BRM Reviews the 2/23/2016 Impact (Lockdown 2016)

[Big Red Machine]

SIX SIDES OF STEEL MATCH: Beer Money vs. Eric Young & Bram- 6.25/10
The Boozer Cruiser is so f*cking stupid. Speaking of stupid things and James Storm, why did Hebner close the cage door before James Storm was inside the cage? And to make things even stupider, Josh then told us that you could win this match via escaping the cage… so if the match has started enough for Hebner to close the cage door, shouldn’t Beer Money just be declared the winners then because Storm is on the outside? And if not, shouldn’t Hebner just unlock the door for him and let him in?
The match was fine, but it really felt like it wasn’t enough after they fought for an entire hour last week.

OH NO! MADISON RAYNE HURT HER KNEE CLIMBING THE STAIRS- instead of asking for medical personnel, she wanted people to “go get Gail.” This smells fishy to me.

ETHAN CARTER III PROMO- THIS IS THE ALL CAGE MATCH PPV ON TV SHOW! WHY THE F*CK ARE YOU WASTING TIME TALKING?!
Ethan calls out Spud and shakes his hand Spud starts to cut a fiery promo about how he always does the right thing, which, in TNA world, almost certainly means he is turning heel. Then Matt Hardy and his entourage come out and Matt ranted a bunch, saying he was the master of the universe or something like that and vowing that Spud will “never be the same” if he comes hear the ring tonight. Then Ethan responded a bit. I hated this whole thing. It’s either leading to a terrible, pointless heel turn, or it was a waste of time (if you want to do the respect thing between Spud and Ethan, that can wait until next week, especially if Spud comes out and takes Tyrus out tonight).

PROMO BY THE GUY WHO IS LOOKING FOR ROSEMARY- he’s a creepy ex-boyfriend of Rosemary’s or something. It has never been explained why this random dude is allowed to walk around backstage at the Impact Zone.

SIX SIDES OF STEEL MATCH FOR THE TNA X-DIVISION TITLE: Trevor Lee(c) (w/Gregory Shane Helms) vs. Tigre Uno- 4.75/10
Why is Tigre Uno getting another rematch? Wouldn’t it have made a lot more sense to spend a week or two building up Mandrews for this spot so he could get a title shot in his home country?
Pope tells us that the cage is there to prevent interference. Then, like an idiot, Josh kills the stip, basically saying, “actually he could climb over and get into the ring and interfere and it wouldn’t be a DQ because there are no DQs.”
Josh also said that we’ve seen Helms get involved in Trevor’s matches, which I don’t ever remember seeing. Furthermore, if this was the case, Josh should be pushing this match as “the cage will prevent Helms from interfering” instead of talking about how Helms would technically be allowed to interfere if he decided to climb into the cage.
Anyway, they had a match. Aside from a crossbody off the top by Tigre Uno, it was pretty meh.

MARIA & GAIL BACKSTAGE- Maria seems to be saying that Velvet was injured, too. I don’t remember this happening. Maria starts to cut a promo. Gail tells her to prove her worth by taking Madison’s spot.

NAMELESS DUDE HAPPENS UPON ROSEMARY BACKSTAGE- He gave her a gift and he said he wanted to get back together with her. Then he left. Then, literally five seconds later (yes, I did go back and count) Crazzy Steve showed up but apparently he didn’t see the other dude. The thing the other guy gave Rosemary was some sort of white cloth with some black designs on it. Steve and Rosemary laughed and shared an Eskimo kiss. Whatever is going on in this story, I do not give one single f*ck about it.

LETHAL LOCKDOWN MATCH: The Dollhouse vs. Madison Rayne, Velvet Sky, & Gail Kim- 6.25/10
The weapons are hanging on the walls instead of on the roof… so if there are no DQs, what is to stop one of the competitors from grabbing one before everyone is in the match?
Oh. Look. They are using the weapons too early. I really hope they didn’t just put the weapons on the walls instead of using the roof because this was a women’s match and they figured the women would be too short or something. Between the 3-on-3 teams and the lack of roof filled with weapons, this felt like a “baby” version of Lethal Lockdown.
So Maria psyched Gail out and didn’t actually get in the match, instead locking the door so that it would be 3-on-2 advantage Dollhouse forever. Dollhouse won when Jade pinned Gail after a Package Piledriver onto a chair, and as much as I love the idea of getting to see Jade vs. Gail for the title, at this point, I want this damn feud to end even more.

KURT ANGLE & EC III BACKSTAGE- the point of this was to show us how Ethan has changed, and it worked very well.

WEIRD SH*T WITH DECAY STICKING THEIR FACES (AND TONGUES) INTO A CAMERA LENS- weird.

KURT & LASHLEY SEGMENT- very good.

ELI DRAKE PROMO- good.

SIX SIDES OF STEEL MATCH: Odrag The Great vs. Eli Drake (w/Jesse Godderz)- 4.5/10
Did you know that “Odarg” is an anagram for “Drago?”
They did stuff. Odarg attempted “comedy.” Mahabali Shera came out to prevent Godderz from affecting the outcome of the match. Odarg won by climbing out, but Drake managed to pull his mask off before he fell, revealing him to be Grado, meaning he should now be fired (again) by TNA. Hooray for happy endings!

ABYSS MEETS ROSEMARY’S EX BACKSTAGE- did nothing to make me care.
Apparently he is named Jimmy Havoc, which we found out when Abyss walked up to him and said “hey Jimmy Havoc” like they’ve been friends for a while or something. It turns out they’re not friends, though, because Abyss proceeded to threaten Havoc. Havoc told us that he was “hardcore” in the least convincing manner possible. He also claimed to be crazy, which I won’t dispute. Abyss sucker-punched him, then Crazzy Steve landed a few shots and Abyss mocked him, asking “you’re not so hardcore now, are ya?”

GRADO FOLLOW-UP- yes! Fire him! A Harris Brothers cameo! I hope they rough Grado up, too! Eli Drake was so great here!

Next week we’re getting Angle vs. Roode and Bennett vs. Galloway.

MICHAEL BENNETT PROMO- meh

SIX SIDES OF STEEL MATCH FOR THE TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Matt Hardy(c) (w/Tyrus) vs. Ethan Carter III- 7/10
Matt just pulled the chain (and the lock) of the cage door with absolutely no effort. How ridiculous is that? And later, Ethan somehow managed to use this same lock and chain to chain Tyrus to the ropes.
When they did the spot where Tyrus got in the ring to face Ethan, I was really hoping that the finish here would be that as Tyrus ducked through the ropes, Ethan would charge forward and dive over him to escape the cage like Willie Mays Hayes scoring on Jack Parkman in Major League 2.
That Twist of Fate with the chair looked nasty as hell. That was a great false finish.
The finish saw both guys crawling towards the door and Reby came out with a hammer but Spud came out to take it away from her… and then proceeded to Russo-swerve us by slamming the cage door on Ethan’s head, allowing Matt to win. Then Spud smashed Ethan’s head between the ring steps and a chair. Another great TNA match spoiled by a pointless swerve. Does anyone actually want to see mean heel Rockstar Spud feuding with babyface Ethan? Really?
And before anyone tries to argue that they “had” to do this swerve because the alternatives were to either beat Ethan clean or to switch the title, I’d ask you to ask yourself WHY that had to be the case. And I don’t mean the booking theory behind why you need to protect your top babyface. I mean “why did they have this a dilemma in the first place?” And the answer to that is because they decided that they had to do this match so soon… and the reason they wanted to do this match so soon was so that they could have a big world title match on their stupid all cage match gimmick show. If TNA wasn’t so obsessed with gimmicks, they wouldn’t have felt the need to rush this match onto Lockdown and thus wouldn’t have caught themselves in a spot where they felt they had to turn Spud heel.

A very disappointing show from TNA. They should have cut all of the Decay/Jimmy Havoc stuff (maybe just leave in the first promo by Havoc), cut the talking segment with Spud, Matt and Ethan and given us a Wolves match instead.