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.

Movie Review - The Mutant Chronicles

For a film thats listed on Wikipedia as "released in an unfinished form" this is pretty good. Take bits of Silent Hill, Quake 4, The Trench and other various weird and wonderful sci-fi, horror and fantasy films and you get The Mutant Chronicles.

I personally haven't heard of the Role Playing Game this is based on (because I'm not that much of a nerd) but fans of Silent Hill and Quake 4 will all be crying that this has mercilessly ripped off their ideas. Which is completely wrong as the original RPG was written way back in 1993 predating Quake 4 by 12 years and Silent Hill by 6 years so it appears the plot of this game has proved to be very influential indeed.

Thomas Jane is your heroic lead as Mitch Hunter (it's not worth talking about his military rank because it's constantly referred to as different ranks by different characters as they speak to or about him and thats this films first, worst and biggest goof). Exactly why Thomas Jane got this job is hard to know as this is only really his 3rd big movie having previously starred in The Mist (and we had no clue why he was the star in that either), The Punisher (the incredibly weak remake that made Dolph Lungren's version look good) and Deep Blue Sea so he's hardly what you call star material. I assume they cast him because he looked good in the costume and gave off a suitably pretty vibe to the women in the room.

If we're honest John Malkovich is the biggest star in the movie but he's not in it for long (a lot like Sean Pertwee who only appears at the start and end of the film, I felt his character was a complete waste of time) which really makes Ron Perlman (playing religious cleric Brother Samuel) the biggest star in the film but he plays his role like he's only turning up for the wage packet which should really make the producers of Hellboy pretty nervous about getting a 3rd film out of their franchise.

The lesser known members of the cast are the real stars here, people like Devon Aoki as Valerie Duval (probably better known for her role in Sin City and I'm really pleased to see her get a decent well rounded role like this) are the ones who truly shine in roles that don't get much dialogue but the performers really make the most of their characters.

Set in some far flung future after an Ice Age a spaceship lands on Earth and starts turning humans into Mutants using a machine that utilizes dead and dying human bodies as source material. A group of soldiers from all the largest surviving groups manage to seal the spaceship underground effectively ending the mutant threat.

That is until there is global civil war between the various human factions (Fans of Ion Storms Daikatana will think they stole the name Mishima for Asia but the RPG predates the game by 4 years) breaks the seal on the door containing the mutant making spaceship and the nasty
mutants are released once more onto an unsuspecting Earth.

The civil war scenes look like a cross between World War 1 (right down to the Allied and German looking costumes and some equipment) and some sort of Steampunk inspired nightmare although the mutants themselves do look as though they were lifted right off the set of Silent Hill or from the Strogg sections of Quake 4.

The clerics lead by Brother Samuel decide their only hope for survival is a suicide mission to plant a long forgotten bomb back into the machine in hopes of stopping production of any further mutants and the chosen group of disgruntled killers is sent off to find a way down to
the machine to plant the bomb.

Obviously various members of the group get killed along the way, I won't say who or when as it's more fun to try and guess who is going to get killed next and how. The ending is fairly ambiguous, it does have a resolution of sorts but it left me feeling like they'd cut at least 30
minutes of material to get to the end titles quickly.

I did enjoy the film but it felt like it hadn't been resolved completely at the end, if this was due to the fact they say the film is unfinished then that's understandable. If it was because they were hoping to get a sequel its also a fairly justified reason.

Hulk Hogans Celebrity championship Wrestling mini review show 5

Bischoff tells the celebs that they are no longer 2 sets of teams but are now all competing against each other individually and that the next match will be a Battle Royal but not with standard rules because as well as being able to eliminate someone by sending them over the top rope they can also eliminate them by using a finishing move.

This weeks 3 new moves to learn are Over The Top (safely going over the top rope to the floor), Duck & Boost (the crouching shoulder lift over the ropes). The celebs are told they will learn the 3rd move later. Todd Bridges hurts his gonads on his 1st attempt at the Over The Ropes and Butterbean fails several times before needing a boost over from Brutus Beefcake. Brian Knobbs then gets them doing the Duck & Boost. When learning a combination eye rake and throw over the top ropes Dennis Rodman manages to injure Sammy, one of the jobbers who were helping to train the celebs (it actually turns out he broke his wrist!). Dustin Diamond leaves to get checked out by the medic as he's complaining of a shoulder problem.

Danny Bonneduche finally arrives to practice as Brutus Beefcake is practicing elbowdrops on Todd Bridges who is curled up in the top ropes in a corner and starts practicing the moves as Hulk Hogan arrives with RVD who comes to teach them about finishing or signature moves. RVD shows the celebs his 5 Star Frogsplash using Brian Knobbs as his partner, Bonneduche looks amazed and stunned and RVD explains the oversell of the move.

RVD asks to see what the celebs have done so far and Bonneduche (who had only been practicing for 45 minutes) steps up to go Over The Top and totally f**ks up the landing (they say he caught the apron, personally I think he totally missed it and took the full impact on his toes and jarred his spine), the medic calls for an ambulance and Bonneduche is taken away on a stretcher wearing a neck collar to be checked by the EMT's in hospital.

Rodman uses the midrope clothesline that he's been doing since day 1 (I assume he learnt that in his WCW days?) as his finishing move and RVD likes it. Butterbean uses the bellyslam as his finisher. Trishelle hasn't got anything so RVD teaches her a nice bridging submission move. Todd Bridges shows the somersault flip into a corner splash he's also been using since the 1st week but RVD doesn't think theres enough of it and suggests adding a sunset flip (actually it would have been easier and better looking if they'd done either a monkeyflip style Irish Whip or schoolboy roll-up out of the corner as both were more logical moves and they already knew the schoolboy anyway). Dustin Diamond decides to use the DDT as his finisher. As Brian Knobbs gives an end of day talk to the celebs we get to see Sammy stood in the ring wearing a plastercast and sling on his broken wrist.

With 4 hours until the match everyone goes to practice with Knobbs telling them they have no idea if Bonneduche is going to show or not but either way the match will go on. Everyone works everyone else with plenty of preset moves thought out and practiced ahead of time, in the locker room before the match Knobbs gives everyone a pep talk and tells them that they are now all members of Team Hogan.

The Match. 5 Person Battle Royal.

As we already know this is a Battle Royal, it was going to be 6 people but Bonneduche cried off with his injury which was no-one's fault but his own. The Winner & Mr No-So Perfect kick this one off, after some showboating to the crowd for cheap heat by both of them Winner hits Perfect with a nicely sold kick to the midsection and an eyerake. Perfect worked the ropes and ran into Winner's back elbow as Winner then stomped Perfect in the gut as he lay on the canvas. Winner strutted into a good elbowdrop on Perfect who was taken over the ropes but managed to reverse himself back in and didn't look too bad doing it either.

Perfect hit Winner with a midsection kick of his own (Diamond really can sell them well!) and then took Winner over to smack him into the top turnbuckle several times. Perfect nailed Winner with a nice forearm to the chest and then hit the overhead somersault into a forearm smash although the forearm smash looked scrappy as Perfect clearly didn't spot his landing very well. Next into the match was The Red Hot Redneck who teamed up with Mr Not-So Perfect against The Winner, they worked him over for a short while before the next entrant who was Rodzilla (unashamedly billing him from "Parts Unknown") who made the save on Winner from the doubleteam beatdown of Perfect & Redneck.

Everybody was beating everyone else down but it turned into a Team Beefcake vs Team Nasty face off until we got the next entrant in the shape of One Mean Bean. Bean came in splashing Winner into Perfect and Rodzilla into the Redneck. Bean sent Perfect to the ropes but he managed to roll back in under the bottom rope, Rodzilla then got Bean's attention after a slap to the back of the head. The 2 biggest men faced each other down and Rodzilla went for the eyerake and Bean sold it well, also really selling a hard looking kick to the midsection. Everyone else came in joining Rodzilla hitting Bean with forearm smashes aplenty, everyone then piled on top in an attempt to pin him (so yet another variation to standard Battle Royal rules then?) but Bean used his sheer mass and strength to kick out.

Eventually with everyone working together One Mean Bean was first to be sent over the top rope and eliminated. Rodzilla duked it out with the Redneck & The Winner was fighting with Perfect in opposite corners. Winner tried to establish a team with Rodzilla only to be sent into the ropes for a clothesline, the Redneck hit Rodzilla with a nice double axehandle to the head then a series of midsection kicks. Perfect hit a well measured sunset flip on The Winner to eliminate him using the finishing move option, as Winner was hitting Rodzilla its hard to telll if Rodzilla actually injured Redneck for real (As when Bridges hit Rodman his head whiplashed back and caught Trishelle in the face), the ref did go and check on her.

This may have been part of the gimmick as Perfect was trying to send Rodzilla over the top when he used his strength putting Perfect over the top rope to the apron. Perfect grabbed Rodzilla's arm, the Redneck grabbed Rodzilla by the leg sending him over and Rodzilla took Mr Not So Perfect with him leaving The Red Hot Redneck as this weeks match winner.

I think Bischoff's comments about Dustin Diamond having plateaued out were unfair, he pulls his weight and works pretty hard. Danny Bonneduche is eliminated from this weeks show, its not undeserved as he wasn't giving the show his full attention what with still doing his radio show and missing half the training. As good a performer as he was he just wasn't willing to listen or do moves the way he was taught.

The Killer cold continues

It's this really annoying cold, stupidly sore scratchy throat and insanely painful tight (almost certainly sinus induced) headache so I've been doing a shedload of sleeping, almost no eating and as little liquids as possible to keep my runny nose as dry as I can manage.
Getting soaked on Nov 8th didn't help and neither did having to sit round in wet clothes for several hours. The fact that I was already sneezing before that probably helped bring this on.
Anyway, roll on getting well.
I hate being ill.

Now in widescreen!

Hello readers of the blog! We now come to you in widescreen as my sister gave me her old Acer widescreen LCD flatscreen monitor today.

My Weekly TNA Catch-up, Impact 13th Nov 08

Mick Foley calls out various people for a chat - AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, The Motor City Machineguns, Eric Young, Petey Williams, Jay Lethal & Consequences Creed. Foley says he'll deal with Alex Shelley next week, he also gives Eric Young his X Division Title shot tonight and arranges a match for the tag titles between Beer Money & AJ Styles and Samoa Joe (why are they even deemed contenders?) and Jay Lethal is also given a shot at the Heavyweight title.

Knockout Tag Match - Awesome Kong & Rhaka Khan (with Raisha Saeed) vs Roxxi & Taylor Wilde. Basically this is the rubber match from the PPV and it's the only title not on the line tonight. Kong jumped Wilde on the ramp and everyone was duking it up outside the ring before finally making it into the ring where Kong & Khan were on top. Roxxi & Wilde doubleteamed Kong & Khan pretty well until Khan flubbed being thrown over the top rope and made a bad landing hurting herself making the flub even worse. Wilde took it to Khan on the floor but Kong hit Roxxi with the Implant Buster to take the win.

X Division Championship - Eric Young vs Sheik Abdul Bashir. Taking one look at who was referee for this indicated where the win was going before the opening bell even rang. Clearly putting Shane Sewell in to run things was a Russo inspired idea to allow Bashir to get s**t cheap heat because he can't get any other kind due to not being over in any way, shape or form. Bashir had his usual slow mat based match. Bashir's "unseen" low blow was pretty much the end of the match and having the ref get involved effectively ended a very shit match with an even worse finish. Despite Young getting the pin this decision will be reversed very quickly as Sewell ceased to be a referee the moment he removed the striped shirt. Eric Young is the new X Division Champion, we'll see how long it takes before he's stripped of the title. If no-one questions the title change then it's clear Russo has complete creative control in TNA.

Scott Steiner vs Rhino. I'm not even sure why this match was happening, its not as though theres any heat between these 2 but who I am to question the TNA match bookers. This was short and c**p, Steiner took the win after Rhino was distracted from the gore by Kurt Angle who'd come out to the ring with Steiner.

World Heavyweight Championship - Jay Lethal vs Sting. Lethal took charge of this from the get go and owned the match, directing Sting all over the ring. All credit to Sting, he ran with all the moves Lethal pulled and sold them all very well too. After a very badly timed break we came back to discover Sting had turned things around in his favour, it was hard to understand exactly why Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin were sent out to cheer from the apron as their intereference in the match was no only pointless but it also cost Lethal the match as Sting hit The Scorpion Death Drop to retain the title. They've been pushing this c***py heel turn for The Guns for a long time now and I wish they'd just get to the point with it.

Pointless backstage segment with Petey Williams getting beaten down by The Main Event Mafia, so we can expect a rebranding of Williams fairly soon. It's been pretty clear tonight by the amount of video packages about the various wrestlers and the complete playing of the TNA theme video that TNA clearly doesn't have the money to pay enough wrestlers to actually work and fill a full show. It's also fairly clear that going to HD was a mistake as it was money that could have been better spent on paying the wrestlers to wrestle. Likewise the money spent on remodelling the Impact Zone was a waste as well (unless someone can actually prove they can get more people in the audience with 1 less ramp and they are actually selling tickets to that many people every week).

Tag Team Championship - Samoa Joe & AJ Styles vs Beer Money. Joe didn't have any facial scar so his bladejob at the PPV clearly wasn't a very deep one as there are no visible after effects. Storm came down to the ring wearing his Beer Helmet so I was guessing that's where the win was going to come from before the bell even rang. Team 3D came down to the colour position during the match and this left me thinking if they were going to run a revenge angle and have 3D cost Beer Money the title. Brother Ray was doing a good job running colour but after Joe's snap slam on Roode was painful to see how badly out of position the ref was to make his count. Joe had Roode set for The Muscle Buster but Storm spat the beer in his face, by this time 3D had seen enough and Brother Ray grabbed the beer and spat it into Storm's face which Earl Hebner deemed as outside interference and called for the bell awarding the match to Beer Money who retain the titles (I assume he did, no announcement was made about the decision). Did Joe's Muscle Buster break Roode's nose? His face was covered with blood when he walked back up the ramp. Another crap finish, blame Russo - I do.

The Main Event Mafia come out to induct Christian Cage as their newest member. The induction turns into a going away party (a storyline specifically written to allow Cage to leave to go to WWE).

My TNA Catch-up, Turning Point PPV Nov 08

Well, its the 1st PPV using the recently revamped Impact Zone.

X Division Ranking Match - Consequences Creed vs Sonjay Dutt vs Petey Williams vs Jimmy Rave vs Volador vs Eric Young vs Doug Williams vs Tanahashi vs Homicide vs Jay Lethal. It's nice to see Doug Williams finally getting another match at long last, I was worried he'd left TNA as it'd been a while since we've last seen him. Volador & Tanahashi again getting lucky in just their 3rd match in TNA and getting their 2nd possible shot at a title. It looks like the rumours are true with Homicide appearing alone here, is this the start of the break-up of LAX? I'm not exactly sure WHY TNA felt they needed to rank the X Division guys because really this is a match to become #1 contender so it's a very badly named match indeed. West & Tenay said this was being done under Lucha Libre tag rules so anyone leaving the ring can be replaced by anyone else on the apron with them having to get tagged in.

Creed & Rave kicked things off here and had a nice if somewhat short run with Creed eventually rolling out to the floor. Dutt came in and made a stunning series of headscissors on Rave who left the ring pretty sharpish. Lethal came in and Dutt bailed so Lethal followed him to the floor with a suicide dive. Tanahashi & Homicide replaced them and also had a nice but again very short run.

Doug & Petey Williams were in next (just to make things confusing for the commentary I guess), the highlight of their equally short run was Petey's Hurricanrana on Doug from the ring to the floor. Volador & Eric Young were in next but Young was out just as quickly as he entered. When Lethal came in next things got much better and they were seriously working each other well, lots of fluid moves, they were looking really good together. Dutt came in after a cheapshot on Lethal and also had a good run against Volador doing another of his spinning headscissors on him.

Voladors Superhurricanrana on Dutt was awesome leading to Volador pinning & eliminating Dutt who is now ranked 10th in the X Division rankings. Rave came in next and after they both left the ring but returned Rave got the pin off the Rock The World eliminating Volador who gets ranked in 9th position. Doug Williams came in next and got a pretty fast face full of very stiff looking clothesline from Rave (unless it was a REALLY good sell from Williams). Williams eventually got back on top turning a roll-up into a suplex to pin & eliminate Rave who earns himself 8th postion. Eric Young was in next and straight out to the floor over the top rope with help from Doug Williams which brought Creed in and straight out through the ropes.

Petey Williams dived in then mayhem ensued eventually leading to Homicide hitting Doug with the Gringo Cutter, he dived into Young & Creed but missed it badly and bounced off the guardrail hitting his back but was also grabbing his head (obviously a very real and serious enough injury for 2 referees to go into the crowd to check on him). Ref Andrew Thomas deemed him too injured to continue so Homicide was eliminated (earning himself 7th position) as Hernandez came out to check on his tag partner.

Doug Williams kicked out from Creed's pin attempt after Young hit him with a scrappily landed Swanton. After lots more swaps Creed & Petey Williamns duked it out for a bit before Petey hit The Canadian Destroyer to eliminate Creed which earned him 6th position. Doug Williams & Tanahashi worked Petey together for a bit before Tanahashi eliminated Petey with a very unusual turning frogsplash (giving Petey Williams 5th in the rankings). Doug Williams & Tanahashi then worked Jay Lethal with Tanahashi hitting a lovely spinning legdrop on Lethal. Lethal managed to eliminate Tanahashi with a fast small package (earning Tanahashi 4th place in the current rankings, not bad for his 3rd match). Williams then turned Lethal over with a real stiff clothesline.

Eric Young elminated Doug Williams (I don't even want to guess what that move was but it looked good!) earning Doug a highly respectable 3rd in the X Division rankings. It came down to Eric Young & Jay Lethal as the final 2. Both guys are quick and fast, both guys can counter and reverse. Young may have the edge on power but Lethal probably has the edge on speed. Young eventually turned a suplex into a bridging pin to get the win and earn the #1 contender spot and the future match for the X Division title, Lethal eanred himself the #2 ranking. This was a really good match, everyone worked hard and it was a shame Homicide was eliminated due to injury. Was Young shooting on WWE with that entertainers comment during his promo?

Knockout Tag Match - Awesome Kong & Raisha Saeed (with Rhaka Khan) vs Roxxi & Taylor Wilde. Has anyone told the people who create the intro graphics for each wrestler that Taylor Wilde IS actually Canadian because since day 1 her name graphic on the big screen has always had American Stars & Stripes on it. Wilde & Roxxi were working well making fast tags to keep the upper hand as they worked Saeed. Saeed sold most of what she was given apart from a fairly blatent no-sell on Wilde's Hurricanrana (either that or she didn't feel able to sell it well enough as it looked very scrappy indeed from Saeed).

After some interference from Rhaka Khan, Kong soon managed to take the upper hand with Roxxi. Roxxi sold a seriously long beatdown from Kong & Saeed with Saeed seriously f**king up an assisted launch moonsault so Kong had to cover for her as the colour guys tried to make like it didnt happen and was accidental. Wilde did get tagged in and took control but it took Roxxi putting Kong over the top rope and hitting her with a cross body block from the top turnbuckle to the floor to allow Wilde to hit Saeed with the roll-up into the bridging suplex (that we're seeing used so much recently by lots of TNA wrestlers) to get the win for her team.

Non-title Grudge Match - Sheik Abdul Bashir vs Rhino. Whats the point of a meaningless grudge match when we could be seeing the X Division title get contested? It's more proof that Bashir is as s**t as I say he is because he's not up to defending his belt on a PPV. This was a pretty dull match, even TNA knew that hence them sending guests The Insane Clown Posse (with Scott Hall of all people) to go and stand by the guard rail to work some heat with Bashir. It's pretty silly when a match is so c**p they have to involve arena guests on the fly to try and improve things. West & Tenay totally failed to mention ICP or Hall, was that Corey Feldman that Bashir pushed with ICP?

Clearly the directors & producers were telling West & Tenay to not name check ICP or Hall when they made the comment of "familiar faces" as if they'd been free to mention them they surely would have. Rhino took the eventual win off the gore, AWFUL match and stupid of TNA to not take advantage of having ICP & Hall in plain view.

Tag Team Championship - Beer Money (with Jaqueline) vs The Motor City Machineguns. I think they are trying push Jackie in a more managerial role now The Main Event Mafia storyline is going and Obama got the White House. ICP & Scott Hall were still in the front row behind the guard rail for this match as well. Storm & Sabin started this match and it was more about The Guns, even so Beer Money had a decent enough match.

Move of the match for me had to be Shelleys double DDT on Beer Money (with Roode selling it like crazy) although Sabins springboard DDT on Roode was equally impresive. The 4 man tower suplex looked impressive but Shelley was grabbing at his knee like he'd seriously twisted it up whilst he was upside down. Beer Money took the eventual win after Jaqueline distracted the ref, Storm spat beer into Sabin's face to allow Roode to make the pin and retain the titles. The Guns were a much better team here though and made for an excellent match.

Legends Championship (aka Belt I Bought) - Booker T vs Christian Cage. If Cage loses he must join the Main Event Mafia. Well Booker was always going to win this once the rumours of Cage's imminent departure from TNA was announced. The ICP & Scott Hall had either moved themselves or been moved by the time this match started. Awful match, Booker won after reversing a roll-up thanks to a handfull of tights. West and Tenay erroneously say he "retained" the belt which would be difficult as you can't retain a belt that you've never won.

Falls Count Anywhere Match - Kurt Angle vs Abyss. Angle didn't want any part of Abyss from the bell unless it was on his terms so ended up doing a lot of bailing out of the ring getting cheap heat and lots of boos. The "big shots to the head" of Angle from Abyss looked rubbish and Angle wasn't selling them very well either. Abyss hit the Shock Treatment early but Angle kicked out then fled into the crowd. Angle was gettng the holy c**p beaten out of him as they went across the bleachers and back over the guard rail before finally hitting Abyss with a nice chair shot.

Angle's forward somersault onto Abyss off the stage is something he's done before (in his match with AJ Styles at Hard Justice this year), Angle spearing Abyss through the wall of the stage looked pretty good too though. It was pretty unforgivable to cut to several repeats of that move to allow them time to get off camera only for Angle to be smashed out of a different segment of the stage from the inside by Abyss. Angle managed to kick out of a chokeslam after being smashed head first into a chair in the ropes only to miss a splash off the top rope onto Angle. Angle made a great moonsault onto Abyss with the chair across him.

It was a bit silly of Abyss to not Black Hole Slam Angle ino the chair that was only inches away so it was pretty obvious by this point Angle was going to get the eventual win. I did enjoy the scaffold segment behind the Spanish Announce table although Abyss's bump onto the table wasn't as bad as most people made it out to be. Angle pinned Abyss by the Spanish Announce position to take the win, very good match by both guys but you have to mark for Abyss taking the bumps off Angle to get him over.

Special Grudge Match - Kevin Nash vs Samoa Joe. The ICP & Scott Hall were very noticable in their abscence in the crowd during this match. I assume Hall had come backstage before the match to catch-up. Joe started off with lots of fists flying, dominating Nash pretty early. All it took was Nash to give Joe a couple of runs into the ring posts to allow him to get back on top. Nash removed the top turnbuckle cover but missed his chair shot on Joe. Joe got hit into the exposed metal but due to the cameras being on him non-stop he didn't have the time to blade himself. Nash carried on with elbowdrops only for Joe to come back up to a nice backsplash.

Joe went for a suicide dive only to run into a face full of chair from Nash but managed to kick out of the resulting pin. Nash hit the big boot and signalled for the finish only for Joe to kick out of the Jack Knife Powerbomb. Joe got another facefull of exposed turnbuckle but this time Nash and the ref had the sense to move the cameras to allow Joe time to do the blade job this time. Joe sold a few more shots into the steel & kicked out of a 2nd Jack Knife Powerbomb. Joe had Nash in a submission armbar but the ref took a c**ppy bump and Nash hit Joe with the low blow. Nash rolled Joe up and used the ropes for leverage to take the win in a match where Joe was the much better worker and Nash should think himself lucky how much Joe put him over here.

TNA World Heavyweight Championship - AJ Styles vs Sting. After the bell rang there was only 19 minutes of show (including end titles) so we were going to be getting a fairly short match here. This thing started off slow and just kept getting slower with all the technical holds and reversals. Not a great way to run a main event and clearly Sting wasn't all that bothered. Styles had clearly been told to hold back on his speed & aerial abilities and he looked understandably pissed off. Styles was having to take all the heavy & hard bumps as well as selling everything for Sting.

Styles was getting the heck beaten out of him until he just kicked Sting in the side of the head right out of nowhere, Sting managed to sell the back suplex pretty well (you have to be REALLY bad if you can't sell an AJ Styles move) but the Styles comeback continued with a nice springboard flying forearm on Sting. Styles kicked out of the Scorpion Death Drop (well they did have at least another 3 minutes of air time to fill) and nailed AJ with 3 consecutive Stinger Splashes. Styles fought out of the Superplex with a powerbomb of his own then nailed Sting with The Spiral Tap.

Ref Hebner really should have DQ'ed Sting the second Booker T & Kurt Angle ran down the ramp to stop AJ's 2nd Spiral Tap all of which allowed Sting the time to recover. AJ missed the Pele and Sting made a side roll to take the pin and retain the title. Really he should have been DQ'ed for outside interference and would have still retained the title. Styles was the much better worker here and that was clearly a desperation move from Russo to send Booker & Angle out to interfer so close to the end.

This was a pretty decent PPV, it's a shame Cage is leaving (if in fact he does turn out to leave). TNA totally wasted the chance to use The ICP and if I'm honest The Main Event Mafia aren't any more over after this PPV than they were before it. Hopefully Homicide isn't too badly hurt and we'll see him on tv tapings soon. If LAX split it'll benefit TNA as Homicide can be a great X Division guy and Hernandez can finally get a Heavyweight title shot as he'd make an excellent champion with his power and aerial abilities.