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Friday, July 11, 2008

My TNA Weekly Catch-up, Impact 10th Jul 08

No Rules Parking Lot Brawl, Robert Roode vs Homicide. Not a good match by any definition, made even worse when James Storm joined in which showed they had no clue how to run the thing. It had jumped the shark once Roode started to drag Homicide back into the Impact Zone through the backstage area towards the ring. After a short beatdown on the handcuffed Homicide, Hernandez came and made the predictable save and I was sitting waiting for Team 3D to stop him. Roode was WAY over selling the leather straps from Hernandez & LAX reunited in the ring to free Homicide followed by a tease of Sting in the rafters to possibly appear later in the show.
World X Cup 2nd Round, Team Japan (Masata Yoshino) vs Team International (Doug Williams), Yoshino was on top from the start with the tilt-a-whirl head scissors followed by a suicide dive. Williams got a decent series of offensive moves but also sold very heavily for Yoshino on his various dropkicks. I 'm not sure if Yoshino flubbed the 2nd head scissors or if Williams was unwilling or unsure about selling the move. Yoshino looked genuinely upset about it afterwards though. Williams did screw up when trying to climb up to grab Yoshino off the top turnbuckle (he even acknowledged his flub to the crowd wagging his index finger and giving a wry smile). Williams clearly is still rusty or unsure in TNA's ring but made an excellent winning pin off a double small package rollover suplexed into a bridge scoring 2 points for Team International.
Various crappy backstage interludes followed by another Matt Morgan interview segment.
6 Man Tag Match (falls count anywhere) - Kip James, Petey Williams & Tomko vs BG James, Eric Young & Matt Morgan. Petey Williams is still wearing the face mask so must still be recovering from his broken orbital bone unless their trying to over exagerate the injury by making us believe its still ongoing when it isn't. This was generally chaos everywhere with several ref's following the various pairings to count pins. It was pretty surprising to see Eric Young take Petey Williams into the crowd with Petey putting Young into a sharpshooter in the upper bleachers & BG James having to make the save. Young & Williams looked pretty good together in the ring (it was nice to see Young actually doing some good looking moves for a change). Petey Williams took the win off a Hurricanrana on Eric Young jumping from in-ring to the floor. It started badly but ended very well indeed. Tomko & Williams were going to put a beatdown on Eric Young but Abyss came in & put a stop to that, it seems Abyss is having a face turn then.
$25,00 Challenge & TNA Knockout Womens Title Match, Shantelle Taylor (now being billed a Taylor Wilde) vs Awesome Kong. After a good performance & a win last week Taylor is getting a shot at the title for some unexplained reason, but winning over Raisha Saeed doesn't really suddenly make you #1 contender. Kong rushed Wilde but Wilde used her quickness to recover, Raisha Saeed interefered (as was to be expected really) but Roxxi came out to watch Wilde's back. Wilde made 2 good pins which were only 2 counts but were very close calls. She also kicked out of the Implant Buster, Kong went for the spinning backfist but Wilde caught her in a roll-up to make the pin, win the $25,000 and is now the new TNA Knockout Champion.
World X Cup 2nd Round, Team Mexico (Ultimo Guerrero) vs Team TNA (Kaz). Guererro basically made this match, putting Kaz over, selling everything & playing the upper hand. Kaz wasn't really ever on top at any point but made the eventual pin, earning 2 points for Team TNA. A pretty poor match as you can tell by lack of commentary.
Booker T comes out to make a "public apology" (translates as comes out to bore us on the mic). Him jawing with Samoa Joe is interupted by the entrance of Sting.
6 Person Tag Match, The Beautiful People & Kurt Angle vs ODB, Gail Kim & AJ Styles. ODB & Angelina Love kicked this one off for their respective teams, ODB made a nice fall-away slam & tags went to Gail Kim & Velvet Sky (who totally fucked up what was I assume supposed to be a drop-toe hold by hitting the deck WAY too soon). Tags to Styles & Angle slowed down the match at exactly the wrong time with the guys hooking up and doing lots of holds, reverses & technical wrestling right after lots of speed and agility from the women. Styles was able to pick up the pace (as he's the much better wrestler with a much wider skill-set than Angle), also selling Angle's attempts at speed moves as well. Having Frank Trigg come out to distract Styles was a bad idea (slowing the match down yet again AND detracting from the women) & I wasn't too sure about having Karen Angle coming down either. Angle took the match to the mat (a bad idea, the match was already WAY too slow by this point & only had less than 6 mins left to run anyway), clearly this match was never intended to put any of the women over. It was to further the Kurt & Karen storyline at the expense of what could have been a really good womens match. The double clothesline was a really bad idea (especially so late in the match) & they really should have taken this one home after AJ's Pele. Having them do a 4 woman finish was probably the best idea you could expect them to come up with on the fly, AJ's suicide dive on Angle was probably the best move of the match. Gail Kim took the eventual win from Velvet Sky but this could have been a MUCH better match. The Frank Trigg beatdown & The Beautiful People brown bagging Gail Kim was almost certainly a Russo idea as it was designed to further a storyline that no-one cares about or wants to see any more of.

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