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This show kicked off in FINE form.

Sad state of affairs.

Just lookit. Raven looks a mess. A fucking mess. These geeks were in the ring, and Dreamer was hyping up the PPV. The crowd were going bat shit crazy for this and I don’t know why. Dreamer said there was some legal problems with the alphabet. Ooo, I get references. He said they conferred with their lawyers and had decided to call this little deal “E V 2.0″ because it’s the new version of extreme. Tommy said he was happy to have Devon be a part of the crew but was concerned about the relationship with Bubba. So out comes Bubba. Devon says they need to put their differences aside for the sake of ECW. He gets all fired up and what have you. Devon is a great promo. Just a great old-school promo. Weird that Ray has always been the main promo guy for the team because Devon always impresses me. Bubba turns his back and starts to walk off. That makes Dreamer sad.

ChairShot.org will soon be launching an "over/under" pool on how many times he cries in TNA.

Dreamer says “Bubba” (thats what he called him) needs to do this. He said this was like KISS reuniting. KISS! IN 2010! He said it was for the fans. It was one last night to thank the fans. I’m pretty sure you’ve thanked them a million fucking times. Get on with your life. Foley took the mic as the fans chanted “one more time”. Foley parodied Dreamer, saying “Brother Ray… Brother Ray… Brother Ray…” Foley is awesome. He looks about 60 though. Foley said they needed Ray to make the show that much better. Why do I care about this? Even within the context of an ECW reunion show; why do I care about one of the Dudleys being involved. The original One Night Stand didn’t have FUCKING RAVEN and it was still awesome. I’m supposed to be upset if ONE OF THE DUDLEYS wont do this show? Taz stands up and tells Ray to do it. This is such bullshit. All of these promos are like… fine… but this angle is just not entertaining. It’s not interesting. I don’t give a FUCK about these men. I don’t want to see them wrestle. Mick Foley, to this day, can STILL cut a money promo. Still. But he can’t make me interested in seeing these guys do this show. Bubba asks if they can set someone on fire and agrees to be involved. There was an “E V2.0″ chant. Ew. Like I say, the crowd was loving this. So good for them I guess.

Hogan comes out. You know, deep down, this guy has to HATE this shit. Flair, Hogan, all these other legends of the 80s who carried the industry on their backs; they have to HATE all the credit ECW gets. Hogan says it’s cool that these dudes are riding again. Hogan says he “gets” this whole hardcore thing. Lie. He calls the announcement Dixie made of the ECW PPV the “shot heard around the world”. Another lie. Then he repeats Dixie’s line, and he had to just be choking on this, that those guys were to the 90s what he was to the 80s. That’s another lie and all. Big one. Never been a fan of Hogan, but that is such a slap in the face to that guy. Hogan did one thing in 80s; make money. He didn’t pioneer anything. He didn’t innovate. He didn’t revolutionise the business. He just took it on his back and made it the huge industry it is today. ECW was the polar opposite. It never made money but it DID innovate and it did bring new things to the business that would ultimately by taken on by the two bigger companies. In NO WAY are the two comparable. Hogan says he missed the original ECW because he was doing his thing in WCW. Hogan said Bischoff had a surprise for later. Probably more BS rankings.

ABYSS came out. With Janice. He cut about how THEY are not happy. He gets all angry and shakey and such. He says THEY are PISSED about the reunion. He says THEY blame Dixie. I do too. Maybe THEY is the internet wrestling community. Hogan tells him to fuck off and that Dreamer is a guest of his, and nothing is going down until the PPV. Abyss says THEY have given him instructions to kill Dreamer, before the PPV. Dreamer says he’ll gladly fight Abyss tonight. BEFORE THE PAY PER VIEW. That’s dumb.

This segment was about as long as the John Cena/Chris Jericho promo from RAW but it was nowhere near as entertaining.

Backstage the WOMENZ are arguing.

At least they're hot.

Lacey is HILARIOUS. She’s playing peace maker and is like… ever so slightly laughing and cracking smiles during this segment. This is like a school play. God bless Velvet. She’s a good promo, improving in the ring, crazy hot… but these segments require far too much acting for her. It’s not just cutting a promo. This is like the worst soap opera you ever saw. But with the hottest actresses. Anyway, the have the same argument they’ve had all month. Madison apologizes. Velvet eventually accepts and they hug it out. It is shocking how badly they have FUCKED UP the, one time, most entertaining act in the company.

Angelina vs. Sarita. Winner gets Madison. Angelina is just the weirdest looking thing. She looks like one of those 40 year olds who just cakes on the make up, and dyes her hair to try and look 20. Absurd tits on an anorexic frame doesn’t help. Anyway, they do some chain grapplin’ early. No heat for this. Very sloppy. Of course, being TNA, Mike Tenay got word in his ear of some announcement during this match. The main event is going to be a “hardcore weapons no disqualification match”. Yes. Look forward to that. I would go on and on about how dumb this is, a week before their ECW PPV, but I just can’t be bothered. This women’s match is still going and it’s still not good. Angelina has the worst punches in wrestling. Is anyone’s worse? Answers on the forum, please.  She also hits a shitty spinning heel kick. She hits a hybrid super kick/bicycle kick for the win. Far too long. Not good. Plus we’re getting Madison vs. A. Love again.

Backstage, Eric Young is trying on helmets to try and impress Orlando Jordan while mannequin in a pink boa hangs upside down. No seriously.

...

OJ is all annoyed and asks Eric if he’s on something. I could have sworn Young was done with all these wacky gimmicks. EY says he’s drunk on some… Canadian booze. And then he says he’s not right cos he got kicked in the head and dropped off the top rope. BUT he has a plan. And a backup. What shite.

They show a clip from Xplosion of Young getting his head injuries. Oh I get it. He’s got some WACKY concussions. That’s always great comedy in 2010. OJ is making faces at the camera and chewing on some gum. He makes SoCal Val eat it. Gross. Just gross. Out comes Young with his back up.

EVERYONE WANTS HEAD.

They take on Ink Inc. OJ started off with Neal. OJ kept trying to molest him. Young is being goofy on the apron, making his back up reach its hand out for the tag. That was funny. OJ makes the tag and breaks the mannequin. Young throws in the mannequin and it breaks more. OJ asks Young what’s up and he says “I’M NOT THE LEGAL MAN”.  Ink Inc win with the Mooregasm. EY throws up the X for a legit injury for the mannequin. This was some unfunny bullshit.

Flair is in the ring. He says he has a rematch with Lethal next week. It’ll be a street fight. He says Beer Money, the muscle of TNA, are in Fortune. Now it’s complete. So wait… was this some kind of tease? If I recall, the original line up was the same as this one except it also featured Nigel. Nigel then lost a match, I think to Lethal, where the gimmick was he was out of the group if he lost. So we’ve been teased with the announcement of the stable members for a month, just to wind up with the four guys we already knew would be in it? Who wrote this? This is like they found the script from a month ago and got confuse and we’re watching a reshoot of the same angle. Robert Roode cuts a promo saying when they beat the Guns tonight, they will become four time tag champs. Kazarian cuts a promo. And this made me want to rage. He says; we’re not some gang of angry rookies. Could this company be any more low rent? Can they not do a FUCKING THING in this company without making some remark about WWE. It’s just pathetic.

Inferior to Wade Barret

We’ll see how smart this clique looks next to Nexus in a few weeks. Kaz says they’re seasoned vets and the best there is in the TNA GALAXY. Good God. It’s getting to be sad, this. AJ gets on the mic and says the Global title doesn’t DRAW RATINGS. MORE RATINGS TALK ON TNA! He says FORTUNE DRAW RATINGS. LOL. He renames the belt AGAIN. Now it’s the TV title. FUCK. ME. He says Kaz faces Terry tonight and if Rob wins, he gets a title shot. This was a desperate segment. A fucking desperate segment. Not even Ric Flair segments are good on this show.

Kurt comes out. He says AJ is next. Oh boy. We get that match again.

Now for the real reason I watch.

FUCK YEAH

Guns. Beer. Cage. The Guns come in the back door and scale the cage when the heels have their eyes locked on the front door. Nice start. Roode got busted open early and bled a lot. They were tagging in and out which is always irritating in a cage match. But according to Vince Russo, and he’s said this on his facebook, you CAN be DQ’d in a cage match. So I guess that’s just how it is. I’m not going to bother calling all the spots in this match because I’m too busy watching it. It fucking ruled, people. Breaking news. WATCH THIS MATCH. Sabin did a dive off the cage, and after Storm accidentally struck Roode with his bottle, Storm was hit with a double team and pinned. Fucking greatness.

Anderson was announced and his music played.  But it was Matt Morgan. Doing his entrance.

Jim Cornette said this guy would main event Wrestlemania

Morgan got the mic. Eventually. He had to shout at the dude lowering it. This was great. Morgan tried to impersonate Anderson. But he sounded like Val Venis. Then he does a Hogan impression and exaggerates his size and weight.  Morgan calls himself the DNA of TNA. Remember that?

Anderson comes out and gets his mic. Says he’s gonna get a little closer to Morgan. Honestly, if ever there was a match I didn’t want to see, it would be between these two dorks. Morgan says he’s going to give Anderson the first free shot. Anderson goes low and hits Morgan in the nuts. Then Morgan makes a comeback using the Von Erich claw. He chokes out Anderson with the mic cord. Then Jeff Hardy runs out. He saves Anderson. Security get involved. Then security starts beating up two time world champion Jeff Hardy. The faces start getting in security’s face but security keep… I guess beating them up. It really didn’t look like that. They kept doing tackles and really sloppy looking grapples. I think they were trying to give the impression the security were aligned with Morgan but they looked really sloppy and it just looked like they were shitty security. D’lo, Snow and Kenney came down and told security geeks to fuck off. Tenay kept saying that one of the security guards was big Murphy, in a way that would suggest we should know who this. This segment started out great and then a million things happened and it fell apart. Textbook TNA.

Christy is backstage with Kennedy and Raven.

LOL WOOPS THAT'S JEFF.

He’s fat, I’m saying. Anyway, Anderson says that the security geeks are frustrated wrestlers who never got a break outside of being security guards. He says they wanted to make a name off Kennedy and Hardy. Is this seriously how Hardy is being used? Kennedy says they’ll have a match later.

Rob Terry vs. Kaz. AJ is sent to the back .  Kaz is squashed in ten seconds. Just annihilated. They JUST formed this new fucking faction. What a dork.

Morgan and the security guys are out. The security guys look like the most generic indy dudes you ever saw. Morgan wants nothing of Kennedy and tags in Murphy. He looks like tall Kevin Thorne. The other dude tags in with Kennedy. Murphy was doing shoulder charges on Anderson in the corner and Anderson would elbow him in the back and he wouldn’t sell.  Murphy took a whip into the corner and looked like another one of these green dudes who can’t take an Irish whip. Jeff went for poetry in motion but got a shitty clothesline from Murphy who proceeded to fall on his ass. This guy is horrible. The other guy tags in. This was hilarious. He whipped Anderson into the ropes and Murphy attacked Anderson who took a bump. The legal man apparently didn’t know this was happening and so still attempted some kind of shoulder charge or clothesline (they tried to cover it with an edit) and just faceplanted the mat. The crowd just turned on this. Morgan fucked off. This was apparently him being in character, but to be honest he might have just been fed up. As he left Gunner took a HORRIBLE mic check and a Swanton and mercifully it was over. Horrendous stuff here.

Christy wanted answers from Hogan about Eric’s announcement. He didn’t reveal much and said he had to go to New York. UP NORTH!?

Titties.

These two were in the ring for the announcement. Bischoff said he loved each and every one of the fans. He is such a horrid face. That came off as the most insincere thing I’ve heard in months. He said the beautiful Dixie had inspired him when she brought back the “E V2.0 guys”. Obviously Bischoff has NEVER been a fan of ECW. Especially because he was always accuse of stealing their ideas and talent.  He said he spoke with Spike executives about doing an exciting project for fans. To cut a long story short; the week after Hardcore Justice they’re doing a PPV quality show on Impact. For years people have been saying TNA’s PPV business is so horrible, and clearly they dont care about PPV, that they should just abandon it and experiment with TV specials with PPV quality matches. And at last they’re trying it out. So, good for them! Although I do wonder why they are doing this a WEEK after a PPV that they are presuming will do bigger numbers for them. Kinda undermines your little ECW experiment. But whatever. It’s progress.

Abyss comes out and says he was talking to THEM. THEY want the main event for that big show to be Janice hanging above the ring, and Abyss and RVD will have a ladder match to attain… “her”. Abyss promo was really good here. I hate this THEY garbage but he’s still a good promo. Bischoff gives him the match. Abyss tried to attack him anyway but RVD makes the save and hits a Van Daminator. But of course, AGAIN, the heel has to make his comeback and a million other people have to run in. D’Lo, Snow and Pat Kenney get involved yet again. As all this is happening, out comes Dreamer for the weapons match main event. His music his horrible.

Tommy has NEW GEAR and MMA GLOVES. What an athlete.

MMA gloves make it more realistic. Not pictured; board with nails called Janice.

They proceeded to have every garbage match ever. There was an ECW tree of woe spot. Dreamer even chanted “ECW” and not E V2.0. They announced Ultimate X for next week in the middle of this. They hit each other with a bunch of shit and then Dreamer took a slam into barbed wire for the loss. Not a big pop for the barbed wire spot. It’s been done a million times in Abyss matches. Just a lame lame main event.

Raven ran out with a chair and turned on Tommy. Shocking.

State. Just a state.

Then. And I swear to Christ this is true; he LICKED Dreamer’s face. TWICE. That was disgusting. Show ends.

This show was fucking horrible. God bless the Guns and Beer Money but they are just four men. They cannot counteract the tidal wave of shit that is TNA Impact. They had a fantastic TV match, but as usual everyone else dropped the ball. What’s new?

3/10

Show opened with John Cena. Crowd was insanely hot. Cena was totally beloved, at least during his entrance. Some boos when he started talking. The heat was just amazing. The crowd was into this one way or the other. I mean… ridiculous. Anyway, Cena is of course talking Nexus. He talked about how when Nexus wanted someone hurt… they got hurt. UNTIL LAST WEEK. Cena said that friends, enemies, whatever, Raw stood united to END NEXUS at Summerslam. Crowd cheered like he was a war hero cutting a promo on Iraq. Cena explains that they want to take over the show and maybe end it. Cena does some lame comedy about his team being the “Superfriends”. It was typical shite. Actually, below typical. Dave Meltzer recently said with regards to Cena’s promos; if The Rock got lines like this from writers he would laugh and throw it back in their faces. Cena needs to do that. Chris Jericho interrupted. He was much loved and got a BIG Y2J chant. That character is dead, fools. It’s 2010. Jericho cut a promo on being a part of “Cena’s team”. He talks about how he doesn’t want anything to do with Cena or the parasites in the crowd. He’s in it to get at Nexus and in particular Barret. Cena says he can have the team. All that matters is beating these dudes. Jericho said Cena would not DARE PATRONISE him and went off on this big rant before Cena knocked the mic out of his hand. Cena said it wasn’t about either of them it was about the BUSINESS. That’s a great line from Cena. The irony. Cena said Jericho is essential to the team. The crowd chanted Y2J again. Jericho said that Nexus wasn’t the only threat to the business. He said CENA was also a threat. He says Cena is just like Nexus. Taking what he wants, saying what he wants, interrupting people. Cena looked sad/mad. Jericho says after Nexus, he’s targeting Cena. Cena and Jericho squared off and then…

BEEP BOOP BEEP!!!

Mitchel Cole got an email. Cena and the crowd looked irritated. Cole announced that the Summerslam match will be contested under elimination rules. Makes sense. He said that Nexus would face seven RAW superstars tonight to give a preview of Summerslam. He said Jericho and Cena would work together tonight too, to see if they could. Then he said “if you’re not down with that, I’ve got two words for you…”. They were in San Antonio, so you had to expect that. Damn fine segment. 18 minutes of talking, and barring some brief comedy it really didn’t drag. Jericho and Cena were both on form and the crowd was eating out of their hands.

Back from break, Sheamus is out. Thought he was on commentary, no. Randy Orton is in action. Against… Jey Uso. These guys come out… to the most deafening silence. From this crowd, that sucks. They have a short, good match. The Usos are really freakin’ good. In just a short time they’ve managed to stand out. Anyway… get this… RANDY ORTON WON! I know shocking. He hits the RKO and gets the clean pin. The other Uso ran in. Sheamus tried to capatalise and hit his kick but he nailed the Uso and got RKO’d. Miz tried to cash in his briefcase but also got RKO’d. Huge ovation. Randy Orton just looked like a monumental star here. They continue to tease Miz cashing in. I’ll stick to my prediction that he cashes in on new champ Orton at Summerslam.

Backstage, Edge is sucking up to DiBiase saying he wishes he was on Cena’s team instead of Khali. No idea what this was supposed to be.

Sheamus and Miz are arguing after break.  Cole gets ANOTHER email. God I hate this shite. Sheamus and Miz will face Cena and Jericho later.  Oh boy. Tag teams who don’t get along.

Khali is annoyed. He shouts at Edge. Ranjin Singh translates. Didn’t he turn heel a few weeks ago? What wackiness this is. Edge says if he beats Khali, he’s off the team. I’m crossing my fucking fingers now.

Khali vs. Edge. As Khali is strolling to the ring, Cole says he got an email telling him that Lawler is on the team to oppose Nexus. Makes sense. Khali threw Edge around and slapped him.  Nexus came out. Edge bailed leaving Khali on his own. Big Khali chants. HA. Khali then… backed off. Nexus looked at him, he looked at them. It was all tense. And that was that. I have no idea what this was supposed to accomplish.

Nexus vs. a team of Raw dudes. Mark Henry, Evan Bourne, Goldust, Lawler, Tatsu and the Harts. Tarver pins Tatsu in less than a minute with his reverse powerslam deal. Heath took out Lawler during the break. Tyson and Heath in the ring coming back. David Hart beat down Slater. Slater eliminated a SECOND person with his finisher which is the exact same move as Dolph Ziggler’s. In came Goldust. Hugely over. Otunga takes him out with his spinebuster.  Sorry; “spinebuster”. Mark Henry dominates. Sheffield hits his BIG ASS clothesline and takes Henry out. Down to Tyson and Bourne.  It, of course, boiled down to Bourne vs. Nexus. Bourne kneed Barret in the face, knocked all of the Nexus off the apron,  but got caught by Barret and took his slam for the loss. Good match that got the Nexus over STRONG. They all hit their finishers, and looked crazy strong in a match thats identical to the Summerslam match. In terms of match quality this was a good TV match.

They beat up Bourne and hit the 450 on him.

Barret cut a promo about how dominant Nexus were. Big heat. Barret said the cracks were visible in team Cena. Come Summerslam; they would be exploited. Sheffield said Cena’s team was composed of individuals and lacked focus. Unlike Barret, Sheffield got “what” chants. Tarver did very well on the mic this week and also largely avoided the chants. Tarver said they were going to tear Cena apart.

Sheamus and Miz had a confrontation. Sheamus was pissed at Miz. Miz said they should have their match tonight and did another horrible Sheamus impersonation. Sheamus got pissed and slapped the briefcase out of Miz’ hand. This was great. These two are the best thing on the show.

Alicia Fox vs. Bella #1. Women segment. Jillian helped Alicia win. She tried to sing and Alicia kicked her. Shit.

Truth is on commentary for Morrison vs. DiBiase. Maryse looks hotter than ever. EVER. They had an okay little match which ended when Truth interfered to help Morrison, but they clunked heads and Morrison lost. Morrison refused a hand shake and left. Simple build to the Summerslam match. Anticipate a FIERY Cena speech next week. Cena was in fact watching on a monitor backstage. Looking sad.

Josh was backstage with Orton. He said he was going to beat whoever the champ was at Summerslam. It was like 10 seconds. Pointless.

Miz and Sheamus vs. Jericho and Cena.  Jericho was much loved. Real babyface heat in this one. He actually worked really well as a face, with Miz. Good TV main event here with lots of time. Jericho finally got the hot tag to Cena only to give him the Codebreaker before the attitude adjustment.  Miz pinned Cena. Great win for Miz. Great build for Summerslam. Then Cena slapped the STF on Jericho. Khali broke it up. Edge speared Khali. Morrison and Truth ran down. There was a big drama and Khali beat up Edge and Morrison and RAW went off air with Team Cena falling apart.

Okay show. Not as strong as last week. Built well to the PPV. They established Orton as a monster babyface, Nexus as super strong and united, and Team Cena as potentially divided and unable to cope with these dominant heels. Good stuff here. In terms of matches there was really only the main event to speak of (Nexus match was fine but more functional than entertaining).

6/10

DIXIE arrives, and the big billed main event is an explanation for why she invited the ECW geeks into the Impact Zone last week. Stay tuned. We also get the two advertised matches (Hernandez vs. Kurt, Match 2 of the title series) from last week, plus Joe vs. Hardy! Should be good.

But of course, we open with an unadvertised title match. Global Champion Rob Terry, who just resurfaced last week, takes on AJ Styles. Terry is put over as the longest reigning Global Champion. What a non-achievement. Match was not all that good, but AJ was really funny. He would hit a kick on Terry and celebrate like it was a big deal. He was high fiving Kaz and all. That was great. Anyway, in the middle of the match Tenay says Love will be stripped of the women’s title later. Good. At least they’re undoing their own stupid booking. Better than sticking to it right? Anyway, Kaz interfered and AJ won the belt. Fortune gets it’s first belt. I would appreciate if they built this match up, especially if they were giving the new group their first belt. Make it look important. Anyway, this wasn’t good.

Tenay and Taz ran down last week’s shenanigans.

Madison and Sarita were gossiping backstage about their respective rivals; Velvet and Taylor. Madison talked about Velvet’s big tits. You can tell Russo is writing this shit. Because the women are back to “bitch this” and “your tits” that. For a man of the lord his shows are quite chauvinist. Velvet wandered in and the two bitched and bitched with Lacey playing mediator. As with last week, the acting was humoursly poor.

Dixie was chewing out PAT KENNEY and AL SNOW BACKSTAGE. She wanted answers for last week. She said they should know better because they’re management. Wackiness.

Sarita and and Madison vs. Taylor and Angelina. Taylor is wearing the slutiest outfit of her career. She seems to be compensating for her weird face. Looks hot though. Sarita and Madison are just friends now which irritates the fuck out of me. EARLY HEBNER CUTS A PROMO. This was beyond horrible. Worse than Bret Hart. I think he says there’s no proof that Madison had assistance from one of the Beautiful People at Victory Road and so Angelina was striped of the title and Madison got it back. Then they had the match. It sucked. The two good girls were doing more bad brawling and the two crap girls were involved in the finish. The Motorcycle Chick showed up, proving it was not Sarita (Velvet accused her previously). Lacey and Velvet came out, looking perplexed. Madison, bodyguard woman and Sarita do a beat down. Lacey and Velvet looked hot as hell. Lacey is literally just standing around in her bra. Madison insists Lacey leaves with her. So Madison and biker woman drive off and Sarita and Von Erich follow… on foot. Shite segment, with no heat.

The TNA guys were shown arriving earlier… they were mumbling incoherently and then it ended. I have no idea.

Kurt vs. Hernandez. They mention his career is on the line. Drop that fucking gimmick. Immediately. Kurt went to ground quick but Hernandez started to dominate. Kurt got his big top rope suplex and his rolling germans. Hernandez kicked out of  the angle slam. God bless Angle, but these matches are actually growing quite tiresome. Kurt misses with a typical BEAUTIFUL moonsault. Angle won with the ankle lock. As I say, Kurt needs to change things up in a major way, but I can’t fault the good match and hard work.

Nash comes out. He shakes Kurt’s hand as he leaves. You know, last week when Kev’ was burying the young talent, he was being cheered. I would have avoided him shaking hands and hugging a top face, when he comes out to do a supposedly heel promo. Anyway he calls out Jarret and we go to break. There’s a cliff hanger.

Nash is talking about something… I am literally struggling to stay awake during this. I don’t want these fucks on my TV. I just don’t. This isn’t like when Cena comes out. And I’m not happy to see him. But whatever, I just see where the segment goes. I want to turn this off. I didn’t like these two in their prime. Kevin is talking about Jarret shitting into his punch. He asks him if he eats lots of almonds. Multiple times. The crowd cheer Nash. Jarret says he’s talking shit and blames him for getting The Band work and hurting TNA. Always with this shit about “you hurt this company”. Jarret is so unbearable. Speaking of unbearable, Nash mentions Jarret’s kids. Yes, another angle with Jarret’s kids. Nash says they’ll realise Jarret’s a prick when they grow up. I have no idea what this was about. I don’t care. It sucked.

Dixie is standing around backstage. She bumps into Kurt. Kurt is concerned BUT he trusts Dixie. And that’s all she asks.

Joe vs. Hardy. Of all the shit promoted for this week; this was not one of them. Again, if you don’t prioritise PPV, fine. But if you’re gonna give big matches away for free, ADVERTISE THEM. It is so silly to just do big money making matches for free. The first EVER encounter between Joe and Hardy. That could be a big deal. But is it? Of course not. The second the bell rings, Tenay says they’ve got Bischoff on the line to talk about Dixie and ECW. This is hilarious. This company sucks. It fucking sucks. The first ever Joe/Hardy match. Bischoff not at the show… AGAIN waffles on about Dixie and I don’t remember what he said. Joe and Hardy are brawling and as the call ends they’re in a rest hold. Joe whips Hardy into the rope. Hardy leaps over Joe but gets caught with a kick on the way down. That was great. Joe dominated and the crowd got behind Jeff big time. Joe hit the powerbomb/STF combo. He turned it into a crossface. Joe and Hardy started brawling as the time limit expired. DAMN fine match They fought after the bell.

Jarret and Dixie were having one of those mumbly “realistic” chats backstage.  She tells people to spread the word on good things coming. Sigh.

Morgan vs. Anderson. Talk about no buys. Anderson asks if there’s any assholes in attendance. Surely, at the Impact Zone. Morgan dominates. Anderson hits his finish out of nowhere. Match done. Short and bad, but not offensive. Apparently Morgan is in the dog house for whatever reason, it was mentioned in the Observer this week. Morgan beat up Anderson. Just like last week, they job the guy out and he beats up the guy who beat him. This just makes everyone look like a geek. No heat, but some piped boos.

Beer Money and the Guns; street fight. The reason I watch this show. Impossible for these two to have a bad match. Impossible, I say. Sabin does a big ass dive into the ring to kick off the brawl. On the ramp, Sabin does a 40 yard dash into a big drop kick to Roode’s face. Awesome. Shelley hits a double stomp off the ramp on Roode. Both teams start pulling out some plunder. Sabin got caught with a chair, doing a suicide dive. Shelley hit his downward spiral into the second turnbuckle, but with a chair in the corner. Great tag team offence as Shelley throws Roode a chair and Shelley hits a drop kick on it. Shelley got caught with a spinebuster but kicked out. There was a bunch of weapon shots and what have you. BOTH refs were bumped. Jesus. This match is supposed to resolve a controversy involving the titles. And the refs have now bumped in BOTH the matches in this series. Guns hit the Sliced Bread powerbomb combo, but the ref was down. Beer bottle to Shelley got Beer Money the pin. Again, great TV match shit finish. Beer Money get to choose the stip for next week.

RVD cuts a promo on ECW. It was an RVD promo.

Video package for ECW.

Dixie came out to a new theme and music. Weird. The dorks in the front row did the bowing thing. Marks. Dixie is hotter than so many of the knockouts it’s scary. She says she listens to the fans and they all love hardcore wrestling and stuff. So they bring out the ECW  guys to the shittiest knockoff ECW theme. Raven… I’ll say again… looks fucking horrendous. Tommy is limping because of his injury from last week. Foley says this is the first time she’s seen Dixie cut a promo… she says “No, I’m being real”, great line on this show. Everything else is fake, you see. She says what ECW in the 90s was like what Hogan did in the 80s. HAHA. What bullshit. They waffle on and on and on just having a fucking big-ass circle jerk. Tedious. Dreamer gets the mic. His voice is quivering. Already. On the cusp of tears. From the start. He says ECW and TNA are hugely similar. Lie. He says Taz was Joe before Joe. He says what Flair did for Lethal, Funk did for Dreamer. He said before the Beautiful People, there was Francine and Beullah. He said he came to Slammiversary and loved what he saw. He said at ECW One Night Stand 2005, he had closure. But “THEY” brought it back. He talks about how they ruined it and that. Some fan shouted “Vince sucks” and Tommy says “exactly”. He says he quit because of how bad ECW was ruined. Sure, sure. Tommy started welling up. He said only Dixie could bring his plan to fruition. He says he wont cry… bullshit. This is such God-awful TV. The promo is such pandering bullshit, the emotion is forced bullshit, the sentiment is tired old bullshit. Just bullshit everywhere. “I BEG OF YOU” says Tommy. The fans were loving this. Dunno what that says about them. Dixie says this is not about TNA, it’s about ECW. The fans chant for Sabu. Dixie and Tommy hug and he says they’re going extreme. They don’t explain what that means. They don’t plug the PPV. It just ends.

This show was the usual bullshit but with some great matches.

5/10

Showcasing TNA’s hottest tag teams, this two disc set is a must own for any wrestling fan looking for all the awesome wrestling of TNA and (almost none of the stupidity).

Disco one is the best of Beer Money, with matches against Team 3D, Lethal Consequences,  The British Invasion and more. With interviews from the team themselves and full length matches, it really showcases one of the hardest working, most entertaining teams in the last ten years. If there is an argument to be made for tag team wrestling in 2010, it’s that Beer Money are keeping the art alive and well.

Disc two follows the same format, but showcases the Motor City Machine Guns. The most exciting team in wrestling today, Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin show two of the qualities that make TNA potentially great; mind blowing X-Division athleticism, and fluid tag team offence that is unparalleled elsewhere.

The DVD isn’t perfect. Almost every interview in between matches is self-indulgent, shameless TNA testicle-hugging. Both teams find 20 different ways to say “TNA has better tag wrestling than WWE” without using those exact words. It is true, and they have a right to brag but they could have offered up a lot more to break up the matches and it gets quite irritating before you even finish the first disc. Also the direction is typically hideous. Even though it’s not live, it seems a lot of the PPV matches (namely the Bound For Glory Full Metal Mayhem match) have countless missed spots that make for infuriating viewing. On top of that, both Beer Money and the Machine Guns are cut off mid-sentence in almost all interviews in a very noticeable, sloppy editing job.

Some match choices are irritating too. The Beer Money DVD is an awful lot of “we’re great, we’re the future, but TEAM 3D IS WHERE IT’S AT.” There were four matches with 3D (some as partners, some as opponents) on the first disc and other sporadic appearances, with Beer Money putting them over in every interview. I don’t know why we needed the Slammiversary match between the two when we also got the much better Lockdown street fight. And on the Machine Guns DVD the first match is a horrible squash match with Magnus beating Sabin to a poor reaction from the crowd. Theres far too much cluster-fuck X Division nonsense on the MCMG side of things; 2 Steel Asylums, a handcuff cage match and a six man hardcore match where the emphasis was on the Guns getting taken out and Jay Lethal being on his own. It’s a very unflattering match selection that lets the disc down in a major way. There is some fun to be had with it still but it could have been much better.

That aside, this set is over 5 hours of mostly fantastic wrestling from two of the best teams in the world and we insist you pick it up IMMEDIATELY.

The ever interminable trio of King, Cole and Striker are on the talkie tonight.

Smackdown Money in the Bank match: Kane def. Drew McIntyre, Matt Hardy, Christian, Kofi Kingston, Cody Rhodes, Dolph Ziggler and Big Show

After clearing the ring early, Big Show broke the first rung of the ladder with his foot, before swatting another rung off with his hand. That was cool. They teamed up on Big Show and there was a sequence of different people all pulling each other off the ladders and scrambling up themselves. Ziggler came close but was hip tossed off the top by Christian. Matt looked to hang Christian up on the top rope but he landed on his feet. Everyone seemed to lose their place here and it became clunky. Matt got flapjacked onto a ladder on the second rope and Christian did his second rope choke on the ladder. That looked nice. Christian took a huge bump off the top of the ladder out to the floor being caught by Big Show. Or rather; landing on him. Kane began taking the announce tables apart but Drew cut him off before he could do anything.  Kofi got Drew on the table and hit a beautiful Trouble in Paradise kick to his head. With him out cold, Kofi got his intense face on and climbed a ladder outside the ring. He hit his big boom drop off the ladder through the table to a big pop. Awesome stuff.  Big Show did some big man ladder spots, squashing Christian and Matt under a ladder with a big splash. Then he got his BIG-ASS LADDER OUT. I dunno how heavy that thing is but Show legit struggled with it.  It is freakish. He got it in eventually. Before he could use it, Mr Dashing attacked his ankle with a small ladder. Kofi springboarded onto the big ladder and gave Show a nice tornado DDT. On his way back up the ladder Kofi was taken out be a BE-A-UTIFUL flying dropkick from Cody. Then a Cross-Rhodes on the ladder. Ziggler hit his Zig-Zag on Cody into the GIANT ladder which had zero give. Big Show was knocked out of the ring and buried under a pile of ladders. A bunch of guys tried to climb the giant ladder but it came down to Ziggler and Kane. Ziggler locked on his sleeper and both men fell off. Kane tried to throw Ziggler out of the ring but it was botched and Ziggler nearly tore every tendon in his leg on the top rope. He survived long enough to get tossed out of the ring ONTO the pile of ladders on Show. Then Kofi got chokeslammed on the pile. Jesus, these poor guys. Kane lawndarted Cody into the armoured truck that was by the side of the ramp. Nice spot. Christian and Matt Hardy were on the giant ladder and you could sniff the finish. I actually thought Matt might grab it. They both took big bumps off the top and necked themselves on the top rope. A chorus of boos as Drew peaks his head over the apron. He climbs but is cut off by Kane. Chokeslam off the ladder gives KANE the win. FUCKING KANE! IN 2010! Does. Not. Want. Match was probably too long, but it was the usual enjoyable Money in the Bank. Like MITB at Wrestlemania 25, the big men played their part and the little fellas took some mean bumps.

***1/2

Sheamus cut a promo on Nexus. He said he realised what everyone was warning him about now and he has picked his side. He made sure to state, however, that he has no respect for Cena. He said he got no props for his first two title wins, but he’ll earn respect when he pins Cena. He says he HATES Cena as all he wants to do is make mayonnaise jokes. Sheamus says he shall beat the SHIT out of this man in the cage. Not in those words. Claims he’s a bigger threat than Nexus. Damn fine promo.

WWE Divas Championship Match: Alicia Fox retains; def. Eve Torres

Daniel Bryan chants from a few dorks in the crowd.  They had a  very bare bones match with zero heat. That said, it was pretty good. You can’t get blood from a stone. Or make wrestling fans care about women with their tops on. Alicia dominated throughout as you may expect. Torres went for a senton but Fox got knees up. She hit her Axe-kick, safely for once, and got the clean pin. Weird finish, with Eve being beaten so clean. Good stuff by WWE women standards, but it went far too long.

**

Recap of the lame angle from Friday with Kane and Daddy SWAGGA.

Swagger was backstage on the phone to Mama Swagga. He tells her to shut up and that his dad deserved it and blah blah blah. Cheap heat segment.

Unified Tag Title Match: The Hart Dynasty retain, def. The Usos

Who could care about this? No one it would seem. Just the most basic tag match ever. Wasn’t bad by any stretch but these titles have never meant less, if you ask me. The Usos are quite good but no one really gives a crap about them. They’ve just been thrown in the deep end and they’re not getting over. Harts made a comeback as you’d expect and David won with his sharpshooter. A nothing match with a predicitable finish.

**2/3

World Championship Match: Rey Mysterio retains, def. Jack Swagger

Of course, Swagger went for the ankle throughout. Rey used his quick feet to keep ahead of Swagger but eventually got caught on a lionsault and Swagger began to dominate. Rey dodged a shoulder charge into the corner, and then hit a great seated Senton to the floor. Swagger hit his big Angle-style belly to belly of the top rope and went to work on the leg. Swagger tossed Rey around like a small child. Just toying with him. Rey did a nice split-legged moonsault. Swagger cut off Rey’s comeback, turning a lucha wheelbarrow into a german suplex. Swagger hit his gutwrench powerbomb but Rey got the ropes. Swagger attempted a big Oklahoma slam off the second rope but got Tornado-DDT’d. Awesome spot. Rey got his 619 but Swagger cut the senton and locked on an ankle lock. Great stuff. Rey gut the rope so Swagger hit the Vader bomb.  Rey wouldn’t say die and eventually as Swagger locked on the ankle lock, Rey’s boot came off and Swagger got rolled up for the win. Very good match. ****

Swagger beat on Rey after the match but Kane made the save. Kane. Mr Money in the Bank. He chased Swagger to  the back. Then as Rey was celebrating moments later, Kane reemerged with a ref and his briefcase. He was cashing in his shot.

World Championship Match: Kane becomes World Champion, def. Rey Mysterio

Rey tried to run. He was caught. He was chokeslamed. He was tombstoned. He was pinned. Kane was a huge babyface for this by the way.

n/a

The timing was just right for Kane, but GODDAMN does it suck for Rey. Two world title runs, two abominations.

Jericho and Edge face off and talk Money in the Bank.

WWE Women’s Championship: Layla retains, def. Kelly Kelly

Am I a chauvinist if I say how hot these girls are in my review? Well I don’t care. Kelly is still so awkward in the ring. They proceeded to have a shitty shitty match and I really couldn’t have cared less. And thats from someone who loves LayCool. Tiffany was also at ringside looking like the cheapest, low rent hooker you ever saw. Accurate description. Seriously. There was a horribly botched finish where McCool was unable to put Layla’s foot on the rope. Matt Striker did his horrible English accent after Layla won. This segment was offfensive.

-**

RAW Money in the Bank: The Miz def. Randy Orton, Edge, Chris Jericho, Mark Henry, John Morrison, Evan Bourne and  Ted DiBiase

Edge introduced the ladder early and let the rest of the competitors take each other out before climbing in and trying to steal the win. Orton cut him off. I was distracted in this match by the bickering commentators. Bourne attempted to get the case but Edge intervened. Bourne came off the middle rung with a hurricanrana. Orton got involved and did his DDT through the ladder rungs, even throwing a look at the ropes before the drop. Nice touch.  Morrison seemed to clunk his head off a ladder as he gave Orton the flying chuck. DiBiase and Miz double teamed Morrison who dropped them both face first into a ladder in the corner. Edge, Morrison, Orton and Jericho were all clawing at the case, when Henry parted the “red sea” as it were and all the competitors got hung on the ropes. Bourne slingshotted in with a ladder and kneed Henry in the head. That was cool. Then Maryse got in the ring. MARYSE. She struggled to get a ladder up and started climbing. This happened. She got near the top when Morrison intervened. He told her to get lost, and as he did, DiBiase climbed the ladder. Morrison cut him off. That was freakin’ wacky. Morrison had a ladder slanted against a turnbuckle outside. He ran up it, and pushed off another ladder on the inside to knock into a ladder in the centre of the ring and start climbing. That was freakin’ sweet. Even sweeter was Edge pulling Morrison’s feet through the rungs. Morrison was literally strung through the ladder, his feet hanging out one side, his head the other. Miz and Edge then used a ladder to brutalise Morrison, before Edge got Miz in the face. That was great. There was a huge mess of slanted and stacked ladders in the ring. Henry dropped Miz on a ladder ON Jericho. Sucks to be Jericho. Bourne nearly got up top as Edge and Orton were beating on Henry. Then Edge and Orton teamed up to press Evan over their heads OUT of the ring onto Henry. Nice. Then Henry got Codebreaker’d and speared. So he’s dead. A fine sequence there. They had this big complex structure set up. Jericho, Edge and Orton were climbing a ladder. Morrison was climbing an UPSIDE DOWN ladder leaning against it. Then DiBiase had a ladder bridge across the top rope and the ladder. Edge and Orton dumped that out of the ring with Ted on it. I thought at this time; someone is going to die. Edge got RKO’d. Morrison got RKO’d but before Orton could stand up he got the AirBourne. Again, just a great chain. The crowd went nuts. Bourne climbed. Bourne touched the case. Bourne got both hands. I was even marking out. Jericho cut him off. Jericho then got an RKO from a few steps up the ladder. Edge got dumped into the upside down ladder. This was just great. Orton nearly had the crowd. The crowd were on the edge of their seats. Miz dumped Orton onto the top rope. Miz climbed. Miz got the case unhooked. THE MIZ is YOUR MR MONEY IN THE BANK. Great match. Great great Money in the Bank. And the right man won.

****1/4

Miz cut a very boastful in-your-face promo.

The video package for Sheamus vs. Cena is entirely about Nexus. What a lame build.

WWE Championship Cage Match: Sheamus retains, def. John Cena (via Escape)

Sheamus is a big babyface in the building. Dunno what that’s about. Sheamus beat on Cena. And beat on him. And beat on him again. Cena was selling like death just a few minutes in. They were doing the boo/yay spot far too early too. Very poorly put together match. Cena was making little comebacks here and there, but getting cut off. Just typical stuff. Really quite boring. They were showing replays of Sheamus doing double sledges and clotheslines. No idea why. This was so underwhelming. There was great heat for Cena comebacks. This really should have been a more back and forth match than your standard Cena match. Sheamus got a sleeper and Cena did his Hogan impression powering up and carrying Sheamus on his back. Cena started climbing the cage with Sheamus on his back. I thought this was leading to a big spot but Sheamus just dropped down and took Cena’s legs away. They are determined to not do anything exciting in this match. Cena went for the Attitude Adjustment but Sheamus began climbing. Cena followed him and Sheamus fell. Cena did the Five Knuckle Shuffle off the top rope but missed Sheamus. Cole said that would take the STF out of the equation. I’ll remember that. Sheamus tied up Cena in the ropes. Leave. Just leave. Of course not, he has to beat him up. Then instead of using the door, Sheamus climbed OVER Cena. Cena got the bulldog off the top rope which was nice. Two count. Cena went for the AA again but got the back breaker instead. Crowd really went dead here. They had to sit through a slow beat down before the sequence of big spots. This was a match where they clearly had more time to fill than they wanted (think Miz and Truth at the last show). Sheamus hit his big kick, but Cena kicked out. Cena hit the AA but Sheamus kicked out. Nexus came out. Tarver had the bolt cutters. A REF took them and bailed. A FUCKING REF. Way to cut their nuts off. The Nexus turned their attention to the ref with the key. He threw the key into the crowd. Jesus. Ref in the cage got bumped into the fence. Sheamus tapped to the STF in the ring but no ref. Cena then fought with Gabriel on the top of the cage. Gabriel took a BIG bump off the top into the ring. The Nexus were fighting Sheamus and Cena as they tried to climb down. Cena had to deal with four guys, Sheamus had Slater. Sheamus won and LEGGED IT again. I guess Sheamus’ shtick is win by any means. Picked up by the end but FAR too much time and a real pain early on.

***

Sheamus was declared the winner as he sprinted away. Cena looked pissed. He beat on Darren Young and Tarver as the rest chased Sheamus. Cena looked pissed and we fade to black. Commentators talked about how the takeover of Raw continued. HOW? I have no conceivable idea what they plan to accomplish by arbitrarily running in on title matches with no clear objective. They attacked both champion and challenger so they were going to fail one way or the other, and this week Cena killed TWO of them on his own. This is a LAME invasion.

Overall a pretty good show by my counting. The two ladder matches stole the show which is good, the world title bout was very enjoyable, there was an UNGODLY woman’s match and an above average women’s match and a disappointing main. So to be fair it was a typical WWE show. If you’re a glass half full guy (I’ve resolved to take this attitude) it was a good show. If you’re calling it down the middle, and say it was average, I’d say you were pretty harsh but I couldn’t really argue.

7/10 - Recommended watch. Both ladder matches were great, I agree with one decision and not with the other, one decent women’s bout, one awful, one great world title match, one average… and then whatever the hell the tag team division is supposed to be these days.

This is the much talked about show that was taped on Monday. Reports from the iMPACT Zone claimed the main event angle was as good as the original Nexus angle a few weeks ago. Lets take a look.

–

They opened the show with a recap of the supremely mediocre Victory Road PPV, which you can see a review of a few entries back if you didn’t see it.

The announced the best of 5 series between the NEW TNA Tag Team Champions; The Motor City Machine Guns and Beer Money Inc, to settle the controversy surrounding the match at Victory Road. I guess that’s referring to the finish of the match which saw two referees counting a pin for each team, eventually leading to the match being restarted. Makes sense.

They also announced a street fight between Sarita and Taylor Wilde. Unless they had a match on Xplosion (which is like doing a RAW angle on Superstars) this is the first match I’ve heard of them having since the absurd break up of the team. And it’s a street fight. For free. Tonight. With no build. Doesn’t make sense.

Also; Jay Lethal will face off against Jay Lethal. Good stuff.

We get the updated TNA Top Contender Rankings, as promised.

#10 - Rob Terry. This guy just returned from months off of TV last Sunday. And he lost. Why is he in this list?

#9 - The Pope. He also just returned to inring action last Sunday. And like Terry, did a job.

#8 - Kurt Angle. I don’t like this storyline, for the record. It’s completely killing his opponent’s heat and to be honest, we really don’t need another Kurt Angle title reign, if that is where this is going.

#7 - Hernandez

#6 - AJ Styles

#5 - Jay Lethal

#4 - Samoa Joe - Don’t quite know what Joe has done since returning to warrant this.

#3 - Anderson - Same.

#2 - Jeff Hardy - And again.

#1 - Abyss - So the top three contenders are the same three guys who all LOST in a four way match at the last show? I like the idea of ratings in wrestling but they need to really really think about the list they’re putting together and book it in a way that the people on top are believable  as top contenders. In the same way that if you have a heel authority figure just announce that a guy is a top contender, people wont buy him as such, if you just throw together a list with no reasoning, people wont take it seriously.

Anyway, on with the show. Abyss comes out with his meat in his hand.

Pictures say a thousand words. Dunno what this one is saying.

Yeah yeah, lame joke I know. So yeah, he comes out with some meat. Taz asks “what’s with the beef?” I love Taz. Abyss cuts a promo on RVD. The crowd chants for RVD. Abyss says THEY have a plan for RVD, involving Abyss and his “girl” (the stick with nails). He says the plan is “beyond extreme”. Abyss then says the plan will be revealed later, after further instructions from THEM. Abyss calls his the stick “Janice”. He talks about how sexy she is and stuff. Then he says she has a dark side, and with his spit still wet on the camera, he beats the meat with his girl. I’m being serious.

This is like porn for Necro Butcher.

He started hitting the meat and the crowd did in fact chant “beat that meat”. Of course they’re not going to take this wackiness seriously. Then Abyss eats his own meat.

Wat.

Taz makes the obvious comparison to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This was just crazy. In a good way and a bad way. First of all, I like how this guy who just murders himself in the ring with glass and nails and barbed wire is now having to resort to eating raw meat to get over. Second of all, this was just such trashy TV that I was kind of cringing through it. But to be honest… it did make him look like a crazy dude. So, I guess if that was their goal, well done but it didn’t exactly make for great TV.

Mike Tenay was informed that there was an altercation backstage. Okay, here’s TNA’s problem. How often does this happen? It seems like every week Tenay gets word of some fucking fight backstage, or someone’s beat up or there’s a big pull apart brawl happening and security is involved. Every week they do this shit. If you want this type of thing to resonate, and not have people brush it off as just another TNA angle, how about you try NOT doing it every week?

Anyway, it’s Taylor Wilde and Sarita in a scuffle. I didn’t watch the show where they broke up but the report I read said that Sarita just beat her up. Is there any reason? Sign up to the forum and let me know if I’ve missed the point here. Anyway, they’re backstage throwing each other into a bunch of shit. Wilde throws a sign at Sarita. Or tries.

Miss.

Sarita is talking about it being all about her now. I guess that’s her motivation. Taz talks about how these two are the first ever TNA Knockout Tag Champions. Taylor seemed to get completely lost at one point. I guess this was an improved fight. Tenay says these two have a street fight later tonight. Then a few seconds later says “I guess this is the street fight”. The fight got sloppier as it went on. Sarita slapped on an arm submission and asked Taylor to give up. I guess it’s now a falls count anywhere match. And there’s no referee with you, you dumb bitch. Then we got to commercial and Tenay says to comeback because they’re having their street fight next. I don’t know.

Coming back from break, they’re still brawling but now it’s just at the side of the stage, coming out from the backstage area. This gets a bell. Sorry, what? You couldn’t officially start the match backstage, that would be silly but here at the side of the entrance ramp is okay? Anyway, I was watching this and thinking; I would never see this in WWE in a million years. I have to give TNA credit. A women’s hardcore match (particularly between two girls who aren’t just poorly trained models) is something only they do. But then again I also wouldn’t see such confusing stipulations in WWE, so it’s a toss up. Anyway, Tenay explains that the backstage fight was just practice and now the match is underway. Taylor lays Sarita out with a sloppy chair to the face which was poorly edited. Sarita throws water in her face and hides under the ring. She re-emerges a few seconds later jumping Taylor from behind. Sarita starts pulling the mats on the floor up.

Then Tenay says Douglas Williams and Brian Kendrick are having an I Quit match later. WHAT? Can those two not just have a match? Can they not just fucking wrestle? And WHY ARE YOU TELLING US NOW!? In the middle of this other gimmick match we’re supposed to be interested in. I mean, I’m sure no one is interested, but come on now. And more importantly; I get that PPV isn’t TNA’s preference right now so it makes sense to do this match on free TV, but why the fuck wouldn’t you advertise it? Why are you giving away these matches with no promotion and no build? I’m sure when the rating comes in and it’s the same as always they’ll be SHOCKED that no one tuned in for the street fight, ladder match and I quit match show. BECAUSE YOU NEVER TOLD ANYONE IT WAS HAPPENING.

Anyway, back on track, this shitty women’s match is still going on. Sarita comes off the apron and gets a chair to the chest. Sarita has a huge bruise on her arm. She got knocked into the crowd and decided to use someone’s hand bag strap as a weapon.

TNA! TNA! TNA!

Ref stopped the match and Sarita was declared the winner. This really sucked. They tried really hard, and for a garbage match with two women I’m sure it could have been worse but this was just no good. And as Sarita is celebrating this supposedly big win, we cut to the back. Some things never change.

RVD is backstage. He says he isn’t intimidated easy, referring to Abyss and his weapon.

Coming back from break, Impact appears to have been bumped for a cheap softcore porn flick.

"I want a pizza with LOTS of sausage."

It’s Bischoff’s assistant woman (forgot her name, but it’s Brooke from ECW) and she’s mouthing off to someone on the phone. Then Nash walks in. For those who haven’t been keeping up, Nash has been frustrated with the Hulk/Bischoff administration lately. Join the club. He wants TV time and he feels bad for The Band. He wants to talk to the bosses and the assistant says they’re not here. Nash stares at her tits and leaves. Then he comes back and says that they should go out tonight. And fuck, probably.

Up next is the I Quit match. Tenay says this is non-title. Well at least that makes sense. Match gets underway at a quick pace with lots of heat. Taz and Tenay don’t care. They’re talking about Nash. The finally start paying attention as Doug Williams starts taking it to Kendrick. Douglas throws a clothesline. Ref asks Kendrick if he quits. Douglas knocks Kendrick down with a punch. Ref asks Kendrick if he quits. Kendrick chokes Williams in the corner with his foot. Ref asks Williams if he quits. They start grappling on the mat. Ref asks Kendrick if he quits. He’s fucking in their FACES with every single move. Jesus. Doug locks on a Boston crab, Kendrick gets the ropes, but no good in an I Quit match. Williams sets up a gutwrench suplex. Referee asks Kendrick does he quit BEFORE the move. Even Taz calls attention to this. Again, before and after EVERY move the ref is asking this guy if he quits. This is interminable. Williams pulls out the climbing glove he used at Victory Road. I guess that’s his new gimmick. Kendrick makes his comeback and goes for his submission but Williams is fighting it. He locks it on and Williams gives. A five minute I Quit match. Just like at Victory Road, this was a potentially good match hindered by the stupid gimmick. I wanted to smack this referee so bad.

Then Kevin Nash came out. Kevin Nash! YAY!

"It's 2010, you old fuck."

"IRRELEVANT IN TNALAND!"

It sucks to be an X Division guy. The state of that division these days. And for seemingly the billionth time, they served as food for an older “proven asset”. And what does Nash want to talk about? HOGAN AND BISCHOFF! He wants TV time apparently. Who could conceivably care? Nash says he wont be replaced when he dies. Lie. We have Matt Morgan. He then implies he’s going to fuck Bischoff’s assistant with his giant cock. He starts calling himself a living legend and says if he cant get people’s attention he’ll take out some of the young stars to get attention. Well isn’t that awesome. I can’ wait. This was a heel promo but of course the crowd cheered. Because they’re conditioned to only care about the old dudes. Then…JEFF JARRET makes the save. I mean… shouldn’t A YOUNG GUY make the save? WHO WANTS TO SEE JEFF JARRET AND KEVIN NASH!? Jarret says it’s not about Kevin Nash any more. And he says it’s not about Jeff Jarret any more. Well at least he’s talking sense. Jarret puts over Lethal and talks about Kev’s ego. He says Nash is a glory-hound and an egotistical son of a bitch. Kevin Nash says, and I swear to God this is a direct quote;

“THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO SAY I’M THE BEST WORKER IN THIS BUSINESS”

I demand names and sources. Immediately. Nash says Jarret has him to deal with now. I have no desire to see this. This cannot happen. This main evented a WCW pay per view 10 years ago, and back then people were saying Nash was over the hill.

Nash is backstage saying Jarret is dumb for defending Hogan and Bischoff. Literally like 10 seconds long.

Wolfe is already in the ring. And with him;

She's unimpressed... I think... it's hard to tell.

He faces Joe and Rob Terry. Because Wolfe ran in on Sunday and cost Terry and Joe their match against Fortune. So they get a three way with the guy? Joe was loved as usual. Tenay put over Terry’s lengthy run with the Global title. Half of which was not televised. The guys stare at each other. And then we cut to the announcers’ desk where Magnus has arrived. During this shot we hear the match kicking off in the ring. This company just fails. On every fucking level. Cutting back to the ring, Desmond is trying to escape but is being dragged in kicking and screaming. Joe and Terry tee off on him and he bails. Magnus is calling Taz babes and talking about handsome he (Magnus) is. What? By the way, they did mention that Magnus was “back” after his extended absence but didn’t explain where he was. As Wolfe is knocked out of the ring, Joe and Terry beat on each other. Why? I thought this was just a joke match where they squash Wolfe to be honest. Is the title on the line? Why do they care who wins? Well whatever. Wolfe made a comeback and took it to Terry with Joe on the floor. Terry made a comeback before Joe came in and slapped on the choke on Wolfe who tapped. Nothing match, nothing segment. For more here’s Chelsea;

...

Taz said “look at the disappointment on her face”. What? Joe showed some respect to Terry before leaving.

Flair said he had a huge announcement later tonight. He said it was a big announcement that would change the direction of TNA. You are joking? That has to be a rib.

Up next; the first in the best of 5 series between Beer Money and the Guns. This first match is a ladder match. The winner gets a contract to decide the stipulation for match two. Beer Money jump the Guns from behind to get this underway. The ladder came into play pretty quick. Sabin got crotched on the ladder in the corner. That looked rough. They brought a second ladder into the fray and things got all kinds of crazy. Sabin tried to do a spot where he ran up a ladder in the corner to hit Storm but he slipped on a rung and it kind of fell apart. He made up for it later though.

HANGTIME!

They did some awesome spots with a ladder bridge between the railing and the apron. Thankfully the ladder didn’t give, which is a hugely over done spot in WWE. They really went a million miles an hour with some crazy spots. There was a ref bump at one point. In a ladder match. Sabin got the contract but Storm hit him with a beer bottle and took the contract for himself. There was two referees but Hebner snr was tending to Hebner jnr and so they saw none of this. What a shitty finish. This series is supposed to be RESOLVING the controversy surrounding the PPV match and they’re doing MORE bullshit finishes. Tainted an otherwise GREAT match. Not quite as good as their PPV straight tag match, as it was a bit clunky in places, but with more time and a chance to pace themselves this would have been a match of the year candidate. It really would have been better suited to PPV. All that said though; great TV match. The heels having the advantage in a best of 5 series is always the way to go, so kudos on that.

Backstage Abyss is attacking more food.

I HATE SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDZ!!!!!!

Never mind that shit though;

Pimpin'!

Pope is facing Matt Morgan. They went like… a minute. It was very basic. Hardly shocking, it was Matt Morgan. Pope won with the DDE Codebreaker variant. Of course Morgan beat him up afterwards. Because no one is allowed to get over on this show. Morgan beat the guy sideways and set up for the kick into the post. OF DEATH. Ken Anderson made the save. Anderson of course is trying to convince folk that he is a good guy these days. He acted like he was going to beat on Pope but he beat up Morgan. So I guess we’re getting Morgan vs. Anderson soon? That will be a technical marvel. Anderson extends a hand to Pope. Pope is wary. Anderson put Pope on the shelf for those who don’t recall. Pope gave him a nod but didn’t shake his hand. Interesting stuff. I like the angle. It’s kind of a rehash of the Anderson/Hardy stuff, but Anderson did take Pope out a few months ago and I like that they’re following up on it. It’s a nice change from TNA’s habit of abandoning angles when it suits them and WWE’s logic of all faces are mates.

Backstage we have more softcore porn setups. Lacey is trying to calm Velvet down. Maybe she should give her a back rub *cue saxaphone*. Anyway, Velvet has the TNA Knockout Titles in her locker. Not seen them in a while.

I like your makeup... Why not come a little closer and get a better look?

Velvet is pissed at Madison for being all high and mighty, or something. And apparently she’s annoyed that the Biker Chick is maybe getting into the BPs. Velvet’s acting = no buys.

Madison Rayne is in the ring, protesting about the decision on Sunday. She highlighted the incompetence of the referee, and explained the stipulation of the match. She’s right. She’s a heel, and she’s right. The decision on Sunday was mind boggling. The crowd is “WHAT”ing Madison. A WHAT chant in TNA. Madison says she could sue TNA if she doesn’t get the title back. I’d love to see that. The Beautiful People come out. These ladies are damn fine, if you weren’t aware. Velvet is pissed about a new girl being introduced to the group. What? She just explained that it’s not a Beautiful People member. Velvet is also annoyed that Madison said she didn’t need the BPs any more. I don’t remember that but whatevs. Madison said it was just the truth. Velvet wants to kick Madison’s ass. Angelina interrupts. She is a hideous crow of a woman.

EW.

She mocks their acting. Seriously. She’s right to be fair.  Angelina says she recognises Velvet’s tits and accuses her of being Motor Chick. Velvet says she has a better ass. Velvet says Angelia can have Madison cos she’s done. Velvet leaves and Angelia approaches the ring. Madison wants the title back. They do a cat fight. Then the chick on the motor bike comes in. Crowd dies. They beat up Angelina. And then they left. What a segment. These girls cannot act to save their lives. Just stupidity.

Jeff says Jay Lethal beat Flair on Sunday but tonight he faces the Charismatic Enigma.

That match is next. Jeff is looking very heavy. For those who didn’t see the pictures of him from the Brooklyn house show, check them out. He’s got quite the gut. Hardy is very slow and once again did not look in good form tonight. The ECW dorks appeared in the crowd during this match. Raven looked like absolute shit.

State.

Jeff went through all his spots. The Whisper in the Wind in particular looked lame. Tenay announces the stipulation for the Beer Money vs Guns match next week. It’s a street fight. They also announce Kurt Angle vs. #7 Hernandez for next week, with Kurt’s career on the line. Fucking million things going on. Can’t people just have matches? Why does the announcement have to be made DURING the match? While Tenay is waffling on, Jeff pins Lethal clean with his finisher. I could just bury my head in my hands right now. The guy came off what people are calling “the biggest win of his career”. He beat his hero. He moved up in the rankings. He’s also beaten AJ Styles and Kaz in recent weeks. Why in the name of God, did he fucking lose to Jeff Hardy? Can NO ONE get over in this company? I wouldn’t mind if Jeff was an all conquering center-piece of the show, but he’s not. He’s just another guy. And now so is Jay Lethal. This was fucking infuriating.

Abyss was backstage fondling his stick.

Flair is out with Kaz and AJ. He says they are the first two members of Fortune. He puts them over big. Desmond Wolfe interrupts and calls them wankers. He gets in Flair’s face and Flair says “you do not put your hands on God”. That was nice. Abyss interrupts with his big stick. Fortune gets lost in a hurry.

Abyss calls out RVD. RVD answers the call. Abyss says he will share the plan with RVD. The plan THEY have laid down. THEY are coming soon, he says. To take over TNA apparently. There is nothing RVD or Dixie Carter can do about it. Abyss says THEY want Abyss to take the title from RVD. “What chants” from the people. Abyss says they’re going to have a match. With “Janice” hanging above the ring. And there’s going to be all kinds of violence with tacks and glass and what not. Abyss then says it’s only a question of when and where? RVD says the title is his. He says he gets to set standards as champion and decks Abyss with the belt. He kicks the hell out of Abyss who then makes a comeback. Abyss goes for Janice. Foley appears on the ramp. Then the ECW guys come out of the crowd and beat up Abyss. Security comes out and they are dispatched. Then Doug Williams and Okada and someone else came out and they were beaten up. Taz was talking about how these guys weren’t employed here, to his knowledge. I’m certain they were bragging about Dreamer being signed a few months ago. And Raven and Stevey and Rhino have all been on TNA TV this year. So I don’t get the instinct of the TNA locker room to run to the ring like this is an invasion. Dreamer and in particular RAVEN looked absolutely horrible in this segment. Raven threwh a kick at a security guard that had to be seen to be believed. He is also fatter than I think he’s ever been. Then some agents came out, some of whom I didn’t even recognise. Just dorks with press passes around their necks. Terry Taylor, D-Lo Brown and Al Snow came to the ring. Al Snow turned on the TNA guys. AL FUCKING SNOW. More TNA guys came to the ring. This must have been like 20 against 6 and the 6 ECW guys were destroying the TNA guys. Pope, Lethal, Kendrick, Wolfe. All destroyed by these fat, old embarrassments. Al Snow and Raven gave Jay Lethal not only the most criminally counter productive beating ever, but it didn’t look too good either. D-Von ran down to join the ECW guys. Then the POLICE showed up. THE FUCKING POLICE. They threatened to MACE the ECW dorks. This is just terrible. Jarret was on the apron reasoning with the gaggle of brawling wrestlers. Dixie Carter got on the mic and said “STOP! I invited them”. You invited who? The ECW guys? If that’s the case, why are you telling the TNA guys to stop because it’s the ECW guys who initiated the fight? This sucked. A bunch of people who not only aren’t relevant in 2010 but also aren’t even in shape. The reports coming from the Impact zone that this was great TV were lies. This being mentioned in the same breath as the original Nexus angle would be beyond comprehension. This was quite embarrassing.

TNA’s back. I got my hopes up last week with that great show, but they found a way to let me down, as always. This invasion angle was hokey, it’s counter productive, it looked like shit, and it made zero sense. We’re supposed to care about Raven and Tommy Dreamer? We’re supposed to be intimidated by Pat Kenney and Al  Snow? Fuck off. That is my review of this episode of Impact; Fuck. Off. Check the ladder match on YouTube. As always the great wrestling is buried under mounds and mounds of dog shit.

This episode of Imapct taught us one thing; consider your source. When a report from the Impact zone tells you the ECW Invasion is better than the original Nexus angle - consider the source.

4/10

Go home show for the ladder match PPV. Lets see how it goes. Although to sum up how uninteresting this show was, I’ll just note that the biggest talking point on Tuesday morning was Jim Ross being edited out of the WWE opening video package. Replaced by Michael Cole of course. Mr David Meltzer reported that it was apparently because of the association with UFC, and of course Vince can’t punish The Rock or Austin these days. Other additions to the video are more clips of Morrison, Miz, Sheamus, Gorgeous George, the Undertaker’s BONG and a closing image of Cena from Wrestlemania 26.

Here’s tonight’s main event;

Darren Young apparently died after that close call with the announce table.

CAN THE ODDS BE OVER-COME?

Cena opens the show, cutting a promo on Nexus. Ten seconds in he did lame comedy about Sheamus. He talked about how Sheamus didn’t make the save last week and still fails to see that they need to work together to defeat Nexus. The crowd started out very pro-Cena but as the promo went on the boos grew louder. It was literally as though they were getting more agitated by his lame material. He said he was going to replace Sheamus’ heart with his… butt. UGH.

"Fuck you, internet."

Cena said Sheamus could prove he was the real deal on Sunday. He did more lame jokes. He says Sheamus is a two time champ because Cena fell through a table the first time and Nexus interfered the second. Oh man. Fookin’ berried. What a line. Cena talks about the Nexus match later and Darren Young being deceased.

Then the team of Emo Alphabet Soup appeared on the stage.

The NWO it aint.

Cena said it was the clan known as “NNNNNNNNNNNN”. That was good. Wade said they would destroy Cena later and blah blah blah. Cena got all fired up but then…

BEEP BOOP BEEP.

Michael Cole gots an email from the anonymous GM. Huge heat for this. The crowd hate this shit. Cena says something like “Michael Cole you rascal flascer” or something. This guy. This guy needs to be throwing this shit back in the writers’ faces. He needs to grow a pair and, dare I say it, be a bit more like Hogan. Or Nash. Or Austin. These people may have abused their power to an absurd degree, but there is something to be said for using your standing in the company to your advantage. As the top man in the business Cena should be vetoing this comedy shite, especially within the context of an angle we’re supposed to take seriously. Big “what” chants for Cole. The GM said no one could interfere in the handicap match and Nexus must tag in and out. Rule breaking will warrant suspensions. This segment was heated, but I didn’t enjoy it at all. Cena needs to ditch the comedy in a hurry.

The lovely Eve is on commentary for the next segment. This should be good. Alicia Fox is in action. No heat for her. She needs new music in a hurry. She’s still using stock music. Gail Kim takes on Alicia. Eve sounds absolutely petrified on commentary. It can’t be easy being a diva. Considering half the time you have to just stand around and be pretty, and then all of a sudden you’re a wrestler, and that means you have to do things like go on commentary on live TV with no experience and try and carry an angle off. So yeah, this wasn’t good.  The match wasn’t better. No heat for this early on. One dork tried to get a Daniel Bryan chant going. It’s over dude, move on. King tries to put over how Alicia is improving in the ring and talks about how she always has new moves. Sure. Then Alicia hits the Axe-kick of death. COMPLETE DEATH.

Jesus.

Cole gets another email. Because Alicia was dastardly last week, Eve gets a title match on Sunday. One PPV; two womens’ title matches. Oh dear.

The Hart Dynasty are out. For all the bitching people did about tag team wrestling in 2009 and how the Harts should have the belts and not Jericho and Big Show, the titles are significantly worse off on the Harts than they have been on other teams. A team of two stars will always mean more for titles and title matches than a team of two dorks. Just because the champs wear similar tights and have a gimmick name doesn’t make the state of tag team wrestling any better. Tag team wrestling is good when it’s good and people care. Speaking of not caring, the Usos are taking on the Harts. It feels like these two have been feuding for years. I’m so bored of this. And isn’t this the title match on Sunday? I guess the girls are involved here and wont be at the PPV. The match is pretty enjoyable though. I like the Usos even if no one else cares. It’s spooky how much David Hart looks just like Davey Boy Smith. Jimmy Uso pins Dave with a splash, setting up the title match on Sunday. This was what it was.

Jericho and Wade Barret are conferring backstage. Jericho refuses to comment to Mathews. Barret then turns his attention to Yoshi Tatsu who made the save last week. Tatsu says something in Asian, Barret pulls this face and says;

"YOU WOT?!"

LOL.

Then Nexus do a hate crime on Tatsu and the crowd boos. David Otunga grabs Yoshi in a MUAY THAI CLINCH and gives him an extremely sloppy, homo-erotic beating. That is hilarious. Then Tarver hits him once and as usual decides to make himself look like as big a goon as possible.

O_O

DiBiase and Maryse head to the ring. They’re really trying with DiBiase. They dressed him up real sharp, gave him the belt, gave him the hot girl. But to be honest Maryse is just leagues ahead of the guy in terms of charisma and look and… just everything. Speaking of which;

Hawt.

Ted says he must introduces the hottest couple in WWE. Referring of course to himself and the Money in the Bank briefcase.

Je suis unimpressed.

Ted says when he wins the title he’ll shower Maryse in gifts and what not. He says he’s going to win “Money in Bank”. HE’S SO RICH HE DOESN’T CONFORM TO GRAMMAR. John Morrison is out. Oh God. Not during a talking segment. He says Ted shouldn’t shower Maryse in gifts, because the French don’t shower. Oh. I get it. Yeah. Then Maryse said something in French which was hot. Morrison offered to translate. NO. Please no. He did some John Cena comedy which lead to DiBiase beating him up. Morrison made a comeback and tried to hit StarShip Pain but Maryse pulled DiBiase out of the ring. The crowd loved this, but it died for me with Morrison’s promo. But hey, whatever gets the guy over with the crowd, I guess.

They had a wacky graphic for the Brady Bunch skits. Oh by the way, there was Brady Bunch skits. Florence something or other was hosting and she was the Mam on that show. Santino was backstage with her and it was implied he wanted to fuck her. There was a laugh track. They built up a tag team match later between Santino’s team and Regal’s team. Regal interrupted. He did some bad joke about Gilligan being the GM of RAW and did the greatest face off all time;

Regalol

Regal got slapped by Flo’. This was zany and I laughed.

Edge video package again. The same one from last week; hyping Money in the Bank. This was good stuff.

Randy Orton vs. Edge. Orton’s pop was ridiculous. So many internet critics like to bitch about how he’s not a good face but the crowd would disagree.

Voices etc.

The contrast between the skin tones of these two men is weird. Orton is like orange. Edge is pasty as hell. Anyway, they had a good back and forth match. Much better than their match at the PPV two months ago. Crowd was loving it. Quick sequence of finisher attempts and signature moves lead to the finish, with Jericho running in and distracting Orton long enough for Edge to win with his Edge-O-Matic. Don’t think I’ve seen that end a match in years. After the match, Edge got a codebreaker and Jericho got an RKO. Evan Bourne ran in and kicked Orton in the face, he went for an AirBourne but Orton turned it into an RKO MID-AIR. That. Fucking. Ruled. Crowd went insane. Great segment.

Mongoloid Steve Austin was backstage. Josh asked him why Nexus were returning to NXT tomorrow. Dude ignored him. Skip then bumped into John Morrison. They had a stare down and Nexus beat up John Morrison. Good beat down segment.

Miz came out and began cutting a promo. Michael Cole got an email. I cannot wait for this gimmick to end. Anyway, long story short, because he injured R-Truth, Miz now has to face his replacement in the ladder match. It’s Mark Henry. So not only do we have to watch a shitty match tonight, but Henry is in the ladder match on Sunday. They brawled to the floor and Mark charged into the GM podium which got a nice thud. Miz poured garbage on Henry and looked intense. His quest to eliminate all minorities continues.

Time for comedy. Team Regal vs. Team Santino. Look at this team of goofs:

Yes that's Doink. Yes it's 2010.

Santino’s team wasn’t a whole load better. It was himself, Khali, Koslov and Goldust. Poor Ryder deserves better than this. To cut a long, tedious story short; they had a short, shite match with some lame comedy. Afterward, Ms Brady Bunch made out with Khali. And I mean made out. Gross.

CM Punk/Money in the Bank video package. Again, good stuff. WWE never disappoint in this department.

"Sorry Jeff, we're sending you back to Orlando."

Edge cut a promo where he ripped off Orton’s gimmick. Lots of talk about voices in heads and what not. I’m very bored of this man.

Bourne was getting medical treatment backstage. Who should saunter up?

"Awight Fella"

Sheamus! Direct quote, above. He cuts a very Irish promo using various terms that I’m sure confused Americans. Do they know what “lads” means. Sheamus basically anticipated Evan. Nexus walked up and Sheamus said Bourne was singing Cena’s praises. Nexus beat up Bourne. Quite a vicious beatdown too. Good stuff there. Then Nexus came up to Sheamus. Skip threatened him and he RAN. HE FUCKING SPRINTED OFF. Like a dear.

RUN, WHITEBOY, RUN!

He asked a stagehand where Cena was.

Cena vs. Nexus. This was about as good as a six on one match can be. They worked over Cena, who would make occasional comebacks only to get cut off and outnumbered. Simple stuff. Cena took a bunch of finishers before eventually being pinned by Gabriel after the 450 splash. Right move there.  Not even Cena should be able to withstand six on one. Cena then attacked Barret and got a chair from ringside. He hit Slater and Nexus regrouped. They surrounded the ring and got ready to attack. Seemingly out of nowhere, Cena was busted open. Just when all was lost, Sheamus ran down for the save with a chair. First thing he did? Accidentally dropped it out of the ring. Nice one fella! Show ended with the two rivals who are supposed to be in a cage match on Sunday, standing tall with chairs.

Very typical Raw. There wasn’t a lot of wrestling, but what we got was good. There was some good promos. Some bad promos. The Nexus angles were good. They weren’t great. There was some laughs, but there was a lot more unfunny groans. It was just Raw. The biggest issue though was that it really sold no pay-per-views. This is the problem with running an angle on your TV that you’re not ready to follow up on PPV. They don’t want to do a Nexus PPV match just yet because it’s too early, so they’re doing Sheamus vs. Cena but that’s not what’s given priority on the TV, so ultimately there is no interest in the program.

5/10

We got a video package putting over Abyss, and talking about the mysterious “they”. Tenay opened the show telling us Angelina Love and Kurt Angle’s careers were on the line tonight. Funny stuff.

Ultimate X Match (Win also attainable by Submission): Doug Williams (c) retain; def. Brian Kendrick (Submission win)

Very fun earlier on as they remained on the ground.  Just some good chain wrestling. Kendrick tied Williams up in the tree of woe. This prompted Taz to tell the ref to break up the illegal hold. In this Ultimate X match. First big spot was a back suplex off the top rope from Williams. Then more ground work. Doug chased Kendrick up the X structure. Taz noted that Williams seemed to have miraculously overcome his fear of heights. Kendrick got knocked off the structure and hung on the ropes. Williams then jumped off the X. Stupid. Why not just climb? He went outside, pulled out a glove and slapped Kendrick with it. That was great. He put on the gloves and began climbing the structure. Like any other X Division guy. Fear of heights; ignored. Kendrick followed and tried to hook some kind of move on Williams but they both fell. What a failure. Then Williams locked on a submission and won. Worst Ultimate X match I’ve ever seen. **

Brother Ray cut a typically good heel promo. He asked Christy if she was going to cry. She screamed no. That was that.

Brother Ray def. Brother Devon and Jesse Neal

As he made his entrance, Brother Ray hid at the announce table. He jumped Jesse, mid entrance. What a goon. No Devon. The cut backstage where they showed Devon’s locker-room barricaded shut with the sound of Devon’s voice calling out to “BUBBA”. I dunno who that is. What ensued was the same lame match we got last match. Bubba just beat the guy up for a while. The ECW dorks appeared in the crowd and distracted Bubba. Neal speared him and he kicked out. Wow. Why? Why kick out of the guy’s finish? Jesse looked like such a twerp in this match. Moore ran down. Bubba used a chair while the ref was distracted with Moore. It’s a fucking three way. Since when do DQs count? Devon finally came out. They teased him hitting Jesse but him and Bubba began fighting. Neal tried to spear Bubba but got Devon. Then Neal was bubba-bombed and pinned. Again, what a dork. This was complete shit. DUD

Knockouts Title vs. Career Match: Angelina Love wins title; def. Madison Rayne via DQ.

The breasts in this match. Good lord. I mean. Good lord. Also; Madison had a wedgie. A big one. Oh my. This is why I watch TNA. Match was pretty solid. Two ladies here who are getting better. There was of course some bullshit. Madison brought a chair in the ring. Not a DQ. Angelina kicked it in her face. Not a DQ. Then… someone drove in on a motorcycle. I am not lying. This is what happened. They cut to the crowd and some leather wearing chick with a helmet was in the crowd revving her motorbike. The motor chick ran in and beat up Angelina. DQ. The ref said it was a DQ and the title went to Angelina. But the stipulation was “the title will change hands if a BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE member ran in”. As Taz correctly assessed; we do not know if this is a Beautiful People member. This would be a great heel move (without the motor bike, but with the helmet) but they fucked it up by having the referee just assume it was a member of the BPs and awarding the title to Love. Fucked up finish. And a fucked up title change. 1/2*

Anderson cuts a promo. He does his asshole shtick. He talked Christy’s tits. He discussed his opponents and made pot references about RVD. This was not good.

AJ and Kaz are out for their tag match. Their opponents are; ROB TERRY. Yes, Rob Terry. He’s just back now. That’s dumb. His other opponent; SOMOA JOE! Now that’s a smart move.

AJ Styles and Kazarian def. Samoa Joe and Rob Terry

So Kaz and AJ taking on this new dream team. Early on Kaz and AJ couldn’t work together and neither wanted any of Rob Terry. They got decimated as both faces ran wild. Then they started to work together, as Tenay explained; they realise they have to work together to overcome these odds. That’s a good story for the match. Flair wants them to work together and during this match they realise they have to. Thumbs up there. They dominated the faces and worked them over. Match was very enjoyable. AJ and Kaz win when Desmond runs in, trying to gain favour with Flair. Joe beat up Desmond. Good stuff. ***

Abyss cuts a promo with Christy on his “girl”. The stick covered in nails that is. He talks a whole lot about THEY. THEY made him make the stick. THEY showed him how. And he was paving the way for THEM. Dumb. Taz says the stick isn’t legal in the four way match later. It should be and I’ll wager a weapon is used later and no one does anything.

Cage Match:  Hernandez def. Matt Morgan

This took forever to start. They talked about it forever. There was a video package. Then they looked at the cage forever. What took them so long? It was up and ready a good five minutes before this started. It was “escape rules” only. Fucking why? This is just a night of vintage TNA. Just bullshit left, right and centre. They brawled early and an awesome spot from Hernandez; Morgan was crotched on the top rope and Hernandez did a springboard of the top rope into a dropkick on Morgan. Great. Lots of cage use, early. Morgan dominated, eventually hitting his Footprint kick thing with Hernandez on the top rope. He posed for like a full minute. He could have just walked out. This was so stupid. Then he went back to work on Hernandez. So many times this happened. Eventually he went to the door but decided to go back in. Ah, vintage heel move that. Hernandez makes a comeback and climbs the cage. He does a dive OFF THE TOP. Hernandez here. This giant. Anyway, it looked like shit and he missed. That looked bad. Morgan then handcuffed Hernandez to the cage and decided to climb. Hernandez of course broke free and did his big dive out the door to the floor. That dive was cool, everything else was shit. 1/2*

Flair promo with Christy on Lethal. She says the world is watching. LOL. Flair cut yet another awesome promo. God, he’s great.

Jay Lethal def. Ric Flair

Lethal’s entrance is so horrible. Bad music, and he has a new robe that says “living the dream”. Ew. To say the least. They did the basics. And I mean the basics. This was a toned down version of every Flair match ever. Tenay said Flair couldn’t go as well as he once could. Because it’s 2010. HIS WORDS. Flair took some chops in the corner, came out doing some punches and did the Flair flop. Is that spot ever not good? I love it. Superplex on Flair. Damn that looked rough. Flair locked on the figure four. Hebner tried to step over the submission but changed his mind half way so it looked like he was just teabagging Lethal. Lethal did the Flair bump over the top rope before strutting 0n the apron to the annoyance of Flair. He hits a sunset flip but Flair tries to escape EXPOSING HIS ASS. Yes. This really is every Flair match ever. But I love it. Lethal wins with the Figure Four. Good stuff this, with great heat. ***

Afterward; Lethal said “Hey mom, I DID IT!” That was sweet.

Jeff Hardy cut a short, shite promo.

Tag Team Championship Match: Motor City Machine Guns become new champions; def. Beer Money Inc.

They put over that Sabin and Shelley have never won the belts before, just as this one begins.  This was awesome. Just awesome. It started in standard form with Beer Money getting the heat on Shelley. Sabin made the best damn babyface comeback I’ve seen in years. Amazing offence, taking out both Beer Money members at the same time. Beer Money comeback and everything was just a flurry of highspots. Scintillating stuff. Guns hit lots of big spots. ROBERT ROODE did a huge tope to the floor. Guns hit an awesome neckbreaker/splash double team on Roode but Storm had the ref blinded with beer. Earl Hebner came to make the count but it was a kick out. They kept going back and forth with lots of near falls. But get this everyone… the finish was shit. Yeah. No, seriously. I know. SHOCKING. So, Brian Hebner, the original referee came too. And instead of Earl leaving or whatever, they just both refereed the match. Stupidity. AND OF COURSE, we got the double pin finish. Despite the fact that both refs were conscious and should have known who was legal and who wasn’t. So, anyway, the match was immediately restarted.  Hitting their double team move the Guns eventually won. First title for them. Other than the stupidity at the end, this was fabulous in every regard. ****1/4

Kurt Angle def. The Pope

This one was just as you’d expect early. They grappled and went back and forth. Angle dominated with lots of great suplexes, as you’d expect. Pope fought back with some suplexes of his own and a lovely STO. Crowd wasn’t as into this as you might think. Last match exhausted them, it seems. Kurt broke out the rolling germans which the crowd just loved. In another vintage Kurt spot; he played possum as Pope went top rope and got belly to belly’d. Pope hits a version of his DDE (the one that resembles a codebreaker) but Kurt kicked out. Then Pope kicked out of an Angle slam. This is becoming a trend. Kurt is far too dependent on near falls these days, and it’s killing the heat for them as time goes on. Ankle lock from Kurt. Pope fought out of it once, but was caught the second time and tapped. Good match, somewhat under-delivered though, and the Kurt Angle formula is becoming quite transparent. ***1/2

RVD says he’s gonna shove the 2×4 up Abyss’ ass crack.

Four Way Match for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship: RVD retains; def. Abyss, Mr. Anderson and Jeff Hardy

Abyss has his stick, of course. Borash does the intros as usual. He’s very good in this role by the way, he announces all matches. Similarly, Christy was very good all night backstage. Abyss was outside the ring at the start. Big love for Anderson. Lots of triple teaming the monster early, with all three men doing ten punches in the corner. Some arguing over the pin, of course. From here, it was just every four way ever. Bunch of brawling, breaking up of moves and pins, and the occasional double team offence. Anderson did a dive to the floor at one stage. That did not look good. This was four guys really not trying hard. These four are not renowned for their work-rate and it really showed here. Very lazy and a bit sloppy in some places. Crowd also didn’t care much as it went on. They did the standard four way tour of doom spot and no one died. I was relieved.  The near falls rolled through and ultimately RVD won with his splash. Not good. *3/4

Abyss tried to use his weapon after the match but RVD avoided it. Lame ending.

The show as a whole was a mixed bag. Some good, some bad. There was more bad than good but the stuff that was good was well worth seeing. I’d say check it out.

6/10

This show is like washing the dishes. It’s a chore. It’s not even a big chore. It’s not a big labour that I detest or that I find hugely annoying. It’s just something I have to do. And part of the displeasure of this show is the waiting and the anticipation. I can’t sit on my arse and watch the telly because I know I’ve to wash the dishes. I can’t waste a Friday playing with the PS3 because I know I’ve Smackdown to watch. And it’s not without it’s charms. Just like how I keep my iPod on when I’m washing the dishes, there is some good to be taken from Smackdown, it’s just outweighed by the tedium of the rest of the show. This analogy is a bit of a stretch but I’ll sum up by simply saying; this show aint what it used to be.

After the pyro… the show opens with:

THE PARTY IS OVER.

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN. HE’S BACK! Visa issues sorted, both in real life… and in story lines. Before he can open his mouth, he is interrupted by charismatic enigma Teddy Long. Long teases this poor McIntyre fellow who is standing in the ring with his head hung and his dignity robbed. Drew kisses Teddy’s ass and Long says he’s just doing so because Vince is gone. Long says that now Drew is on a level playing field with the rest of the roster. Drew, who has been humbled badly as of late, completely agrees. He goes on to say he thinks Teddy Long should be put into the Hall of Fame next year. The crowd boos… I guess they don’t like Teddy. Drew cuts a promo about Long being inducted to the HOF in his hometown next year in Atlanta (where this show was taped, for the record), and at the same event, Drew says he’ll main event with the World Belt. Teddy says Drew can get there by winning Money in the Bank. BUT WAIT A SECOND PLAYA! YOU AINT IN THE MONEY IN THE BANK LADDER MATCH! He goes on to say that if Drew wants in the match he should get on his knees and beg. What a douche Teddy Long is.

Douche.

Recap of Teddy begging for mercy from Drew. Followed by an “on your knees” chant from the crowd. Drew gets on his knees. Teddy feeds him lines to spout off about how great Mr. Long is. Drew does it and looks all sad. Long says he’s not in the ladder match still. This poor guy. He got screwed at the PPV (you’ll remember he had Kofi pinned clean and Teddy wouldn’t count) and now this. Teddy says Drew must beat Kofi to get into the ladder match. Yes, we get that mediocre match yet again. Oh boy. Okay segment.

Here’s the qualifying match for the final spot in Money in the Bank on the blue brand:

Dorks.

Remeber the first Money in the Bank? Imagine one of these characters being in there.

So anyway, that match is next. Some good heat for Dolph. As her nephew approaches the ring, Vickie gets on commentary. Matt Striker helps adjust her headset and calls her a “cougar”. I’m convinced no one in WWE knows what this word means. So the match starts in typical fashion, with the heels double teaming MVP. Matt Striker is very enjoyable sucking up to Vickie. Todd Grisham plays the DEFIANT BABYFACE, questioning how right it is to have MVP in this almost-handicap match. SWEAR TO GOD. Grisham is the next Rock. Matt and Vickie’s exchanges are disturbingly sexual. I mean, it sounds like porn dialog. Sorry, I’m getting sidetracked. Apologies if the wacky commentary distracts me from this Chavo Guerrero bout. Match is pretty solid. Not a bit of heat. Some fans are behind MVP’s little comebacks but no one gives a shit about the heels. And seemingly no one gives a shit about the goofy ladder match. Big superplex from MVP on Dolph got a pop. Vickie was concerned. To ease her, Matt breathes “are you okay” and rubs her poonany. That last bit isn’t true. Chavo contemplates pinning someone. Seemingly for 20 minutes. Just staring at the prone bodies. Scintillating TV. Then Dolph turns on Chavo too… it’s like Michaels and Jannety all over again. MVP made his big fiery comeback but Vickie pulled the referee out of the ring as he went for the cover. Dolph Ziggler slapped on the sleeper and got the win. This segment was five stars for it’s stupidity, I had lots of fun.

They hype up Big Show vs. Swagger. Let me get the popcorn.

We get another Alberto Del Rio vignette. It looks the same as last week’s and fuck knows if it’s not because I certainly wasn’t paying close enough attention last week to distinguish the two. I am mesmerised by how dull this is and can’t be arsed to take notes or screen caps.

Some little fan in a Mysterio mask is being tended to by the doctors backstage.

DAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWW

Look how small he is. I dunno if it’s perspective or the doctor is just stacked but fuck. Josh asks the doctor how bad the injury is (it was apparently caused by Swagger’s ankle lock last week). The doctor speaks directly to Josh and points at the foot whenever he’s making a point. This is like; concerned mother Josh panics after her son is hit by the ice cream truck and the doctor tells her it’s just a sprain. Quite weird. And people worried Rey would be treated like a child like he was during his 2006 title reign.

SWAGGER bursts in. He tells everyone to get the fuck out and slaps on the ankle lock. Now… before I tell you the rest of this, remember this is supposed to be a SERIOUS angle. This man is a vicious predator attacking the much loved world champ. He puts on this ankle lock and proceeds to DRAG the pathetically weak Mysterio through the backstage area. By his foot as he wails in pain.

Not making this up.

Eventually Jack smashes his knee into the ground and swings Rey into the wall like a rag doll. This is like what JR used to say about the Big Show to put over his size when he beat on other wrestlers; it was like a man playing with a child. This was a big dude just annihilating a feeble little dude. After posing, Swagger proceeded to lock the hold on again and drag Rey out to the arena . This feels like it lasted an hour. And Swagger’s ankle lock looked like. TOTAL. FUCKING. SHIT. Batista’s ankle lock was better than this. Big Show made the save as the world champ lay in tatters. It at least had heat, and Swagger looked like a beast but FUCK Rey looked beyond pathetic here.

Of course they recap it after break.

Christian comes out as they recap last week’s Peep Show segment. Matt follows. “Awesome” I thought. This could be a good match to build to the pay per view. No. Turns out they were teaming. After they beat each other up last week. And against team No Heat too. Hawkins and Archer come out. Hawkins no sports a suit jacket during his entrance. This is like if the Dudebusters were supposed to be taken seriously. They aren’t though; their gimmick is they’re dorks. Hawkins and Archer are meant to be intimidating.

Look at the shoulders.

Even the commentators don’t care about this team. They spend a large amount of time discussing Money in the Bank. And why not? Obviously this match is meant to showcase the talent that’s actually in the ladder match right? So, Matt Hardy does a job to one of these dorks and the segment ends. Seriously. Okay, it’s not as simple as that. But it did annoy me. The team IN the ladder match on Sunday LOST to the team not doing anything. The actual finish did at least get over the “everyman for himself” concept of Money in the Bank. Christian (maybe) turned heel by attacking Matt Hardy to a chorus of big boos. Hawkins picked up the pin. Match was short and no good.

Kofi vs. Drew. “Lets go Kofi” chants from the kids early. They did some good grappling early, before Drew locked on a chinlock in the first minute. Jesus. How tired are you, really? Match was pretty fun, once it picked up. Kofi missed his big kick but hit an awesome reverse kick on the rebound. The crowd was really into the near falls. After using the turnbuckle, Drew hits his DDT and gets in the ladder match. BOOO say the crowd. Very good stuff here.

Should flash a graphic on screen saying "SYMBOLISM". IT'S A BIT TOO SUBTLE.

They recap the silliness with Punk and Serena last week.

Rosa Mendes made her now weekly cameo, in another 10 second backstage segment where some more important character walked past as she was exercising in a manner that highlighted the jiggly-ness of her lovely breasts.

A few seconds later, Punk and Gallows walk past... and Rosa is never spoken of again...

This started with her wanting in LayCool and they said she must work out first. Who the fuck remembers that?

MORE ALBERTO. Didn’t pay attention.

Punk and Gallows are out. Gallows talks about Serena’s shame last week and calls her out. She comes out and is all… sorry and stuff. This was one of the most melodramatic, unconvincing promos I’ve seen in a while. Punk and Gallows were staring at her, unapprovingly, as she groveled. Gallows said she was pathetic. Who the fuck could possibly care about this? It’s a silly, poorly acted soap opera between the TOP HEELS on the brand. Do we sympathize with Serena? Is she a face now? Is she an alcoholic babyface? Punk says Gallows is out of line, and that he forgives Serena. They pipe in some shocked noises that were totally unforgiving. Gallows looked angry and left. Oooo, tense. Serena said she wouldn’t fail Punk again. They hugged. Piped in some boos for that. In reality, no one cared about this shit.

Promo for the WWE Title Cage match. That really is an A+ feud compared to what’s going down on this show.

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASHING. CODY. RHODES. Is out next. He has new music. It’s a vast improvement on the old stock tune he had. He also has a new mini-tron, and this is quite inventive; basically one part of it is a mirror, and as he looks into it, it actually does show his reflection on the other side — live.

LOOKIT! AWESOME!

God, that’s great. Anyway, Dashing Cody faces Scruffy JTG. JTG always gets a pop, no matter how much he’s jobbed out or left off TV. Just further highlighting how the E dropped the ball with the Cryme Tyme split and not moving J up the card. This was quite dull. No real heat. Not even for JTG’s comeback. Cody looked impressive as usual, but still no heat. No one gives a damn about the guy. I guess we need to give the new gimmick a few weeks, but it’s not exactly electrifying fans yet. Easy win for Cody with his pinwheel finisher.

A DASHING Victory!

Kelly Kelly is interviewed by Josh who announces she has a title match at the pay per view. In her YouShoot DVD that I recently reviewed, Maria Kanellis said Kelly had real tits…

LIES, WOMAN.

Layla interrupted.

I don't have a caption... we just need more Layla greatness.

Kelly got in her face, but Michelle jumped her and she was double teamed. Not like that.

Big Show cut a promo about how painful the ankle lock is. The most pain he’s felt in his leg. He said Swagger viciously slapped it on Rey earlier, and got a little upset. I swear to God Show looked like he could cry at any moment. I know this guy has acting training and does want to get into movies, but fuck this was great.

Swagger vs. Show. Oh boy. Big Show ran wild early. You should see the man hit the ropes. It’s a joy. He does it like a normal person but he’s fucking huge. Great TV. Swagger soon dominates and works the ankle. Then they fight outside. Then they get counted out. Fuck. Me. Can Swagger actually win a match? If you’re working so hard to get the guy over as a beast, why have him get counted out or DQ’d all the time? Anyway, he beats up Show on the ramp and is kidnapped by Kane. Kane takes him to a room and puts him on a chair. Swagger acts shocked and seems to create the illusion that he can’t leave the chair despite not being bound to it. Then this happens.

LOL.

Kane blames Swagger. Swagger says it wasn’t him. Kane was intense as usual, but Swagger was like… amateur hour stuff. Middle school play, as the Americans might say (maybe). Swagger says he has an alibi and he’ll show us next week. Kane says if he doesn’t buy it, Swagger goes to hell. Then the show ended.

This is the goofiest show on TV. And also; completely irrelevant. There is no incentive to watch this show in terms of angles or stars you should care about. But to its credit, much like I said with the crazy cast of characters on NXT season 2; the wackiness can be a plus, and you can have some fun with this show if you don’t take it seriously. And unlike NXT, there actually are some good matches and good segments on this program.

A mixed bag as always, but some stuff worth checking out.

6/10

They recap Titus O’Neill being eliminated then the “brooding, serious NXT theme” plays. OHHHHHHHHHHHH IF WE CAN GET THROUGH THIS…!!!

Then they play the somehow even worse theme; Wild and Young.

Show opens in typical fashion, with Matt Striker in the ring addressing the WWE Universe. He mentions the winner getting a PPV title shot. With all the shenanigans going on on RAW with the season one winner, I can’t imagine anyone takes this stuff seriously. Striker introduces the pros, who all get good reactions. Zack Ryder is sporting PLAID tonight. PLAID. 2010! LayCool came out to a face reaction which was weird from the Atlanta crowd.

Zack says he is perplexed by Titus’ elimination. Sure, sure. John Morrison is up next, to speak. Big girly pop. Morrison actually doesn’t embarrass himself. He says Titus should have stayed, and he would vote off The Miz. That got a laugh.

Out come the rookies. Lucky Cannon got a weirdly good reaction. WHY? He’s not good. Kaval also got a pop, not strange in a big wrestling city like this. Percy Watson was also loved. Silence for pretty much everyone else.

The dudes cut promos. Husky intimidates Striker. Again. Sigh. Old hat, mate. Riley is pissed off about his positioning, and disses Kaval. Kaval cuts a babyface promo on the WWE Universe, which gets pops.

Striker introduces the “Talk the Talk” challenge. For those that don’t remember from season one; this is just a promo cutting challenge. Last season it saw Wade Barrett really step up to the plate, and Gabriel really really not. Striker says the winner of this challenge will host their own talk show next week on NXT. Yay, I guess.

PERCY WATSON is first, his topic is glasses. What? He cuts a promo about needing vision to succeed. He does OK. Kaval’s topic is chicken. I’m not lying folks. CHICKEN. He talks about the other type of chicken ie. a coward. He says he isn’t one. Pretty much it. He says he will succeed with the help of the WWE Universe. Matt Striker says he was patronising. Fuck off. I mean seriously; this guy is fucking annoying. Eli Cottonwood cuts a promo on mustaches. The guy’s topic sucked, he sucked. God he’s awful. Mike McGillicutty cuts a promo on “BREATH”. This is such a simple concept and they’re fucking it up with wacky topics. Mike does very very well, and says he’ll take folks breath away. Husky Harris has to talk about doorknobs. He doesn’t even bother. He gets big boos. Lucky Cannon has to talk about deodorant. He loses the crowd quick. Alex Riley has to talk about pigeons. He says he’s the head of the roost, and the others are just six pigeons. VERY good from that man. Striker gauges the crowd and announces Percy the winner. Not a bad segment, but not great. Twenty minutes in, and all we’ve had is wackiness.

Commercial for Money in the Bank. Have to say, I am excited. It’s a fun match, and the commercial they put together made it look exciting. Also interesting to see if they’ll elevate someone.

Percy vs. Mike. The respective pros are on the apron “coaching”. Well that’s stupid. MVP is wearing some kind of khaki suit. That’s stupider. Anyway, the rookies have a very bare-bones move. After like two minutes Mike Hennig or whatever it is wins by SUNSET FLIP. A SUN SET FLIP! That… was some bullshit.

They recap the keg carrying thing, with multiple replays of some people’s runs. Jesus. This show is only an hour and they just WASTE time. We had 20 minutes of shit, a three minute commercial just to get a TWO minute match. Now this.

Speaking of bullshit. They do one of the pros talking head videos for Titus O’Neill. Titus O’Neill who was ELIMINATED last week. God. Again, a waste of time. Completely. The video was good … but what was the point?

Recap of Titus’ goodbye speech. Wow.

Commercial for RAW with all of Nexus vs. Cena.

Miz vs. Kaval! Finally, something worth watching. The respective coaches are on the apron. This is so unnecessary. LayCool play great babyface managers.  Good match, nice and competitive. Kaval’s big offence was VERY over with the crowd. Miz countered Kaval going up top and hit the Skull Crushing Finale for the win. Very good stuff.

The pros discussed Cottonwood. Highlighted his shittiness.

Raw Recap featuring dramatic music.

Money in the Bank card rundown… come the fuck on.

HUSKY HARRIS video with pros critique. It was… okay. Two minutes until the over-run and no main event yet.

Cody and Husky come out for the main event. On the hour.

*COMMERCIAL*

Fuck’s sake.

Nexus are showing up on NXT next week according to this ad. Okay.

Three minutes after the hour and out comes Mark Henry. They wasted so much time on this fucking show and now the show is ridiculously late. Who’d stick with this? Anyway it’s Lucky and Henry vs Team Dashing Harris. Very dull match, the highlight of which was Cody having to move the ref out of the way, as he intercepted him hitting the ropes. Cody pinned Lucky again for the win.

This show fuckin’ sucked. Once again, Kaval was pretty much the only redeeming factor. And that isn’t any “internet darling” bullshit, that’s me being a fan of wrestling.

4/10