sided ring and (2) get rid of the Grand Championship. Those two issues combined times ten are not as detrimental to this promotion as Jeremy Borash and Josh Mathews are. For this week’s example, during the entertaining X-Division match, neither man was able to genuinely put over the action in a way that heightened the drama. They called the match like they were reading ingredients on the back of a cereal box. At this point, you may as well watch the show with the sound turned all the way down.
Overall Show: This was an awful, embarrassing two hours of television. WCW Thunder in its dying days looked like the WWF at the height of the Attitude Era compared to this drek. After the first match of the show, it was all downhill at an accelerated pace. This week’s Impact felt more like an infomercial than an actual wrestling program. They should have had this figured out months ago. If they didn’t think Pop TV would air their main event, they should have never shot it in the first place. The Don Callis-led episodes can’t come soon enough, as this company continues to be a complete trainwreck that is impossible to reccomend in good faith to any wrestling fan out there. Callis may not be able to turn this thing around, but even Vince Russo on his worst day would struggle to put together a crappier night of wrestling than this.
NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S COLUMN: IMPACT HITS & MISSES 1/11: Why are Garza’s opponents shocked when he rips off his pants? LAX continues to be highlight of entire company, Jimmy Jacobs lack of impact
I think you hit the nail on the head with the point about the blind eye turned to SD’A’s use of Impact as a vehicle to get his own promotion over: It’s insane, counterproductive, and utterly audacious.
The only disagreement I have is that I cared about the Grand Championship, and until Arron Rex started doing that bit with Rockstar Spud as his valet, he had a decent gimmick going. But of course Jarrett came back (then got fired, again) and it’s been shit ever since. Which is why I only watch old stuff and better indy promotions than D’Amore’s Cable Access looking promotion .
For the first time in a long time, I agree with this review.
Not showing that barb wire match was ridiculous. IF they pull that with the steel cage match, I think I am done watching. The more I think about that, the more it bugs me.
As far as bringing in decent wrestlers and making them look like they can’t wrestle two in the Knockout Division come to mind. Laurel Van Ness was made into whatever that character is and yes she can still wrestle as that character but was far better as just a cocky, spoiled rich girl wrestler. The whole drunk every week thing just, well it doesn’t work. Allie also should be on that list. She is quite an accomplished wrestler and we have to pretend she is still green. I understand where it fits in the storyline, but it has taken so long to get to the payoff. Where is Braxton Sutter. Was he released?
Crazed bride LVN was fantastic, I thought. I loved the character because it was different. Credit to her- she pulled it off well, too. I preferred it to the spoiled rich girl.
King,
They could have done so much more with the crazed bride gimmick. It was funny to see her in that same dress show after show. The character they seemed to create after that though, was some weird version of that character. That was the character I didn’t like much. I don’t know if she was going for a Courtney Love gimmick or what, but it didn’t work for me. I am sorry to see she is leaving the company though. The Knockouts roster is getting pretty thin.