BRM Reviews the 9/19/2013 Impact

[Big Red Machine]

MAGNUS PROMO AND E.G.O. BEATDOWN- I’m quite sure what it is, but something about the style of the promo made me feel like this really should have been on last week’s show.

MAGNUS PROMO- he challenges any one member of E.G.O. to fight him right now. All of them wind up coming out and beating him up, then Joe and Sting make the save and Sting challenges E.G.O. to a six man tag team match tonight. A good segment. So good, in fact, that it makes me question what the purpose of the last segment with the backstage beatdown was?

MANIK & SABIN (& Velvet) BACKSTAGE- Sabin was good. You really can’t tell if he is just going to be a frustrated babyface or actually go heel. I also like how Sabin and Velvet have not appeared together backstage for YEARS and then once their relationship is mentioned, they are suddenly in backstage segments together.

JEFF HARDY vs. MANIK- 5.5/10
Manik loses yet again and doesn’t even get to look good in defeat. And this guy is supposed to be the future of the X-Division?
During the match, Taz tried to compare Sabin and Velvet to Ken and Barbie, but with his Brooklyn accent, it sounded like he was comparing them to the famous couple of “Ken and Bobby.” This amused me greatly.

SABIN JUMPS MANIK AFTER THE MATCH- so rather than have him have a confrontation with Jeff Hardy, who is a big superstar which would help solidify Sabin’s move up the card, they appear to be setting him up to feud with Manik, who has just lost cleanly to Jeff Hardy and who would do nothing but return Sabin t the spot he was in before he won the World Heavyweight Title. Maybe they are going for a three-way feud, but either way Manik should have gone over clean with a roll-up here.

SABIN PROMO- very good

TNA KNOCKOUTS TITLE MATCH: Mickie James(c) vs. ODB- 4.5/10
BOOOO! Why the f*ck would you take the title off of the hottest heel (and overall best act) in the company?
POST-MATCH STUFF- EY and Joseph Park both com out to celebrate with ODB, and just a few seconds later, Bro-Mans come out and start cutting a promo on all three of them. Joseph Park grabs a mic and says “how dare you diminish the new Knockouts Champion ODB.” Sorry Joe, but if you want to know who is really diminishing the new Knockouts Champion, it is the idiots that booked a new segment to start about thirty seconds after she won the title, putting all of the focus on starting an undercard tag team feud instead of on the title change.

ERIC YOUNG (w/Joseph Park and ODB) vs. Robbie E. (w/Jessie Godderz)- DUD!
If the whole reason that EY took this match when the challenge was made to Joseph was that Joseph couldn’t wrestle in a suit, why would you have the match (which consisted of Robbie bumping into a turnbuckle and getting pinned with a schoolboy) be something that Joseph easily could have done without getting his suit dirty?
Then Robbie E. cuts a promo saying that the match shouldn’t count because he was challenging Joseph and not EY (good heel stuff). He then calls Joseph a fat bastard and once again challenges him to a match… and apparently being called a “fat bastard” is enough to convince Joseph to take his suit jacket off and step into the ring, despite his earlier reluctance.

JOSEPH PARK (w/Eric Young & ODB) vs. ROBBIE E. (w/Jessie Godderz)- DOUBLE DUD!
Oh. Look. THE SAME F*CKING MATCH AS BEFORE!
POST-MATCH BEATDOWN- apparently one shot to the back is enough to put Joseph down for a while. They set up and then hit EY with what I assume is their finisher (though we don’t know because they have never actually won). They then send Joseph into the ringpost which causes him to bleed so he goes all Abyss on their asses. So, for those keeping track at home, the entire results of this eleven minute segment were that the jobbers looked like jobbers and Joseph Park did the same Abyss-ing out thing that he has been doing for ALMOST A YEAR NOW (with almost no progression at all, to boot). And TNA thought that THIS was worth crapping all over a title change they had been building up to for about a month for.

One week later, we still apparently don’t have any sort of medical update on Ken Anderson.

Tenay is trying to get Taz to admit that Bully’s action last week were wrong. He says “Bully crossed the line last week and you know it.” In a completely normal tone of voice. FIRE TENAY!

ACES & EIGHTS SEGMENT- horrible… aside from Knux, who was great!
Bully leads Brooke Tessmacher to the ring by a chain connected to the lady-parts area of her crotchless pants. So Bully is fine doing things like this which are sure to upset the censors, but he usually shies away from saying the words “balls” or “ass” on TV. Okay…
Anyway, Bully says that he has only one person to thank for the fact that he retained the title, and everyone in the world aside from the Aces & Eights Job Squad behind him saw this swerve (the the person in question was Tessmacher) coming a mile away. The Job Squad is upset by this, and I assume it will be the impetus for some eventual turn on Bully, but nobody is going to care because no one will have any sympathy for them because they are f*cking idiots for not seeing this coming after the way he treated Devon and the way he pissed on all of them in favor of Tito.
The sh*tty acting brigade then gets the chance to show their lack of charisma. Wes starts to complain that Bully is giving “her” all of the credit, so Bully forbids Wes from using pronouns when referring to Brooke. I swear to God this actually happened.
Garrett says that since Brooke came along Bully’s judgment has been bad. Bully tells both chumps that if they ever speak up to him again he will smack them in the face because they were nobodies before he brought them into the club.
Then Knux got the chance to cut is promo and it was great! He pointed out the steep decline in Aces & Eights membership, including the lack of the unnamed chumps that we saw last summer (though his count for how many members were left in the club is a bit off, he forgot about Taz, and I assume that Tito is still a part of the club, he just isn’t allowed to show up on Impact anymore). He says they have all sacrificed themselves for Bully because it was good for the club… but for the past year it has all been about doing things for the good of Bully Ray rather than for the good of the club.
Then the promo fell apart because of his last line: He says that Bully forgot that it is “bros before hos.” This would have been a great line, except that Brooke hasn‘t been the driving force here! Bully’s desire to keep the title belt on himself has been. And Bully was showing the same inordinate amount of love at the expense of the others to Tito when Tito was around, too.
The other problem with this line is that is you really can’t get angry at Bully for defending his girlfriend’s honor.

MEM PEP TALK BACKSTAGE- okay.

JAMES STORM & GUNNER vs. CHAVO GUERRERO JR. & HERNANDEZ-
Chavo cuts a heelish promo claiming that the match won’t happen because he isn’t medically cleared to wrestle. Gunner then cut a promo challenging Hernandez to a fight. This was still inappropriately confrontational, but he came off like more of a babyface this week. Like he really deserved the nickname “Mr. Intensity,” so good for him. Anyway, we got…

GUNNER (w/James Storm) vs. Hernandez (w/Chavo Guerrero Jr.)- 4/10
So the super-strong Hernandez lost clean in four minutes. How are these guys supposed to be a threat to the tag champs?

THE MAIN EVENT MAFIA vs. E.G.O.- 6.5/10
During this match, something happened that brought a HUGE smile to my face. Joe and Magnus hit a double team move and Taz said “great teamwork by the former tag team champions!” Magnus then went for a cover, and in contrast to Taz, Tenay just said. “Cover. Magnus. Escape by Kazarian.” And then Taz actually called Tenay out for his sh*tty job performance, flat out telling him “you bring us into it.” I’m not sure that this smile will ever leave my face.
The match was standard babyface in peril stuff, but well done. During the recap of the match, Tenay tries to sell us some BS that Sting about to get the submission victory for his team before Roode used the baseball bat, but neither Sting nor the guy he had in the Scorpion Deathlock were legal, as was evidenced by the fact that Roode got the pin on Magnus right after afterwards after Magnus took the baseball bat shot to protect Sting. And boy was that baseball bat shot stiff. The mat was almost certainly gimmicked (dear God I hope it was), but it looked f*cking scary on TV.

AJ & DIXIE SEGMENT-
AJ says that Dixie buying the company “broke up the chemistry” of what made TNA great. Whether or not this is true, the fact remains that Dixie buying the company saved it from going under, so I’m really sure how you can blame her for that.
After that, which I can forgive for the sake of the angle, this rocked. I like that AJ is actually acting heelish… except that he is doing so to prove a babyface point.
Then Dixie comes out and we get the same f*cking fake apology swerve that Anderson did last week in the beginning of the show, and once again, everyone saw it coming.
As for the rest of Dixie’s promo. It was certainly passable, even approaching decent. I was expecting much worse. I think a lot of my problem with this was that I cannot watch this promo without imagining just how much more awesome Vince or Steph would have cut it. At least they did the ending right.

Overall, an okay show from TNA, but they do have my interest to see how this AJ Dixie thing plays out. They have actually set the seeds quite well here for some AJ to win at BFG because of interference from Anderson (so that AJ can claim that the belt makes the best and Dixie can respond that he isn’t the best because he needed help to win it). I am most interested to see what Sting and Hogan’s opinions on this are.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Mike Tenay- “Look how quickly and unpredictably Jeff Hardy goes to the top!”
UNPREDICTABLY? Have you never seen a Jeff Hardy match before? He did the f*cking Whisper in the Wind! He does it EVERY MATCH! And apparently “Professor” Tenay still hasn’t caught on after calling almost six years worth of Jeff Hardy matches.

[cero2k]

Then Knux got the chance to cut is promo and it was great! He pointed out the steep decline in Aces & Eights membership, including the lack of the unnamed chumps that we saw last summer (though his count for how many members were left in the club is a bit off, he forgot about Taz, and I assume that Tito is still a part of the club, he just isn’t allowed to show up on Impact anymore). He says they have all sacrificed themselves for Bully because it was good for the club… but for the past year it has all been about doing things for the good of Bully Ray rather than for the good of the club.

i can't believe it took me this long to see such a great promo by Knox. He was great, awesome voice and great delivery\

AJ & DIXIE SEGMENT-
AJ says that Dixie buying the company “broke up the chemistry” of what made TNA great. Whether or not this is true, the fact remains that Dixie buying the company saved it from going under, so I’m really sure how you can blame her for that.
After that, which I can forgive for the sake of the angle, this rocked. I like that AJ is actually acting heelish… except that he is doing so to prove a babyface point.
Then Dixie comes out and we get the same f*cking fake apology swerve that Anderson did last week in the beginning of the show, and once again, everyone saw it coming.
As for the rest of Dixie’s promo. It was certainly passable, even approaching decent. I was expecting much worse. I think a lot of my problem with this was that I cannot watch this promo without imagining just how much more awesome Vince or Steph would have cut it. At least they did the ending right.

My first problem with this was that i'm just not sold on anything here. they're obviously trying to recreate the Summer Of Punk II, even with the fake news that AJ's contract is up the night of Bound For Glory, but at least with Punk there was still some sort of reality that made you wonder whether it was legit.

Second problem is that while AJ is trying to shoot, it doesn't come off as a shoot like Punk's. nothing really hurtful was said, no 4th wall breach. Then Dixie comes out and well, she sucks at acting. She did well, but still felt scripted as fuck.

lastly, something that really bothers me is that Dixie will add to the number of heels in TNA that we've seen that can't take a bump, or at least won't. The reason why WWE has good heel GMs is because they'll at least take a bump when necessary, and here, Hogan couldn't really take one when heel, and you know Dixie won't be taking any Style Clashes.

Oh and I forgot, for this to work, AJ needs to win the title at BFG, and do it against DIxie's wishes to keep the title away from AJ. But this means that Dixie must try to help Bully Ray win, but doing so, she's aligning herself to Aces and Eights, thus antagonizing Hogan, Sting, MEM, and practically TNA. it doesn't make much sense, so let's see how they figure this one out

[Big Red Machine]

AJ & DIXIE SEGMENT-
AJ says that Dixie buying the company “broke up the chemistry” of what made TNA great. Whether or not this is true, the fact remains that Dixie buying the company saved it from going under, so I’m really sure how you can blame her for that.
After that, which I can forgive for the sake of the angle, this rocked. I like that AJ is actually acting heelish… except that he is doing so to prove a babyface point.
Then Dixie comes out and we get the same f*cking fake apology swerve that Anderson did last week in the beginning of the show, and once again, everyone saw it coming.
As for the rest of Dixie’s promo. It was certainly passable, even approaching decent. I was expecting much worse. I think a lot of my problem with this was that I cannot watch this promo without imagining just how much more awesome Vince or Steph would have cut it. At least they did the ending right.

My first problem with this was that i'm just not sold on anything here. they're obviously trying to recreate the Summer Of Punk II, even with the fake news that AJ's contract is up the night of Bound For Glory, but at least with Punk there was still some sort of reality that made you wonder whether it was legit.

Second problem is that while AJ is trying to shoot, it doesn't come off as a shoot like Punk's. nothing really hurtful was said, no 4th wall breach. Then Dixie comes out and well, she sucks at acting. She did well, but still felt scripted as f**k.

lastly, something that really bothers me is that Dixie will add to the number of heels in TNA that we've seen that can't take a bump, or at least won't. The reason why WWE has good heel GMs is because they'll at least take a bump when necessary, and here, Hogan couldn't really take one when heel, and you know Dixie won't be taking any Style Clashes.

Oh and I forgot, for this to work, AJ needs to win the title at BFG, and do it against DIxie's wishes to keep the title away from AJ. But this means that Dixie must try to help Bully Ray win, but doing so, she's aligning herself to Aces and Eights, thus antagonizing Hogan, Sting, MEM, and practically TNA. it doesn't make much sense, so let's see how they figure this one out

1. See, I think your mistake here was in automatically assuming it is supposed to be Summer of Punk-esque. In the cases of both Summers of Punk, the idea was that Punk's goal was to take the belt and go somewhere else for the purpose of humiliating the company. I think that AJ (especially if he is going to be fully established as a babyface) will use the power that comes with the belt and the threat of going elsewhere with it to effect change in the company.
I also think you are wrong about AJ's contract being up at BFG. I thought he said that he actually didn't have a contract right now.
As for there being no breaking the 4th wall, I think they did it in a completely kayfabe way, just like Punk did in WWE.
I think that Dixie would have come off as a lot less scripted if she hand't started with the fake apology. If she had just come out and started blasting AJ.

As for your last point, I think it will be very interesting to see what they do because it would certainly feel like they are really shaking things up, and it would actually be an excellent way to write Hogan out of the company if they don't want to renew his contract.