BRM Reviews the 12/26/2013 Impact

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING VIDEO PACKAGE- good. I like the phrase “a choice that lasts a lifetime,” but I really think they need to make that come true. Let Magnus be a heel for years. Take a pro wrestling cliché and turn it into something real again. Do their best to make this really feel like a moment that changes Magnus and how everyone sees him forever, like they have done with Bobby Roode.

OPENING SEGMENT(S)- a mixed bag, but mostly very good stuff
Spud is settling into his stooge role fantastically well. Everything he did here with Jeff was great! I cannot wait to see him start comically overselling babyface’s finishers. Maybe he’ll take Jeff’s Twist of Fate-Stunner like The Rock taking a Stone Cold Stunner.
Some of the fans in the front row are really distracting. My eyes keep going to the guy with the Santa hat and facepaint on. His facepaint looks vaguely enough like something Seratonin would have worn that I keep waiting for him to jump into the ring. Also, a note to the guy trying to throw up the AJ symbol: when you don’t have the gloves on, you’re not doing the AJ symbol… you’re calling for the Diamond Cutter.
Dixie teases a big announcement for something about next week’s show, but she is interrupted by Jeff Hardy. Jeff is angry, but only wants a minute to get something off of his chest. Spud complains that this isn’t on the format and Jeff and Spud have the aforementioned awesome interaction. Jeff chokes spuds (which Spud oversells hilariously) and then, just when it look slike Jeff will finally get to cut his promo on Dixie, EC III jumps him from behind.
Dixie is about to her announcement again, but Sting interrupts her. Sting says “I’m sick and tired of these entitled punks running around here and thinking that they can do whatever they want, say whatever they want, without suffering severe consequences.”
Care to elaborate on that, Stinger? Because the only person who has come out and done something they technically aren’t allowed to do (aside from you) is Jeff Hardy… and even if we ignore Jeff’s long and storied career (he is a twenty year veteran and has been world champion of the two biggest companies in the world right now), he is totally the babyface here and given the events of last week’s show, he is perfectly justified in trying to cut an angry promo on Dixie. Either that, or Sting is actually going to criticize EC III for coming out and defending his aunt against a scary, dangerous man who has an axe to grind with her.
Sting says that he isn’t leaving the ring until he and the fans get what they want, which is apparently Sting beating up EC III. Well then what are you wasting time standing around cutting a promo for? He’s right there on the ramp! GO GET HIM!
Then Sting says the equivalent of ‘hey! Didn’t Spud get a job here because he wanted to be a pro wrestler?’ Good idea, Stinger. Remind everyone that they shouldn’t try out for British Bootcamp, because even if you win the competition, the best you’ll be able to do is be a stooge.’
Anyway, because Sting wants to beat up EC III, he demands that Dixie sign EC III vs. Sting, one-on-one tonight!
No. Sorry. That’s what would have happened if this made more sense. Instead he demands a tag team match pitting EC III and Spud against Sting and Jeff Hardy. In other words, Sting would like a match where EC III can hide from him on the apron all match, and because he is such a good friend, he has decided to drag the injured Jeff Hardy (who finally managed to limp back into the ring after Sting was done talking) into this, too.
So first Dixie refuses to book the match, but then does so anyway so that EC III and Spud can shut Sting and Jeff up. I feel like this was a big missed opportunity for TNA. As has already been noted by many people, this top heel stable is pretty anemic. Instead of giving this match away (and subjecting her boys to a probably ass-whupping), why not bring in a big enforcer tag team for Sting and Jeff to face. Some big, strong, scary motherf*ckers like the Dark City Fight Club or the SkullKrushers (is Keith Walker even still wrestling?). Maybe give Jay Bradley a new look and put someone with him. A large, intimidating tag team to give this stable someone who seems like they can actually fight (aside from Magnus, who is the centerpiece of the stabe).
Taz was very good in this segment, doing his best to build up Dixie’s announcement and also explaining to us why Jeff hasn’t yet recovered from just one tumble to the outside.
When we come back from commercial, Dixie is still trying to make her announcement, but Gunner comes out and interrupts her. He wants the TNA World Heavyweight Title match he won via Feast or Fired. Dixie tells him that he can’t have it right now because Magnus is in England celebrating his victory. Gunner tells Dixie to tell Magnus that he wants his title match next week.
Dixie shoos Gunner away, but before Gunner can leave the ring, James Storm shows up. He yells at Gunner about costing him a chance because of some match with Bobby Roode or something… and it took me way too long to remember that he was talking about the finish of Storm’s first-round match in the world title tournament… which happened back at Turning Point over a month ago.
Gunner says he threw in the towel because Storm was not 100% due to Roode jumping him in a bar the previous night and that Roode was about to kill him with some move involving barbed wire, so, as Storm’s friend, he came out and threw in the towel to save his life. Storm accuses Gunner of informing Roode that Storm was in that particular bar at that particular time to allow Roode to jump him. Gunner denies it, but Storm doesn’t believe him. Storm says he wants a match right here, right now, for the Feast or Fired World Title shot briefcase.
This was decent, but I think it would have worked a lot better if Gunner hadn’t crotched Storm on the turnbuckle to get the case in the first place. It would give his “as your friend” line more credibility, and it would allow some more flexibility for which one of them to turn heel. With the turnbuckle crotching, it is really hard for anyone to get behind Gunner here, which makes turning Storm heel pretty much impossible (also, not doing the turnbuckle crotching wouldn’t make this feel like a rip-off of Cody vs. Sandow, which is important because it seems like TNA has gone out of their way to appear to be a WWE rip-off in recent months).
One thing about this set up that I do like is that, in some ways, it puts Storm in a similar position to Bobby Roode before Roode turned heel on Storm: A babyface who was screwed out of the world title (or at least the chance to attain it) now facing his tag team partner in a match for a title shot (which, if they still have them work MITB-style, is basically a guaranteed world title)… but with the turnbuckle crotching, if Storm cheats, that will come off as him just getting even with Gunner for betraying him rather than coming off as a real heel turn.
Dixie decides to book the match to punish Gunner for interrupting her. That was good. Then she decides that she won’t make her announcement now after all. WHY?!

MATCH FOR THE TNA WORLD TITLE SHOT FEAST-OR-FIRED BRIEFCASE: Gunner(c) vs. James Storm- DUD!
So they start this match off with a great, intense, atmosphere. It spills ot the outside where everyone really wants to see these two throw down… and pretty much immediately they are counted out (Earl’s count was legit- it just felt like they hadn’t been outside for long at all).
Gunner punches Storm after the match (though Storm was walking right towards him, so you can see how he could have thought Storm was going to punch him). Then they have a lame brawl where the referees barely put any effort into trying to separate them (the same thing we have recently seen time after time after time with Roode and Angle), and we cut to the back with them still punching each other because apparently the cameraman knew that Bully and Tessmacher were going to have an important confrontation.

BULLY AND TESSMACHER BACKSTAGE- Apparently Bully hasn’t been answering Brooke’s call. He doesn’t respond to her in person, either, so she says that she will go out tonight and air all of his dirty laundry. Bully finally speaks, telling her “that isn’t a good idea,” but she ignores him and walks off.

“MAGNUS’ SIDE OF THE STORY” VIDEO PACKAGE- GRRRRR!!!!!
He starts off by saying that everyone who thinks he is some sort of “young punk who hasn’t paid my dues” is wrong. WHO IS SAYING THIS?! It hasn’t been anyone on-screen, and it’s certainly not the fans, either, because most fans have been pushing for Magnus for a few years now.
Anyway, how does he explain to us that he has paid his dues? Is it my mentioning that he has been wrestling for ten years, and that he used to wrestle for crappy indy pay in high school gyms? That he spent his first two years in the business in training before having his first pro match? That he had to scrap and claw his way up the ranks in the UK enough to get noticed by TNA? Does he mention the time he spent abroad with prestigious organizations like Pro Wrestling Noah?
Nope. He tells us that “the multiple regime changes that I’ve seen in my almost five years here- I was saddled with all kinds of horrible characters before I got my chance.
What did they decide that I should do? Let’s have him be a stoic, boring, gladiator character. Then they formed the British Invasion, which I’m sure won all kinds of originality awards. Where did that leave me? Nowhere. Purgatory.
Then they go ‘hey, we’re gonna stick you with Samoa Joe.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, you know, you’re pissed off and he’s pissed off so we figured that you’d be pissed off together.’ And then we wound up pissing everybody off because we became the best tag team in the business.
I started to break out on my own and started to get a lot more attention and started to get tipped as ‘the future. The future. The next potential guy.’ And between the lines, they’re basically saying to everyone that ‘he’s gonna be good, just not yet, because I’m not ready to hang them up yet, brother.’
So then we get to 2012 and I finally start to show everybody that I could be a player. And I get taken out by the Aces & Eights. That was a definite wake up call for me because it meant that I was on people’s radar.”
So many problems here, but let’s start with the one intrinsic to the viewing of this video package as part of this television show. Magnus completely craps on kayfabe here, talking about being saddled with bad “characters.” Because wrestling is fake, you see. Everything you are watching on this program is fake… so why should I care about any of the goings on in this fake world with these fake characters?
This video package right here, though… that wasn’t fake. That was real. This real “Magnus” just told me a nice story about him battling some adversity to now rise to the top of the company any become a top star. That makes me sympathize with Magnus because I, too, have faced adversity, and it makes me happy for Magnus that he has overcome it. It makes me proud of him. It makes him an inspirational figure whose success I can focus on whenever I myself face adversity. If Magnus overcame it, so can I! It makes me like Magnus, and not care about anyone else because his story is real and the rest of them (say, for example, the issue between Gunner and Storm that I was so into earlier) are not.
In the world of the TV I am watching, Magnus is supposed to be the top heel… and they have just shat all over everything else going on on the show in order to make me LIKE THE TOP HEEL!

If you want to ignore that whole thing because it doesn’t bother you as much as it bothers me, that’s fine. They aired this “shoot promo” on the air. Let’s examine it as smart fans:
1. Magnus claims to been saddled with tons of bad characters. The gladiator was bad, but that was the only one, and he was only a gladiator for about three months.
2. Magnus claims that there were multiple regime changes that gave him bad characters. The gladiator would have been during the Russo-Jarrett-Dixie Era. So was his change to being a Brit. Nothing changed for him after Jarrett’s loss of power (which saw the removal of Jarrett, Dutch Mantell, Jim Cornette, and Savio Vega from important positions), and nothing changed a few months after that, either, when Hogan and Bischoff came in (okay, they lost the tag belts, but they moved on to do other stuff). He was still a Brit until the British Invasion broke up and they put him with Nigel, where he was still a Brit and got to show some more personality.
Then he was put with Joe and was kind of just a guy, but so are a lot of guys in wrestling, and as he himself said, that was when he started to show the personality that eventually got him pushed. He was treated no differently when Russo left or when Prichard left. And that implication that Hogan was holding him down because he wasn’t done wrestling yet? Hogan hasn’t wrestled in two years, and only wrestled twice in his entire TNA run. He wasn’t taking up a spot at the top of the card that Magnus could have been occupying. So immediately in this “shoot” promo, he is saying things that smart fans know are not true.
3. He dumps on the British Invasion for being unoriginal. So what? In 2002 Triple H and Ric Flair came up with the unoriginal idea to form a Four Horsemen-like group in the WWE. This would become Evolution. The idea wasn’t original at all (in fact, it was so unoriginal that Lance Storm came up with the same idea at pretty much the same time for a stable of himself, Christian, Test, and Jericho to basically be a Canadian Four Horsemen). Does this mean was bad? Hell no! It was awesome!
And if Magnus is complaining about unoriginal characters… what the hell does he think he is doing now? The top heel guy who is the favorite of the people in charge of the company? I’m certain that everyone reading this article can come up with at least ten examples of this being done before in less than a minute.
The British Invasion fall into this category. They weren’t original ideas… but that certainly didn’t make them bad. They were awesome.
4. Throughout this whole series of things he is complaining about, he is almost completely glossing over the fact that he has been getting pushed most of this time. He is a two-time TNA World Tag Team Champion, and TNA even put the IWGP Tag Titles on him and Doug Williams (without New Japan’s permission at first). He has had numerous title shots at the TV Title as well, including a feud with Joe over it. His claim being taken out by Aces & Eights meant he was on people’s radar is ridiculous when you consider everything he had done before that. Winning the tag team titles- some
“purgatory” that must have been.
As a smart fan, it’s hard to feel sympathy for someone complaining about not being used well when that “not being used well” constitutes multiple championship reigns and title shots! This is a guy who is complaining about being pegged as a future top guy! WHAT THE F*CK?!
Why should I feel sorry for him when there are guys even more talented guys like Damien Sandow, Zack Ryder, and Drew McIntyre out there who aren’t being used anywhere close to their potential? Why should I feel sorry for you and your cushy guaranteed contract when people like Colt Cabana and Eddie Kingston and Cheerleader Melissa are having to scrape by on indy dates?

Why not have him cut a promo that makes sense both in kayfabe and out? Have him say that people who say that he hasn’t earned everything he got are ridiculous. He is so good that in his first professional match, he took DOUG FREAKIN’ WILLIAMS to the limit in a two-out-of-three falls match. Yes. He got a pinfall (or maybe submission or whatever) or DOUG WILLIAMS in his first match. As part of the British Invasion, they beat Beer Money, Booker T & Scott Steiner, the Motor City Machine Guns, and the freakin’ Dudleys!
Despite being a makeshift team, he and Desmond Wolfe won a #1 contenders tournament for tag titles and only didn’t get their title shot because Wolfe got sick. Despite being a makeshift tag team, he and Joe won a tournament, too, and wound up winning the belts together. Then they went over to Japan and in their first match for NOAH, they won the GHC Heavyweight Tag Team Titles, beating Akitoshi Saito and JUN AKIYAMA! He was the only non-former World Heavyweight Champion recruited to join Sting’s new Main Event Mafia… picked over guys like Jeff Hardy, Austin Aries, Bobby Roode, James Storm… and even AJ Styles!
Then, at Bound for Glory… HE BEAT FREAKIN’ STING! On his way to win the TNA World Heavyweight Title, he beat both Kurt Angle and Samoa Joe. How the hell can anyone question whether or not he deserves to be champion?!

A promo with both kayfabe and not-so-kayfabe implications that makes Magnus sincere but still arrogant and dislikable and doesn’t sh*t on kayfabe.

TESSMACHER & BULLY SEGMENT- UTTER F*CKING SH*T!
Tessmacher says that it has been weeks since she has spoken to Bully, but she knows he is blaming her for throwing the hammer that Anderson caught to he knocked Bully out with to end the Aces & Eights… but she refuses to accept the blame for this. Is she f*cking delusional? Her throw SUCKED! It went so far over Bully’s head that it almost looked like she was throwing it to Anderson on purpose! Sorry Brooke, but it is your fault that Anderson got the hammer!
She wants Bully to come out and “tell the truth,” so Bully comes out for this big confrontation… and the crowd cares so much that she starts chanting “we want Devon!” Brooke says that the end of the Aces & Eights was neither of their faults. Bully doesn’t respond, so Brooke immediately has a mood swing and shouts “I am tired of being your dog!”
She says that Bully was the one who told her to throw the hammer. This is true… but he probably assumed that she didn’t have aim of an… I don’t know… an archer in the anti-Olympics… or something. I’m struggling here, because that’s just how terrible Brooke’s aim was. TNA is lucky the hammer dind’t fly into the crowd and hit a fan on the head.
She then says that Bully was the one who ruined everything: The club… and even his relationship with his own brother, Devon. So I guess she is supposed to be a babyface here?
Wait. Nope. She goes from that to saying “I used you for fame. You were supposed to be my ticket into the spotlight. For money and fortune.”
So the FORMER TNA KNOCKOUTS CHAMPION wanted money and fame… and decided that the best way to do that would be to latch herself onto a convoluted evil plan, rather than… say… TRY TO WIN THE KNOCKOUTS TITLE?! And why does she need more fame? She is a TNA Knockout, after all, and a former champion at that! You would never hear anyone in WWE say that they need to get famous because they portray themselves as being famous by virtue of being WWE superstars! This whole thing just makes TNA look like a f*cking blip. Even the guys in ROH portray themselves as famous and important and talk about sponsorships and radio and TV appearances… but in TNA you’re not famous unless you are hanging around with the world champion?
Brooke then finally gets Bully to look at her by saying “you’re like that miserable, weird high school kid that has no friends who nobody wants to talk to or look at.” I swear to G-d she actually said this. And you’ve got to love the way she is purposely antagonizing a man who has recently threatened to kill a man, his wife, and their unborn twins. That is WAY on the wrong side of the bravery-stupidity line.
Once she has Bully’s attention and he walks up to her, Brooke says “Oh. What? You think I’m scared of you? Like you scare me like you scare everyone else? I am not anyone’s possession! I don’t need you.”
If you don’t need him, then WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU SO UPSET ABOUT?! Three sentences ago you said he was your meal ticket to fame and you were upset with him because he ruined things and now you can never get that fame… and now you are saying that you don’t need him. WHICH ONE IS IT?! And where did that “I am not anyone’s possession” line come from? Did Bully ever mistreat Brooke in any way? Certainly not that we saw.
Brooke tries to leave, but Bully grabs her arm and says that “You’re done when I’m done with you.” He then tells her that he was only with her because she was hot… but that she is so bad in bed that he sometimes wished he was back with Brooke Hogan.
Then the evil mood music starts playing and Bully says “you should consider yourself lucky. I could treat you like Ken Anderson right now.” He threatens to piledrive Brooke, but says that he will use Brooke to spread his word but letting everyone who how evil and sadistic he is and what is in store for them.
This whole thing sucked. Between Brooke’s wild shifting of her story and her opinions to Bully’s lame dialogue, this all just screamed “poorly-written, corny, wanna-be soap opera.” The music especially kills it. Not only is it over-the-top corny, but there is no logical explanation for it unless Bully has an accomplice with a flare for the overly-dramatic or the sound guy is ribbing everyone (neither of which seem likely here).

JOSEPH PARK BACKSTAGE- he is questioning whether or not he wants to do this match. Good stuff.

MAGNUS EXPLAINS IT ALL, PART 2- This one was exactly what they should have done! It was perfectly kayfabe, and actually talked Magnus up. Of course, having the last one be a “shoot” and this one not be means this one is fake and doesn’t matter, so it really doesn’t help them in any way at all anyway.
There were some other problems with this one, too, though. Magnus claims that bringing him into the MEM and giving him the rub was Joe, Angle, and Sting trying to hold him down. How does that ever begin to make any sense?

EC III AND SPUD COMPLAIN TO DIXIE ABOUT THE MAIN EVENT- Friction between EC III and Dixie for no reason, with EC III pointing out that Magnus didn’t win clean. Always nice to have the heels calling their heel friends out on bullsh*t, ruining their heel heat.

JOEPH PARK VIDEO PACKAGE- very good

EY & JOSEPH BACKSTAGE- good. EY has the sound people play Abyss’ music instead of Joseph’s

HANDICAP MONSTER’S BALL MATCH: Bad Influence vs. Jospeh Park-
Because she sucks at her job, Christy Hemme forgets the possessive at the end of the word monster, making this a “Monster Ball match.” So instead of showing us how monsters “dance,” this match is going to be about a giant testicle. This show was taped weeks in advance. There is no excuse for not correcting this in post-production.
So Joseph comes out and for the match, and for the second straight time we go to commercial, we are promised that this match is “next.” Of course, when we get back from commercial, we go straight to…
A BACKSTAGE SEGMENT WITH JEFF HARDY AND STING-
Sting says that he will “beat the entitlement out of EC III,” and Jeff can get revenge on Spud for pushing him off of a ladder. He then says that he is going to “mark out right now” because has wanted to tag up with Jeff “for years.” Jeff is not as excited about this. Perhaps it is because they have teamed up before. Many times.
Apparently Jeff isn’t really with it because he “really didn’t come here tonight to wrestle.” Apparently in the hour it has been since the opening segment, Jeff has not gotten that big thing that he wanted to say off of his chest. Sting tells him “you’re Jeff Hardy! You can just talk to Dixie and she’s gonna listen!”
Are you f*cking kidding me?! Does Sting just not understand anything of what is going on in TNA right now?! Seriously! From a creative standpoint, how do you let this sort of ridiculous sh*t get onto your show?!


HANDICAP MONSTER’S BALL MATCH: Bad Influence vs. Joseph Park- AWESOME segment!
So a whopping FIFTEEN MINUTES after we were promised that this match was “up next,” we finally get the opening bell. Joseph was standing in the ring, alone, for a good SIX MINUTES before Bad Influence made their entrance. Could you really not have flipped Joseph’s entrance the Sting-Jeff segment?
Fantastic performances for all involved. Chris Parks has been awesome this whole time, and Kaz and Daniels are fantastic assholes. Kaz and Daniels hit Joseph with weapons but avoid hitting him in the face so that he won’t bleed and turn into Abyss.
Joseph gets some hope spots in, but mostly he gets his ass kicked and wants to give up, but EY comes out and tells him not to. Joseph tells EY that he needs his help, so EY goes to punch Joseph in the forehead to bust him open, but Bad Influence cut them off because EY can throw a punch.
Bad Influence go to beat them both up. They line EY up for a shot with a kendo stick, but Joseph pushes EY out of the way and takes the kendo stick to the forehead himself. The heels dispose of EY, but turn around to find Joseph bleeding turning into Abyss. Joseph begins to no-sell weapon shots and beats the sh*t out of Bad Influence with weapons and Abyss’ signature moves before getting the win. An amazing segment that was only prevented from being perfect by Tenay’s horrendous commentary.

JEFF HARDY ON THE PHONE WITH HIS WIFE- Apparently there is “something Jeff has to do.” There was no reason to put this on the show other than build up suspense for something that didn’t need it. And doesn’t anyone else find it weird that TNA would air Jeff’s private phone conversations with his wife. From a kayfabe point of view, why would they do this?

MAGNUS EXPLAINS IT ALL, PART 3- perfect!
He talks about the BFG Series and beating Sting at BFG.

GAIL KIM PROMO-good hype for the only feud in the whole division.

ODB vs. LEI’D TAPA (w/Gail Kim)- 4.25/10
Short, but great big-woman stuff. I LOVED the finish, too.

SABIN & VELVET BACKSTAGE- Sabin says that because it was Velvet’s fault he lost the title, she needs to do everything he wants her to in order to help him win it back. Velvet says that she can’t be interfering in his matches the way he wants her to. This would have been good if we had ever seen Sabin blame Velvet for costing him the title. In the segment they did after he lost the belt, he blamed his loss on Aries putting Velvet in danger.

STING & JEFF BACKSTAGE- more of Sting questioning what is on Jeff’s mind and if it will affect his performance in the ring.

MAGNUS EXPLAINS IT ALL, PART 4- bad
He says that the only person who saw the potential in him from day one was Dixie. So somehow, despite the person in charge of the company thinking he was going to be a top star, he was booked as a “stoic, boring gladiator.” So I guess that was Dixie’s idea of a good gimmick?
Then he says that the plan all along was for him to be Dixie’s chosen champion, but in a moment of weakness, Dixie decided to ask Jeff to be her chosen champion instead, and that is why EC III attacked Magnus during the title match instead of helping him. So even though he knows that Dixie will turn on him on a whim, he has still decided to ally himself with her and proclaims that “this partnership will last for years).
That whole thing was so pointless and stupid. Russo might be gone, but TNA is completely stuck in this “think swerve first” mentally. Rather than do something simple, they always go for the swerve just for the sake of doing a swerve, they push the swerve so hard that everyone sees it coming, and they wind up having to jump through hoops to explain it later (if they even bother to explain it at all), when something simple would have worked better, made more sense, and doesn’t train the fans to also think swerve first, so that when you actually do have a good reason for a swerve, they won’t see it coming so easily.

DIXIE MAKES HER BIG ANNOUNCEMENT- oh yeah! I totally forgot about this! Maybe if the announcers had mentioned it at some point after the opening segment, I would be more excited to finally hear it (especially Taz, who also had no idea what it was and was so eager to find out during the opening segment)
So she actually has two announcements. The first is that there will be a “coronation” for Magnus next week. So they are copying WWE AGAIN. It has got to be f*cking intentional at this point, which leads me to ask what do they possibly hope to gain out of this? I’m serious. Explain to me how appearing to be a WWE rip-off helps them.
The second announcement is that instead of just Spud and EC III, Sting and Jeff will be facing Bro-Mans, too, in a handicap match. So we have a four-on-two handicap match including the tag team champions… and Jeff Hardy and Sting still have twenty times more credibility as the guys they are wrestling put together. And what was the purpose of Dixie keeping this info from Spud and EC III? NOTHING! They just decided to randomly create some dissension in Dixie’s new stable that won’t even last a week… for absolutely no reason

HANDICAP MATCH: Jeff Hardy & Sting vs. Rockstar Spud, EC III, & Bro-Mans (w/Zema Ion)- 4/10
Maybe I just missed this before or maybe he got new gear, but EC III’s gear appears to be diamond-studded. Nowhere near good enough for a main event.
So when it is four guys against Jeff Hardy, Jeff gets his ass kicked. When it is the same four guys against fifty-four year-old Sting, he kicks all of their asses with ease. If you are going to have EC III pin Sting, get some real heat for it! Have Sting get an ass-kicking from all four guys, then have EC III pin him arrogantly with a foot on his chest. If the angle is that EC III is a little sh*t who we all know can’t beat Sting on his own and you are building to a match between them, you need to create a situation where we think that maybe EC III does have a chance of winning (though some heelish means). Having Sting suffer a vicious beatdown but still want to face EC III one-on-one will allow Sting to be both filled with righteous babyface anger and also weak enough where EC III might actually be able to beat him.

CLOSING SEGMENT- Jeff Hardy apologizes to Sting, then says that Sting inspired him to become a professional wrestler. Jeff says that Dixie’s actions “over the last six months” have driven him crazy and taken his heart out of it. Six months? That’s a weird number. Dixie only turned heel three months ago. He says that Dixie doesn’t own him and he is so sick of politics and games. Sting tries to convince him to stay, but Jeff says that “the fight’s all gone” and announces that this was his last match in TNA. He then says that he won’t come back until “the sun shines on this dark kingdom.” Decent stuff, but Jeff’s words here were really strong, and they will need something major to change with this Dixie angle in order to bring Jeff back (presumably after the UK tour).

Overall, a bad impact with one or two bright spots. Go watch the Monsters’ Ball, though. That was art!

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Tenay- “In terms of the scientist, Eric Young, this experiment continues.”
The “experiment” in question involves putting a barely-willing man into a dangerous match filled with weapons against two dangerous wrestlers in order to see if getting viciously beaten until he bleeds will turn him into a vicious killer monster. WHY THE F*CK IS ANYONE SUPPORTING THIS?! That is some f*cking supervillain sh*t right there!
If you just frame it as EY helping Joseph “unlock his true potential” so he can “stand up to the bullies” or something like that, it seems like Eric is doing a noble deed. Instead they have framed it that Eric is going to try to bring Abyss out of Joseph just because. (Taz actually did try to reframe it, so props to him for that. Taz was great tonight aside from the women’s match).