My Weekly TNA Catch-up, Impact 20th Nov 08

The Main Event Mafia give Christian Cage "a proper burial" (a storyline designed to allow Cage to return to WWE with the minimum fuss). Angle asks if anyone wants to speak and Rhino comes out making a nice shoot on big wage packets. Booker T invites Rhino to come down to the ring and you didn't need to be a genius to guess Rhino did & got the tar beat out of him.

Tag Match - Sonjay Dutt (with SoCal Val) & Tanahashi vs Consequences Creed & Jay Lethal - My 1st question here would be what happened to Tanahashi's normal tag partner Volador, I assume he had commitments back with CML? Good match, I was too busy watching and enjoying it to write much about it ;-) Creed won off the TKO in Dutt.

Video insert, it seems that despite the fact it was so unpopular with TNA viewers they will be re-using the idea of Feast Or Fired. Has anyone read any rumours of talent asking about their release? Or is this their way of finally binning the Curry Man gimmick and for Christopher Daniels to finally unmask himself?

Backstage segment - As predicted by me last week Jim Cornette made Shane Sewell take the X Division Title from Eric Young and give it back to Sheik Abdul Bashir. Sewell is placed on probabtion under threat of firing.

Knockout Tagmatch - The Beautiful People (with Cute Kip) vs Sojournor Bolt & Christy Hemme. This is Bolt's 1st appearance since 28th Aug when she jobbed to Awesome Kong. I can't recall if Bolt was as chunky or topheavy then as she is now but that girl has some meat on her bones! Bolt & Love kicked this off with Bolt selling well on a pretty awful looking kick from Love. Bolt was selling well for Sky but she was given the chance to show off a few moves. Hemme got a stupidly short run in the ring before Love won off the Lights Out on Hemme after a rubbish distraction by Kip.

New segment - ODB's Angle. I guess this is letting us know Kurt's wife is well and truly unemployed now? ODB's guest was Sharmell. Oh dear.

Tag Match - The Motor City Machineguns vs Samoa Joe & AJ Styles. This is a match that Mick Foley made near the start of the show. It's a bit weird having an all face tagmatch but it's probably part of an ongoing Russo plan to have the Gun's turn heel that's been going on for what seems like forever. Yet another awesome match that I spent watching so haven't written much about it. AJ's Pele totally missed and whoever was in the camera control room really screwed up by showing the angle they did. TOO MUCH AIR! AJ took the win with the Styles Clash off Shelley. The Nash, Booker & Angle run-in and beatdown was utterly pointless, you can't get cheap heat from a storyline no-one really cares about. Sending Creed & Lethal out was stupid and badly timed (if Russo sent them out he's got even less of a clue than I credited as having because it was way too late and the wrong people to send out against the bigger more experienced vets), they were feeding in crowd noise as the Impact Zone crowd weren't reacting to this at all, neither cheering or booing. It makes the show look bad when the only heat a beatdown gets is no heat and no reaction from a crowd normally packed to the gills with marks.

Raisha Saeed mouthes off at Traci Brooks in her office threatening that Kong will take matters into her own hands. Way to sell Traci as in a position of authority Saeed you idiot! More on the "respect" storyline from the face locker room with Rhino. It's pretty clear this angle isn't going away but its awful and todays crowd reactions are a clear indicator that everyone hates it.

Legends Championship Match (aka Belt I Bought) Eric Young vs Booker T. This was a match made earlier in the show after Cornette made Young hand back the X Division belt. If your upset by how I refer to this title then I'm sorry but I will continue to use the AKA until someone wins it because they earned it and didn't pay for it. With Sharmell at ringside I didn't expect this meaningless title to change hands. As I was watching the people who do stills pictures at ringside I was trying to decide if one of them was Russo as he was the right build, height and hair colour. This was one of Booker's standard slow and very boring matches with all the good moves coming from Young. Clearly Booker was too heavy for Young to do the Death Valley Driver properly (Eric had to let him go early and let Bookers own weight put him flat on his back), Booker kicked out and after interference from Sharmell Booker took the win off the axekick.

Tagteam Grudge Match - Kevin Nash & Kurt Angle vs Matt Morgan & Abyss. It's hard to know exactly why this is classed as a grudge match as the only 2 of these guys that have any previous heat are Abyss & Angle who kicked this off. They HAD heat, past tense. And artificially created heat at that. They don't have anymore and it wasn't very good heat then. This was generally awful (like most matches involving Angle or Nash in fact) and they took a badly timed break to show the trailer for the new Star Trek prequal movie that everyone hates already. The match stayed generally awful and the stroll-in by Beer Money was always going to lead to some sort of interference but having Abyss throw Angle out of the ring and start fighting with Beer Money to get to him before going back to the ring was an interesting idea. Nash got the cover on Abyss after Storm smashed an obviously fake beer bottle over his head. Weak finish to a really awful match.

Mick Foley comes out to announce the 2 joint main event matches for the upcoming PPV.
Booker T, Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner & Sting vs Samoa Joe, AJ Styles and 2 as yet un-named wrestlers.

If The Main Event Mafia win Sting keeps his title, if they lose AJ Styles wins the belt. Odd stipulation. Why not just have an outright title match?
Kurt Angle vs Rhino. Kurt Angle comes out looking miffed because he can't fight Jeff Jarrett and if he can't have him he wants Mick Foley instead. Jarrett comes out after Angle hit Foley and cites "My company, my rules". Jarrett says if he beats Rhino at the PPV he gets his match with Jarrett but if Angle loses his TNA contract becomes null & Void. Angle slaps Jarrett and gets gored by Rhino.