My Weekly TNA Catch-up, Impact 17th Jun 08

Show opens with Booker T & Sharmell coming out to bore us on the mic. Was that coat he was wearing a Monty Brown cast-off? The crowd giving him a "You Suck" chant? So he's not as over as people think then. Cornette puts an end to the madness & comes out to take the title back to Samoa Joe who then comes out to get his belt back. Joe tells Booker to keep the belt for now as he doesn't accept handouts from Punks & he'll take the belt back at the next PPV.

X Division Championship, Kaz vs Petey Williams. I guess we'll see if that "arm injury" of Kaz's is real or not here. Petey wasn't wearing the facial guard any more so I guess he's all healed up from his broken orbital bone. Kaz didn't use the "injured" arm much during the course of the match which was pretty even. Both guys gave as good as they got but I think Williams still isn't fully healed as he wasn't as high flying as he usually is. Rhaka Khan's interference stopped what would have been a victory for Kaz, Williams eventually took the win to retain his title off a reversed roll-up & a handfull of trunks.

Various backstage s**te, Curry Man finally jumping the shark by speaking English for the 1st time ever so we can expect that gimmick to be ending pretty soon.

Jimmy Rave vs "The Blueprint" Matt Morgan. Despite being billed as The Rock & Rave Infection this was definately just Jimmy Rave in a solo match, Christy Hemme was in his corner but she ran backstage pretty quickly. Morgan got a very fast pin (way too fast in my opinion so either Rave was clueless on how to work Morgan or afraid to work with him) & Hemme came out with Lance Hoyt (now calling himself Lance Rock).

Lance Rock vs Matt Morgan - A bell rang to start this so I guess it was official. Morgan gave Rock a nice fall-away slam (someone's been watching ODB then) but Rock got the upper hand when Hemme distracted the ref. Morgan took the win off a great looked move (whatever its called).

S**te video segment telling us what Karen Angle's going to be doing for the company - some sort of mini talk show called Karen's Angle which I assume is to give her more time to learn how to wrestle & take bumps before finally joing the ranks of the Knockouts. Well I guess they know we'll all be fast forwarding through that bad idea. The sooner that segment fails, the better. It gives back more time to wrestling. More s**te from Beer Money then we get Kurt Angle's music & him & Team 3D all come out dressed like Sting, wearing Sting masks & carrying baseball bats to bore us on the mic. AJ Styles, Christian Cage & Rhino eventually interupt them setting up for a 6 Man Tables elimination match next week on Impact.

Knockout 10 Woman Gauntlet Match (Basically it's Battle Royal rules, 2 people fight for 1 minute then a new person comes into the match & that goes on until all 10 have entered. The last 2 left fight standard rules, winning by pinfall or submission). Jaqueline vs Gail Kim kicked this one off & had a decent set to. Next in was Angelina Love who pushed Jacqueline out of the way to beat on Kim (I loved the loud scream of "I Hate Her!"). Kim got a nice double clothes line on both Love & Jackie. Next in was Salinas but we didn't get much action there apart from a few thrown forearms. Next in was Velvet Sky & we got her making the expected save on Love & the double beat down on Salinas.

Next in was Roxxi who took on The Beautiful People & did a nice job of it, she was trying The Voodoo Drop on Salinas but she countered it & The Beautiful People took advantage of that & eliminated Salinas together. Next in was Rhaka Khan who went straight for Gail Kim, Roxxi jumped on Khan but came off the worse after a nice axe kick across the back from Khan. Her kick on Kim was no-sold or just badly done as it looked really awful. Next in was Traci who The Beautiful People went for but missed, Traci putting them both down very quickly. She also made a nice faceplant on Khan as the next to enter was Christy Hemme who duked it out with Kim (who was really selling for her like mad & putting her over in a big way!). The last woman in was ODB (who the crowd were already chanting for way before her music ever hit) who gave Hemme a facefull of whatever was in the flask. She took out Love & Sky individually then splashed them both against a turnbuckle.

During yet another badly time commercial break ODB eliminated Rhaka Khan, Gail Kim eliminated Christy Hemme & Angelina Love eliminated Traci. As we cut back to the action Jaqueline eliminated ODB then also eliminated Roxxi with a nice Hurricanrana as she was hanging off the top rope. Roxxi eliminated Jaqueline by pulling her off the ropes from outside the ring (Really shouldn't be counted as eliminated as it wasn't by someone who was still in the match). This left Gail Kim on her own against The Beautiful People, Kim held her own for a short time but the double teams always prevailed. Love went for a superkick but Kim ducked & she hit Sky instead. I'm not sure what kind of bad eyesight West & Tenay have saying Kim got "kicked in the upper leg" when it very clearly hit her in the knee. Angelina Love was eventually eliminated by Gail Kim giving her an elbow in the head as they struggled on the apron both on the wrong side of the ropes. Kim made her way back into the ring under the bottom ropes & Sky ran up behind her to make an extremely fast roll up to get the win and earns herself a title shot against Taylor Wilde next week on Impact.

Awful interview segment with Jay Lethal & So Cal Val. His gimmick gets worse every time I see it.

3 way Match, Johnny Devine vs Eric Young vs Sonjay Dutt. You had to know Jay Lethal was going to interfere with this match at some point. Dutt & Devine teamed up a bit against Young then went against each other but neither guy was showing his usual level of skill. Young & Devine were alone for a while after Dutt was sent to the floor by Young & it was good that the colour desk did acknowledge Devine's flubbed landing of his reverse moonsault. Young got his chance to be on top (with Devine totally f**king up by putting his arm too high up to protect himself when taking Young's clothesline, it looked like a totally rookie mistake). Devine's rollover on Young didn't look very professional either (they either hadn't practiced it before or Young didn't trust Devine to pull it off correctly), Dutt took out Young's leg (which Young WAY oversold too hard) and got the pin in a match that he hardly really featured in at all. Lethal made his predicted run in as Dutt was enjoying his post-match celebration.

Johnny Devine made the save (I guess we'll find out why later down the line) but Lethal was able to take out Devine with a nice dropkick that powered Devine out of the ring under the ropes. Lethal was giving Dutt a beating when So Cal Val came down screaming at him to stop it. She stopped him using a chair outside the ring & Dutt hit the ringpost with it, faking a chairshot & threw Lethal the chair & then hit the deck (really badly overselling a non-existant chairshot) pretending he'd been hit when Val wasn't looking. Val left Lethal on the ramp, Dutt was left smiling at the result.

Beer Money come out to bore us on the mic. The jobber that they grabbed from the 1st row & brought into the ring was easily spotted a mile away before they even got close to him. He may as well have been wearing a t-shirt that read "I AM A PLANTED JOBBER". The refs were quickly fended off & that brought out Scott D'Amore & Pat Kenney (better known to TNA viewers as Simon Diamond) who also both got a strapping. No-one should have to see any part of Scott D'Amore's ass though. They were chased out of the Impact Zone past the Spanish Announcers position & this lead to an obvious face off with Hector Guererro. They beat him into the ring & handcuffed him then strapped him hard leaving some nasty looking marks. LAX & Salinas did come & save him (they took their f**king time though, didn't they?).

Stretcher Match, Booker T vs Consequences Creed. Apparently this was a match where Booker chose both the match type AND his opponant (I assume he did this in 1 of the c****y backstage segments that I never pay any attention to because their utter shit). Creed came to the ring pretty wearing most of the Apollo Creed style costume. Ref Earl Hebner was calling this one from outside the ring as the only way to win is to secure your opponant to the stretcher & there was no sign of his "injured ankle" from the 6 man match he ref'd at last weekends PPV. Creed was on top a lot & looking good, Booker was sellng for him & putting him over. Booker got himself back on top after yet another badly taken commercial break. Booker's axekick on Creed (which he sold like crazy) was probably his only good move in the whole match.

Even though Creed was wheeled out on the stretcher you can't technically call this an actual win as the rules very CLEARLY stated "secured to the stretcher" which Creed had NOT been! It was a nice touch having Samoa Joe waiting for Booker as he jumped him when he opened the ambulance door (and we got even more bad over-acting from Sharmell who seriously needs to take some salesmanship lessons as the useless bitch couldn't sell icecream on a hot day). Joe sent Booker off in the ambulance & turned to stop Sharmell who was about to hit Joe with a Black Baseball Bat & the show ended with Joe asking "Who gave you this?". For viewers with f**king awfully short memories I'd like to remind them that Sting WAS NOT present tonight & Kurt Angle & Team 3D were the ones carrying his trademark baseball bats.