Impact kicks off with Hogan and Abyss making their way to the ring. Abyss is sporting splashes of Hogan's yellow and red. Flair and Styles make their way to the ring both robed and Styles robe has a hood to cover his face, with Phenominal One written across the back.
Match One: Hogan/Abyss vs Flair/Styles
Flair and Styles gain the upper hand and the lights go out. When they return we have Sting in the ring along side Hogan and Abyss. Hogan rips his shirt and Sting beats him with the bat, before attacking Abyss. After a slight pause Styles and Flair join in to bust open Hogan and Abyss. As Flair and Styles are leaving Hogan tells them that this ain't over and they will face eachother again later on tonight in a no DQ match. Your winners Hogan/Abyss by DQ.
Backstage Dixie questions Sting who grabs her by the throat and tells her that he owes her nothing., before walking off.
Styles and Flair are with Borash. Flair cuts a decent promo, that proves when he doesn't go off rambling that even now Flair can cut a promo better than most. Abyss is showing screaming "Why Sting, Why?" SO much for no more sissy Abyss.
After commercial we see Brooke and Hogan's girlfriend clone Brooke (that is kind of creepy, I mean she looks like an older twin of Brooke). Brooke is crying and Clooke is trying to comfort her.
Kazarian is in the ring saying that he will lead the X-Division into the coming war for Monday nights. Daniels comes out and says if anyone will lead the X-Division it will be him since he was X-Division before X-Division was cool. Doug WIlliams comes out proclaiming that the X-Division is alive and well since he's the champ. Bischoff comes out and says that Kazarian is supposed to face Williams at Destination X, but he's changing it to tonight and it's a threeway with Daniels, starting now.
Match Two: Daniels v Kaz v Williams
Decent match with a few nice spots and double pin attempts that I hadn't seen before. It's nice to see the X-Division in a match longer than two minutes showcasing what that branch of TNA can offer. Williams retains after Chaos Theory on Daniels.
Shannon Moore attacks Williams after the match and Bischoff comes back out to inform Williams that he will now be facing Moore at Destination X.
Dixie is with Borash saying that since Sting has re-signed his contract he will have a match tonight, but he won't know his opponent until everyone else does.
Match Three: BP v Tara/Love v Wilde/Sarita for the vacated Knockout Tag Titles.
Ok match, putting BP over with the tag titles that were vacated with the leaving of Awesome Kong. I think Hamada should have been given the chance to choose a new partner, leaving Wilde and Sarita out of the match since the match was really about pushing two storylines they weren't involved in being BP vs Love and Tara vs Dafney. BP win the titles.
The BP are celebrating with Borash and Lacey Von Erich proves that she should be seen and not heard.
The Pope is being interviewed about his upcoming match with Desmond Wolfe. Wolfe attacks his injured heel beating him with a chain before walking off telling him to keep the chains. teehee.
Match Four: RVD v Sting.
RVD comes through the crowd with a heel kick off the top rope catching Sting off guard and gets a quick pin.
While RVD is celebrating Sting attacks with the bat. RVD is hit in the knee, the stomach, back, pretty much everywhere. After doing the job for a returning RVD, this allows Sting to still look strong without hurting RVD's return. Nicely done. Plus, with the attack on Hogan and Abyss, grabbing Dixie, and not attacking RVD and later Hogan with the bat they've managed to move Sting from loved to hated in less than an hour. Well done. Much like Hogan ten years ago, it's time for Sting to finally go heel.
Nash and Young are in the ring with a one time contract for Hall and Waltman for a match at Destination X. Hall and Waltman appear, but say they want another stipulation in the match, that if they win they get TNA contracts. Bischoff pops up on the teletron and agrees, but if they loose they are to go do whatever it is that they do. Bischoff then makes a match right now between Young and Waltman. Even my dead grandmother can see that this is going to end in a swerve at Destination X with Nash throwing the match for Waltman and Hall. The only question is, will it be by sacrificing Eric Young or with a finger poke of doomesque ending? I'm hoping for a sacrifice of Eric Young. Please Gods, no fingerpoke.
Fifth match: Eric Young v Sean Waltman
Short fast paced match that saw Young pull out the win, further inforcing my swerve vision.
The US Army are surrounding the ring and Angle comes out cutting yet another serious promo in a suit. Anderson interupts from backstage, Angle goes after him and beats him toward the ring where he keeps throwing Anderson out to the troops so they could beat on him for a minutes before throwing him back in the ring. Ends with Anderson laid out and Angle smiling on the shoulders of the Army with his warrior metal back.
Jarrett confronts James Storm about being forced into a match and how much Storm owes Jarrett. Storm says he don't owe Jarrett nothing, it's what have you done for me lately and Sorry about your damn luck, which is one of the best catch phrases in TNA.
Match Six. Jarrett vs Beer Money, with Foley as Ref.
Decent showing from Jarrett, which just goes to show that when he doesn't have to worry aobout running the company he can still be the company man. I've always been a fan of Jarrett's. Beer Money gets the win after a pin from Slick who came out to stop Jarrett from using the barbwire bat that Foley had given him.
Scattered through ou tthe night there have been segments of people talking to Hogan about not doing the match tonight, including Brooke, who he promises that tonight is the last time he gets in the ring.
Match Seven: Hogan/Abyss v Flair/Styles
In a matter of second Flair is bleeding and looking like someone that's been attacked in a horror movie. Not a bad match but not great. Hogan/Abyss get the win after an assisted Black Hole Slam from Abyss on Styles.
Hogan and Abyss celebrate before being attacked by Wolfe with a chair. Flair and Styles join the fray until The Pope makes his way in the ring. In short order Wolfe, Flair and Styles gain the upper hand beating Pope, Hogan and Abyss to the mat. Then music hits and Jeff Hardy charges the ring laying out everyone standing, the show goes off with Hardy perched to leap from the top rope.
The Good
-Sting Heel- About time and well played out. Face it Sting has grown stale over the last few years, maybe it's from hangin out in those rafters. Even his turn in MEM, didn't help freshen him up, with his suits, glasses and no makeup. Maybe this will add some flavor to this almost used up stick of gum. I hope so. If he's going to stay around the freshness could help.
-Segments that actual did something for the story. No lucky charms, no magic, no diva pillow fights or Springer segments.
The Bad
-Production- still we have the one minute segments between comercials with guys walking or preparing to walk to the ring. Really we don't need it. There were also a few times where it felt like the camera man was in the way and forgot what he was filming.
-Too Much Hogan- I know the thought is that when Hogan is on the screen rating's spike, and they may even have rating proof to back it up. But seriously we didn't need to see him in three segments and coming out to aid RVD. The only thing that accomplished was to push Sting further along into the hated category for attacking a held back Hogan.
The Rant
Tonight's show title should have been Misdirection. For weeks now we've heard how Hogan was saying he was going heel soon. How he would turn on Abyss. So everyone was expecting it, Hell I was. When Sting came in the ring, I thought well he's going to attack Sting as well. Glad I was wrong. In a short bit of time I grew to love Sting as a heel. It's about time. I just hope he does something with it, and it's not short lived.
After that bit of misdirection it got me to thinking. Has the last few weeks been all misdirection? Have they purposely had shows that weren't that great, with less than fifteen minutes of actual wrestling, just to lure everyone into thinking they wouldn't be much competition for RAW? Look at what we did see tonight. The surprises didn't surprise me. I wasn't shocked by RVD, (I think it was revealed on purpose to lure fans), Moore wasn't a surprise, nor was Hardy, hell between them two and Hardy's girlfriend it was all over twitter that they would be on the show anyway. What surprised me was the use of Daniels and Beer Money. Not just their use, but how they were used. Daniels didn't come out at the prude mad because a "porn star" was on the show, he came out as the egotistical "I'm the reason the X-Division is here" guy he was a few months ago. Beer Money didn't come out as the whinning, "were being held back" tag team they were last week or a few weeks ago, they came out as "sorry about your damn luck" what do we get out of this team they were a few months ago.
I found the show enjoyable and fast paced. Hell we got seven matches, eight if you want to count the Angle/Anderson segment as a lumberjack match. If TNA could just clean up the production, cut some dead weight from the roster, and focus on wrestling this war might just be more than a skirmish. God I hope so.
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