[Byrntrigan]

Hey All -

as a sort of make good on missing this weeks TNA Impact! I'm gonna recap the PPV as well as putting up the results as they happen.

Here's a rundown of the card as it stands as of 4/12/2008:

X CHAMPIONSHIP XSCAPE MATCH
"Black Machismo" Jay Lethal(c) vs. Curry Man vs. "The Guru" Sonjay Dutt vs. Johnny Devine vs.Shark Boy vs. Consequences Creed

MIXED TAG TEAM MATCH
Booker T & Sharmell vs. Robert Roode & Payton Banks

FORMER PARTNERS COLLIDE aka 'This shit better be the blowoff!'
BG James vs. Kip James

WOMENS TAG TEAM MATCH
Awesome Kong & Raisha Saeed vs. Gail Kim & ODB

CUFFED IN THE CAGE
Latin American Xchange vs. Motor City Machineguns vs. Rock N' Rave Infection vs. Scott Steiner & Petey Williams vs. Eric Young & Kaz vs. Black Reign & Rellik

QUEEN OF THE CAGE
Angelina Love vs. Velvet Sky vs. Salinas vs. Rhaka Khan vs. Traci Brooks vs. Christy Hemme vs. Jacqueline vs. Roxxi Laveaux

LETHAL LOCKDOWN
TEAM TOMKO (Tomko, AJ Styles, Team 3D, James Storm)
vs. TEAM CAGE (Cage, Sting, Nash, Rhino, Matt Morgan)

TNA World Heavyweight Championship
KURT ANGLE vs. SAMOA JOE

[Byrntrigan]

They start off the PPV with the X Division Campionship match which should be a fast way to bring the crowd up and get us even more excited for the rest of the card.

Dutt is knocked out of the match first after some nift double-teaming with Lethal (they even bust out a flying headscissors of Lethal onto Devine (I think . Dutt saves Lethal froma pinning attempt but Lethal doesn't return the favor for Dutt. Dutt then stays by the cage for the rest of the match forshadowing what I thought would be the heel turn or at least dissention ('I saved you! You couldn't even help me stay in the match?').

Other highlights of the match include a Curry Man top of the cage reverse moonsault (I'll be nice and not chasitse the Knife Salesman for screwing the call up on that) which basically was a front flip onto the remaing few wrestlers. Creed looked impressive and crisp, and the ending was something we haven't seen before where Devine ties up Lethal with his wrist tape and is blocked by Dutt to exit via the door. He then starts to climb the cage while Dutt finds scissors under the mat and hands them to Lethal to cut himself free while SoCal Val opens the door so Lethal can suicide dive to the floor to beat Devine to the championship. Nice fast match and Curry Man looked like he'd actually win for a bit. Crowd none too happy when Curry Man is eliminated.

The Reverve Battle Royal was unoffensive at worst and descent at best. The getting in portion of the match was rather short (maybe 2-3 minutes tops) but once Angelina Love and Roxxi Laveaux got to the 1 on 1 it was good if not short. I do belive Roxxi busted out a powerbomb version of Teddy Harts' Siamese Twin DDT. Good match that didn't make me want to go take a piss.

BG James and Monty had a match. Sadly, BG James might rival Sting for gullibilty as after his win he raised the hand of his estranged partner only to be utterly surprised that he got closelined outta his boots seconds later. Maybe the ol' Road Dogg is back on the wacky tabacky. Meh match. Sadly we have more of this shite it would appear, unless Kip James is felled by a congenital heart defect before their next match (kidding of course! (not really))

The Mixed Tag match was my piss break. Oh lordy, they are gonna make Bobby a wife / assistant / chick beater completely now? Make him a redneck. Canada has those right? Worst match of the night but teases a Roode / Banks breakup. I say put Banks with MCMG and give her back her old name of Rain.

Cuffed in the Cage became readily apparent that Super Eric was going to win the whole thing as The Monsters beat down ol' EY in the back. Match itself was as much of a clusterfuck as I would have thought. It had the flow of a regular battle royal as Steiner was the "Monster" that ran through everyone until everyone wised up and teamed up to handcuff him. Awesome move with kaz doing a Wave of the Future off the top rope on Rave and a Future Shock on Sabin into the cage and then handcuffing him.

Super Eric comes out and puts all 4 men left (The Monsters of Rock) in handcuffs (even pull out a Houdini move when it looks like Rellik (that's Killer spelt backwards) handcuffed Super Eric only to be handcuffed himself. At least Super eric has a better mask (lucha style instead of the Matt Classic one he's had for a month or so).

The Female Tag match was really good. I was quite struck with just how crisp Chearleder Mellisa's moves looked. reminded me of Benoit minus the strangulation and bibles. She also had some new eye makeup on that made her look hot (or at least as hot as a chick that shows a 1 inch strip of her face can be ;D) Another solid Knockouts match. Saed should start fighting on her own, she could be the breakout star of this division very soon.

Lethal Lockdown played out as the others we've seen minus the fact that the majority of men stayed in the cage this year. Storm shows some good agility getting up and out of the cage but almost goes through the roof of the cage in what didn't look all too staged. AJ shows just how good he is by going out of the cage in like 5 seconds and takes a jump off a 10 ft ladder on TOP of the cage onto a table. Would've been more impressive going from the ladder onto the outside but jesus I wouldn't really have wanted to see that as the top of the ladder was at least 30 feet of the floor. To the top of the cage still looks damn impressive though. We are also told that Morgan has been fired from his management duties. Good, the guy knows how to wrestle now.

The finale shows to me just how serious TNA is about differentiating themselves from WWE.

No shenanigans, no sports entertainmenty shit minus Kurt kicking his wife outta the arena and her saying fuck on TV like 5 times ;D Is it just me or is she way hotter when she was swearing?

The match itself was slow and methodical for the majority as they were going for a lot of submissions and alot of catch as catch can style. reminded me a ton of poresu (sp?) and was engaging if not slow. Exciting but still slower then we've used to (at least me as I don't watch MMA).

They finally did get to some pro wrestling near the end but it seemed like an after thought to the MMA submission stuff. I will give them credit, Joe wins clean with NO shenanigans. Shit I thought that Frank Trigg was gonna do something, but Joe beats Angle clean with no excuses.

I for one am relived as with Lucky, I wasn't doubting that he'd win, I just doubted he'd win clean. The style seems different enough that some will shit on the match and call it plodding but it was just more strong style / MMA then we see in Pro wrestling. Weird thing was they were doing assloads of submission but no physchology at all. Seems odd if you are going to go that route and not explain / target the same area for submission over and over in th traditional sense.

I reserve judgement on this style of wrestling but Joe wins! Good enough for me...

Also, that frank Trigg sounded really good and natural on commentary. The best compliment I can say about him is that he didn't distract me from the match. I wouldn't be pissed if he stuck around...

All in all, if you didn't watch this one live then for christ sakes buy the damn replay. awesome for Knockouts match, lethal lockdown and Joe's coronation as World Champion of TNA

[Lucky]

LOCKDOWN!

Some Lockdown Fanfest footage on TNA Today. 20 minute video so its long with lots of little comments from Lockdown players. Nothing world shaking but amusing if you're as crazy for Lockdown as me. Curry Man is there. Cide talks shit on the Red Sox. Rock 'n' Rave Infection. RELLIK! James Storm is a drunk! Alex Shelley is hilarious and trendy. JB gets lucky with the Beautiful People!


And the Lockdown video one more time because I love it. Although this is the new one from this Thursday's Impact with the last week's footage instead of just stock.

[Tommy]

Apr 12, 2008 23:22:18 GMT -5 Lucky said:

Cide talks shit on the Red Sox.

Welp, so much for my LAX fandom.

[Lucky]

You can no more expect a Bronx native in Boston this weekend to not talk shit than you can expect... uh... Dane Cook to not talk shit on the Yanks?

Homicide > Dane Cook

[BTR]

No, no, it's "Dane Cook homicide > Dane Cook living"

[Tommy]

Apr 12, 2008 23:30:32 GMT -5 Lucky said:

You can no more expect a Bronx native in Boston this weekend to not talk shit than you can expect... uh... Dane Cook to not talk shit on the Yanks?

Homicide > Dane Cook

1) They're in Lowell, not Boston. That would be like being in Montauk and saying you're in the Bronx.

2) Homicide > Dane Cook.

[Lucky]

That's fair. I concede the point that I referenced a suburb of Boston (at best) as "Boston." My bad.

Point remains. Dane Cook sucks and the Bronx (and LAX) rules.

I will also concede that Dane Cook's Homicide trumps all.

[Tommy]

Dane Cook's Homicide would be quite awesome. It could only be topped if Carlos Mencia got capped at the same time.

Edit: And Lowell's not even on the Commuter Rail. If it's a suburb of anything, it's Manchester, NH -now that that's clear for everyone I'm done being anal.

[iamdoug]

"take that fat goth kids"

Alex Shelly just guaranteed the guns a spot on my twelve pack list this week.

[Batman]

I loved Sabin's surprised genuine laughter in reaction to Shelley's impromptu line. Funny stuff.

[punk/core]

Apr 12, 2008 23:53:39 GMT -5 Tommy said:

Dane Cook's Homicide would be quite awesome. It could only be topped if Carlos Mencia got capped at the same time.

You know, if the two of them got into a car with Larry the Cable Guy and Frank Caliendo and then the car blew up... well that would be ideal.

Oh, and you could stuff Rodney Carrington into the trunk of that car as well.

[Byrntrigan]

JOE WINS! JOE WINS CLEAN!

[chrisisadad4308]

I went 3 for 8 on my picks at DML... yikes.

But hey, I thought overall it was a pretty decent PPV. I didn't like the way Joe/Angle started out, but once it slowly turned into a wrestling match it was fantastic. I really, really can't wait to watch Impact Thursday night.

[Byrntrigan]

Yeah, I only did 4 for 8. But at least I got the top one right

[Lucky]

4 for 8, I think. Yeah, I suck and my early lead was a fluke.

Xscape match was good but it felt like it never really clicked. The stories I expected to be told (Creed in the final 2, Dutt "accidentally" hurting Lethal) weren't told and that threw me, and the Devine story they did tell didn't interest me since I don't care about Devine and he just kind of looked like a jackass for all the stalling he was doing. I dunno. Creed looked good, Curry Man was fun, Lethal's dive to end the match got a group cheer from all the attending. But it never clicked like I hoped.

dxb described Queen of the Cage well. Inoffensive at worst, decent at best. The 1st stage ended a lot quicker than I expected as I really expected someone to stop Love but she just went up unmolested. The match between her and Roxxi was good but nothing special.

VKM match sucked as much as I feared it would. The highlight of it was that it was the lone match where the casual audience with us knew all participants and we were making a lot of jokes. Case in point, Kip appeared to run out of moves and be lost when his finisher didn't get the win. To the point that seemed to resort to a Sweet Chin Music but then turned it into a Stinger Splash, like he was just searching through his memory bank for moves but couldn't get it right. And then he just went back to his finisher off the top rope. And BG did his shuffle punch combo a 2nd time suggesting that he too ran out of moves and was starting over. The match blew ass and we amused ourselves.

Booker and Roode was what its been for months. Not bad, not terribly good, just nothing to care about. Please be over. Leaving Banks crying in the ring was odd but I'm not sure I'm interested. Because its a Roode angle and it appears to be the same story they just did with Traci.

Cuffed was... there. I really don't like the Super Eric stuff and breaking the cuffs is just gay. And I was surprised and upset that they wrote out the guys I was most interested in early like Steiner, LAX, and MCMG. Never really getting a chance to see MCMG go to work seemed like a mistake. But there were enough big moves and moments that it was fun enough. Kaz's spots, Hoyt's top rope choke slam, Hernandez killing Rave. But the highlight package is all you need to watch.

Women's tag was really good and arguably my 2nd favorite match of the night. Saeed looked good and tough and methodical like noone in the division is. Everyone else did the good job they've done and had the good chemistry they've had. This was where the PPV really started to turn around for me and start to become the show I was excited for. Definitely one I'll rewatch.

Lethal Lockdown was fun and good and what it is. AJ is terrifying sometimes with the risks he takes. There were two times in that match that we honestly thought he might die when Cage was fighting him on the top of the cage (with no top) and when they were on TOP on the ladder. AJ convinced us he might honestly slip and die. And when he went through that table it looked like it broke legit by him. My friend claimed he saw a blood pack on D-Von's forehead when he entered so I'm gonna watch for that but I was shocked that was the only blood we saw tonight. Storm's shot to Morgan was awesome and then Rhino's gore and pin just came out of nowhere. Which is kind of cool but also very odd. We all were shocked that was the end, especially those of us who follow TNA because Rhino was one of the last guys we expected to get the pin and Storm looked poised to get it there. But I thought the match was fun, made Morgan and Storm look good, and AJ did his usual job. And Cage's splash from the top was beautiful. Like seriously. "Beautiful form."

I really didn't like the between matches Joe/Angle build stuff. I know what they were doing and its worked for 5 weeks, but I didn't think it worked tonight. Joe's promo was good, Angle's was fine except that his staring off was just weird, and I peed during Karen's. But Trigg rambled so long that I popped the Yankee game on the picture in picture and it kinda was distracting that most of the people we heard from were basic strangers. I really think that they did a good enough job building the match on Impact that they this was just overkill.

The mat wrestling and MMA stuff early in Joe/Angle felt a bit stilted, but wasn't boring. Just slow and odd. I expected that but I didn't expect so much of it early. But I thought it was a good and smart story and the "wrestling" picked up and the match really sucked us in. The variety of submissions used was really interesting but in the end they went back to what their moves. And I swear that is the first time I've ever seen Joe do a mafia kick and it shocked me. Some of those submission escapes were awesome and when Angle escaped something (I forgot what, the Walls of Jericho?) and turned it into an Angle Slam we all freaked and I was terrified it was over. I was actually kind of surprised that the Muscle Buster won it but it just worked so well for a match that was 85% submissions and then a bad ass wrestling move (that the casuals all were impressed by) won it.


It wasn't as awesome as I hoped but was a very good show and the 2nd half really kicked ass for me. Because I watched it with much the same crowd as WM we kept comparing the two and we all agreed that it was much better for less price. But it wasn't the crazy great show I was hoping for which I kind of expected since I was way too hyped for it. And the match that had to deliver delivered and nothing went wrong. The era of Joe has begun. He beat Angle clean, no distractions, no BS, no Russo. And I think it was the best match the 2 have had besides Joe/Angle II. Of course maybe I'm biased that I think the two matches Joe won are their best.

[Andy]

Apr 13, 2008 22:18:18 GMT -5 chrisisadad4308 said:

I didn't like the way Joe/Angle started out, but once it slowly turned into a wrestling match it was fantastic.

You're an idiot! That was the best wrestling match in the history of the world! You just like having WWE shit shoved down your throat! TNA is amazing and they've never done anything wrong, while WWE has yet to do anything right! If you didn't like every fucking second of that pay-per-view then you are the world's stupidest mark piece of shit! /Dev

Notice how it got good once they started using professional wrestling moves in the professional wrestling match on the professional wrestling show?

All in all it was a meh show. Xscape match was a bit of a letdown. It had its couple of good highspots but it wasn't anything to put on the Best of TNA dvd. Roxxi/Angelina was surprisingly better than I thought it would be. Angelina can wrestle better than half the WWE woman's roster and Roxxi will look good getting eaten alive by Kong. Road Dogg vs Billy Gunn was every bit as interesting as when they did it in WWF. The tag team handcuff match was a clusterfuck with a really obvious punchline that people who've never seen TNA before and are blind saw coming. The women's tag team match was really great and managed to overcome the raging handicap that is having ODB in it. Melissa is fucking awesome and finally people got to see that. I hope she gets to wrestle in tna for a while and maybe gets to use her actual gimmick. Robert Roode sucks. Robert Roode sucks. Robert Roode sucks. Lethal Lockdown was pretty good, but it sort of had a bit of that clusterfuck feel to it as well. And it ended really abruptly, but hey, good for Rhino. Glad he got the big win. Hopefully he gets some sort of push with it. Angle/Joe was garbage until they started wrestling. Fake MMA is almost ALMOST as interesting as Show/Akebono's fake sumo. It basically looks like a bunch of big restholds, but for some reason a couple people got off on that. So hey, who am I to complain? Joe is the champion so everyone can shut up. Got to get tough. Go Joe.

ETA:

Apr 14, 2008 0:28:23 GMT -5 Lucky said:

The 1st stage ended a lot quicker than I expected as I really expected someone to stop Love but she just went up unmolested.

If she was in the cage at my place there's no way she'd get out unmolested.

[Tommy]

It was actually the legit old-school Liontamer rather than the slightly toned-down "Walls" (even though they were calling it a Boston Crab like they were calling an armbar)

[Lucky]

Yeah. I actually thought it was interesting because one of the people with me asked "Is that a Walls of Jericho?" and I said "Liontamer!" He actually thought Joe had it applied incorrectly while I thought it was applied better than Jericho has in years because it was the harsher version he used in WCW. Of course Joe also didn't have it locked in which allowed Angle to escape, an aspect to the submissions I really enjoyed. They kept using a variety of submissions but they weren't getting locked in perfect and that was allowing the escapes. But when they went to THEIR submissions they were better because those are the ones the know perfectly.

[Mr. Dashbee]

It almost seems like TNA made a statement by setting up a million ways Joe-Angle could be a screwjob, eliminated the most obvious one (Karen) and then let the match go 100% clean.

Regardless of the reason, I like it.

I think Impact should open with a random backstage interview (Kaz?) where Borash mentions that Joe is the new champ and mentions that Kazarian might be considering throwing his name in the hat for a future title shot. In walks Joe, belt on shoulder. "You want a shot, you got it. You and me, main event, tonight."

Glorified squash for Joe that starts off his title reign nicely. Total badass "I don't give a shit who I wrestle. I'll beat them all" attitude from Joe.

[Tommy]

No...don't squash Kaz...dammit that makes sense. Can't squash Freakzilla til the PPV.

[Lucky]

I REALLY want Joe to be that exact defending champ who gives guys like Kaz and Jay Lethal and Hernandez and even Roode shots when they ask and "deserve" them. Because Joe waited so damn long to get a fair shot and he knows he's good enough to take on any up and comer who deserves one. But I kinda think that Steiner should be his first defense and you should maybe sell that Joe's been so focused on Angle that he's got to recover a bit and refocus on being the champ. Steiner at Sacrifice, Angle/Cage/Tomko/AJ at Slammiversary, then "I beat the top challengers, who else wants a piece?"

TNA's already announced 3 title matches for Impact but no world title match. Lethal defends vs Devine. Kong defends vs the Queen of the Cage winner Roxxi. AJ & Tomko defend against the #1 Contenders LAX and Cuffed winners Kaz & Eric Young (in a "I can't believe they remembered LAX were #1 contenders but how come they got screwed in a 3-way" match).

[Lucky]

Huh, you know what I just realized? The faces won EVERY match. Guess TNA really wanted a happy audience tonight.

Or maybe it was a subtle play to try and make people who pay attention to that stuff anxious that Joe was gonna lose? Double psych out?

My TNA hater board seemed to love the PPV a lot more than I did and went crazy for Lethal Lockdown. Go figure. Maybe the watching it with a group of people thing and not totally focusing hurts.

[punk/core]

I thought the main event was boring. But I said it in chat and I'll say it here-- I'm not an MMA fan at all. So rather than saying, "the main event sucked," I'll say, "I guess I didn't get it."

This was actually the first TNA pay-per-view I've ever seen. Good stuff I thought. Opener was cool, I thought Sonjay was gonna turn on Lethal for sure. Should we believe he helped out for some underlying reason we don't know about yet? Lethal diving out of the cage for the win was a cool visual.

Both women's matches were good. It's weird to see women that are good looking and can actually wrestle too! Imagine that.

I really wanted Booker to beat the shit out of Roode and make the pin. Oh well.

The ladder spot on top of the cage seemed like it was gonna be more spectacular than it was. And the end of that match was very abrupt with Rhino making the pin the way he did. Oh, and I don't the six-sided ring was not meant to hold ten guys at once. Everyone was so crammed in there it looked like they hardly had any room to move around.

[gobshite]

Thats not really a six sided thing, thats just an 'its a small ring' thing.
Will be downloading this later, looking forward to it!