TNA Genesis 2006

TNA Genesis 2006 (11/19/2006)- Orlando, FL

PRE-SHOW:
First we got JB telling us how hyped the crowd was, then we got a segment where Christy Hemme was asking some fans whether they thought that Joe or Angle would win. LAX showed up and started to menace the crowd, so Christy Hemme just gets right up in their faces and starts a �"USA!” chant. WTF?! These are the rough, tough, mean heels who have spent the past year brutalizing people, including, just last month, Gail Kim (which is what led to the match they are having at this very PPV). Christy should be AFRAID OF THEM! Someone needs to teach her how to actually sell a damn angle!

EY comes out to make an announcement about some big secret he has, but is interrupted by Robert Roode (and Traci) coming out and making an open challenge. He sees EY and taunts him a bit, then sucker-punches him with the mic and drags him over the guardrail. Roode tosses EY into the ring and orders the bell to be rung, and the timekeeper does so… So apparently EY got forced into accepting an open challenge against his will? That doesn’t seem right. The ref seemed to have no problem with this, too.

ERIC YOUNG vs. ROBERT ROODE (w/Traci Brooks)- DUD!
This was short and uninteresting, but competently worked, so I was going to be generous and give it a 1 or a 1.5 or something along those lines, but then they did such an idiotic finish that I have to give it a dud. Roode had originally won the match via pinfall using the ropes for illegal leverage, but based purely off the testimony of EY himself and the crowd, he decided to reverse the decision. If the ref can do this, shouldn’t he be doing it every time the crowd tells him that someone has cheated?
So Roode gets back in the ring… and EY immediately pins him using the ropes for illegal leverage. Roode complains about illegal leverage, but both EY and the crowd lie and say that EY won fair and square. So what we now have is a lying, cheating, babyface. Why should I root for him if he is a liar and a cheater? Furthermore, the moral compass of the entire crowd seems to be off, but most disturbingly, THE BABYFACE ANNOUNCER CLAIMS THAT EY DIDN’T CHEAT! The babyface announcer is supposed to be our viewpoint character… and now everything he says is suspect because he is acting like Bobby Heenan on commentary!
After the match, Roode yells at Traci because apparently her job is to make the fans like him.

ANGLE VS. JOE HYPE PACKAGE- great.

CHRISTY HEMME REPORTING LIVE FROM SAMOA JOE’S LOCKER ROOM-
Christy starts off by sayingsays �"right now we are in the locker room of Samoa Joe, waiting for the arrival of either Samoa Joe or Kurt Angle.” A few problems here.
1. If this is Joe’s locker room, why would Angle come here?
2. Are you telling me that neither man is at the show less than half an hour before it is supposed to start?
3. Shouldn’t Joe be a big enough star to get his own private locker room?

Yes, this is a public locker room, so not only do we not get Joe (or Angle), but LAX walk in and once again, instead of acting afraid of them, Christy is just irritated that they interrupted her airtime. She didn’t even sell Homicide pie-facing her!
Konnan cut a great promo, though I’m not sure why he didn’t just burn the American Flag right here, right now if he wants to do it on camera so badly.

CHRISTIAN CAGE PROMO- he comes out and asks tells the sound-guy to shut his music off so he could talk… but apparently the lighting guy wasn’t smart enough to figure out that he should shut the strobe lights and green lasers off, too. Christian starts to cut a promo about how he thinks it is BS that he has to wrestle AJ tonight. AJ, the babyface, then jumps Christian from behind, leading to a pull-apart. I don’t care how many title shots or titles Christian has cost AJ lately, AJ shouldn’t be attacking Christian from behind. He should charge down the ramp and face Christian like a man, because that’s what babyfaces do. I don’t want to cheer for someone who jumps people from behind without a very, very good reason for it.

WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH VIDEO PACKAGE- yeah… still having your voice-over guy say that Sting has come to rid TNA of the �"cancer” that is Jeff Jarrett seems really tasteless now that Jarrett has decided to take time off to, among other things, be with his wife, who is fighting breast cancer. Other than that, a great video package.

JAMES MITCHELL PROMO- awesome, as usual. Because of the religious nature of a lot of Sting’s statements leading up to this match, Mitchell’s promo also had a very religious tone, and it just made Mitchell look the devil himself.

MAIN SHOW:
HANDICAP MATCH: Maverick Matt, Johnny Devine, & Kazarian vs. The Voodoo Kin Mafia- 3.75/10
When VKM come out, Tenay enthusiastically tells us how, on Impact, they �"declared war” against Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Don West then talked about �"the others” they declared war on, without mentioning any names. The reason for this was because the names in question that they declared war on were �"Michael Hickenbottom” and �"Paul Levesque.” I actually have very clear memories of watching them cut that promo and wondering �"who the f*ck are Michael Hickenbottom and Paul Levesque?” I don’t know if this was a Russo worked-shoot or the New Age Outlaws going on an ego trip, or the combination of the two, but either way it just comes off as extremely petty. It’s not Cookie-Gate bad, but you would have thought that maybe TNA might have learned their lesson from Cookie-Gate and wouldn’t do dumb sh*t like this which just makes them look petty.
Anyway, VKM win pretty easily. So much for this news stable of Kaz, Devine and Bentley. Kip James does a Pedigree, a crotch chop, and teases a Sweet Chin Music. After the match, B.G. James grabs a mic and promises �"VKM, Paul, and Michael” that �"the ground war” will begin this Thursday on Impact. How much do you want to bet that when Shawn, Hunter, and Vince saw this, they just pissed themselves laughing at how pathetic this is.

SERATONIN SEGMENT- So Bentley and Kaz comes back dragging a blindfolded Johnny Devine to the ring, and each holding to poles of some sort. Then Raven comes out wearing an utterly ridiculous-looking white suit with silver stripes, and some sort of odd leather mouth-cover. Raven beats Devine in the back with a purple Kendo stick, and they got some great close-ups of the welts on Johnny’s back (and I’m sure that the chipped-off paint made them look worse than they were, so props to whoever came up with that idea). Devine submits to the beating. Then Raven walks off. Well… at least they had the no-so-big reveal of who Seratonin’s �"redeemer” was on PPV. In later years, this is the sort of thing they would have just given away on Impact.

SHANE DOUGLAS PROMO- GREAT! Apparently the Naturals have turned heel because Shane thought Brother Ray disrespected him, so they put Team 3-D through a table… which they had right there with them backstage with �"Team 3-D was here” printed in big yellow letters! Apparently 3-D is in Japan tonight (which Shane claims is them being cowards), so the Naturals will face Sonjay Dutt and Jay Lethal instead.

THE NATURALS (w/Shane Douglas) vs. JAY LETHAL & SONJAY DUTT (w/Jerry Lynn)- 5.75/10
Chase Stevens hit Lethal with a low blow right in front of the ref, but there was no DQ. Other than that, this was a good action paced match, until the Naturals botched their finisher. They tried to do the dropkick-powerbomb combo from too far away, so Douglas actually kicked Stevens in the back the back instead of kicking Sonjay in the torso.

KONNAN PROMO- and he turned this political. LAX are supposed to be heels! Cutting a promo that is pretty damn similar to the campaign message of the party that just won control of both houses of Congress in major victory means that you are, saying things that pretty much AGREE WITH THE VIEWS OF OVER HALF OF THE PEOPLE IN THE COUNTRY! That is not going to get you heat! His comments about the match tonight itself were great. The rest of the promo, though, was a terrible idea, and Konnan has been around long enough that he should have known that.

CHRISTOPHER DANIELS PROMO- he first teases a heel turn and another feud with AJ (remember that they spent all of 2005 and early 2006 feuding, then became a tag team and won the tag titles, so this would put them right back where they started at the beginning of the year), then cuts a good promo on Sabin.

TNA X-DIVISION TITLE MATCH: Christopher Daniels(c) vs. Chris Sabin- 6.75/10
Tenay spends some time talking about how Sabin’s new disrespectful attitude is a bad thing because the X-Division has �"been about honor. It’s been about mutual respect between the competitors. It’s been about a situation where, if the better man wins, raise his hand. Shake his hand.”
For those keeping track at home, this is now the second straight year in a row in which TNA has randomly come up with some sort unwritten rules of conduct that the X-Division wrestlers are supposed to follow, which will only be mentioned for just one angle, and then disappear, and this is the second straight time that they have not done anything to attempt to disguise the fact that they are ripping of ROH by doing it (the first time they did it was with AJ, Daniels, and Joe for God’s sake!). More frustratingly, is that last year they called it the �"X-Division Code.” This year, Don and Mike have never mentioned that term once. If you have an already-established plot-point, why not use it? That way it doesn’t quite look like you just made it up on the spot just to do one angle.
They have a very good match. Sabin tries to use a chair, but AJ stops him. Daniels wind up winning and Sabin tries to attack him with a chair after the match but very Lynn stops him. Lynn yells as Sabin and tries to get him to shake Daniels’ hand, and Sabin eventually relents and does so. Sabin then attacks Daniels and hits him with the Cradle Shock, and bails before Jerry Lynn can come back.

NASH, ARIES, & SHELLEY BACKSTAGE- they make it clear that they are all on the same page and that they need a win.

LANCE HOYT & RON �"THE TRUTH” KILLINGS vs. ALEX SHELLEY & AUSTIN STARR (w/Kevin Nash)- 6/10
Apparently they’re not on the same page, and it costs them the match.

JB INTERVIEWS CHRISTIAN- Christian is mean to JB and cuts a great promo on AJ. The audio faded out at times, though, which made parts of the promo very hard to hear.

AJ STYLES vs. CHRISTIAN CAGE- 7.5/10
GREAT finish. Christian tries to use a chair, but Daniels comes out to repay the favor to AJ. He winds up getting into a tug of war with Christian over it, but Christian uses that to thwart AJ’s sunset flip attempt, and sits down on it to get the pin. Christian bails, and AJ and Daniels start to argue. Lethal and Dutt come out to stop them from fighting. Then Rhino comes out and tells them that he won’t let Christian’s actions tear another friendship apart and tells them to be men, put it behind them, and shake hands. Daniels does so… but AJ storms off angrily. FANTASTIC!

AMW PROMO- awesome (until James Storm made some borderline racist comments at the end)
My particular favorite line here was Storm saying �"the First Amendment will protect you from the government, but it won’t protect you from us.”

NWA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: LAX(c) (w/Konnan) vs. America’s Most Wanted (w/Gail Kim)- 5.75/10
Konnan ONCE AGAIN cuts a promo about how he is going to burn the flag (that has got to be at least the fourth one tonight.” As for Konnan’s legal defense, the First Amendment protects you from THE GOVERNMENT! TNA absolutely can fire them for burning a flag. And whether flag burning is protected by the Constitution is entirely debatable, so they might not even get any protection from it at all.
Anyway, while Koannan is cutting this promo, the babyfaces jump the heels from behind. How could they have possibly screwed this up? Just have Konnan cuts his promo and when he says the line about �"there’s no one here who can stop us,” then you have AMW charge out from backstage and they start to brawl. This is the most obvious thing in the world!

They have a short match in which the heels cheat to win. Rather than try to do what Konnan has spent all night saying they were going to try to do and burn the American Flag, then decide to shove Gail Kim around instead. Homicide then goes to hit her with the Gringo Killer but Petey Williams comes out with a steel pipe to make the save. During this save, they did a spot where Petey tossed the pipe to Hernandez, just so he could hit Hernandez with a dropkick to the knee. Wouldn’t it have hurt Hernandez a lot more to just hit him with the steel pipe?
Cornette comes out and accuses LAX of �"the most egregious example of gross misconduct and out-and-out bad freakin’ taste that I have ever seen in professional wrestling.” That seems like an exaggeration, especially considering a lot of things we have seen in pro-wrestling (McMahonism immediately comes to mind). Conrette then announces that because they have offended TNA management, the fans, US veterans and the families of those who have given their lives to defend our freedoms, LAX is hereby stripped of the tag titles. The crowd immediately started to chant �"BULLSH*T!”

JAMES MITCHELL PROMO- good, but nothing close to his promo from the pre-show.

NWA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Sting(c) vs. Abyss (w/James Mitchell)- DUD!
They fought on the outside forever the ref never once tried to count them out. This culminated in Abyss setting Sting up for a powerrbomb off the stage through a table which he had set up with a barbed-wire board, but both Mitchell and referee told him not to or else he would be DQed. Then once, they got back to the ring, Mitchell handed Abyss the NWA World Heavyweight Title belt to use a weapon, right in front of the referee, who took it away from him. They did a bunch of random stupid crap, including Sting using his rappelling equipment to hang Abyss upside down and then bash him with a chair right in front of the referee. For some reason, this was not a DQ. They also did a chokeslam into the tacks as a nearfall just half-way through the match.
Sting then lets Abyss down and drags him up the ramp to put him through the aforementioned table, but the referee tries to stop him, so Sting clotheslines him. The ref goes down, but it still conscious enough to call for a DQ. So a referee will be knocked unconscious for minutes if he is barely touched, but a clothesline from the World Heavyweight Champion doesn’t even knock him out for a second. Sting then shoves Abyss off the stage and through the barbed-wire board-covered table.
Then we got one of the most egregious crimes against any title in pro-wrestling. The belt changed hands via DQ (and, of course, with Abyss being the one to come out of the match with the title, they thought it would be a good idea to do a spot earlier in the match where Sting made Abyss tap out but the ref missed it because he was distracted). Mike Tenay assures us that �"since the inception of TNA, the rule has been in place: you can lose the championship if you are disqualified.” Funny how this rule has never been mentioned before.

�"DREAM MATCH OF THE DECADE”: Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe- 8.25/10
An awesome match, with one of the hottest crowds I have ever seen. The match was awesome, but I was expecting a lot more out of the �"Dream match of the Decade.”
POST-MATCH ANGLE- After the match, Joe grabs a mic and says that Kurt was the better man tonight, but he wants a rematch. Angle snubs Joe’s handshake, though, and walks off. Joe then says that he will �"have to do this the hard way.” Umm… why would you do this here on the PPV instead of this week on Impact? And seriously... why would you do this angle instead of giving more time to Joe vs. Angle. It went less than fourteen minutes!

Overall, this was a good show from TNA, but it was slightly disappointing. I was expecting more out of all three title matches and Angle vs. Joe. The NWA World Heavyweight Title match disaster really brings this show down.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Apparently Roode is angry at Traci, his new manager whom he just hired, and now thinks that he needs an �"image consultant.” Tenay says �"if there’s anybody whose image that you would love to have in TNA, it’s somebody like Eric Young, who is such a fan favorite.”
While EY might be a fan favorite, he is a fan favorite because he is a loveable putz. A fun screw-up. And Tenay decides to use EY as an example of someone’s whose public image you would want. Not Sting or AJ Styles or Team 3-D or Rhino, who are not only as beloved by the fans, but are also seen as tough and competent. Tenay uses ERIC YOUNG as an example of a fan favorite whose image you would want to have.

2. Tenay "I know where I'm going to be Thursday night. I'm going to be glued to my screen watching Spike TV."
You're the f*cking lead announcer, Mike. You damn well better be watching.