BFG thoughts -
The pre-show match with Lethal Consequences vs. the Guns was incredibly fast-paced and a good, short match. It certainly played into the Ultimate X match perfectly due to that. I like that they turned a bad situation (whatever happened with the Pope) into a really good one and wound up giving two guys PPV paydays who wouldn't have otherwise gotten one and were then able to shine in the match. Red's new gear somehow looks even more indy-riffic than his previous stuff. He wears sneakers now. Yowza. The flip uranage spot off the cables was insane and really disgusting. Joe's jump off of the balcony onto steps last year was stupid as hell, but his was even worse. Daniels landed right on his head, the ref and Taz were each terrified, as was I when I saw it. That left me with no desire to ever watch one of these matches again, so of course they're doing one on Impact.
The Knockouts tag title match was fine considering TBP were in it. This act just fell off the Earth without Angelina - the ring work dropped, Lacey doesn't have anywhere near the presence of Love, and Madison isn't as good as she was in the ring either.
The legends title 3-way went on too long, although it had some nice spots - I liked EY suplexing Hernandez and Hernandez shoulder blocking EY over the top rope, but these guys just had no chemistry together. The ending also looked horrible, largely due to the director as it didn't appear like EY threw Hernandez into Nash - it just looked like Nash fell backwards and Hernandez fell forward for some reason, and then EY hit a bad cradle for the win. So now he's a singles champion. Wonderful. They make Hernandez look like a fool for weeks, then he doesn't even win the B-level singles belt after losing his shot at the world title due to the WE and his own idiocy. Dude's still over though, but I wish they'd have him wrestle in the Supermex gear as opposed to his street wear.
The double tag title match was a mix of good stuff and some bad stuff. The best part of the match for me was Steiner running wild with the Frankensteiner off the top, the belly to belly off the top, a chain of suplexes and clotheslines and then taking for more bumps than I expected him to take - including one through a table. The only downside for him here was his head smacking right into the ladder on a bump - otherwise, he was just on fire here. Booker being a goof was amusing, but also annoying - especially with him suffering some mystery injury, and then appearing to laugh throughout the entire deal. Shit like that makes me hope that WWE doesn't bring him in, but I'm sure the second he's back, that kind of behavior will stop. The bad stuff here would be Roode getting pressed to the floor and basically missing the table - resulting in him taking a Spike Dudley-La Resstance bump to the floor. The director missed a bunch of stuff because, shockingly, entirely too much was going on with four teams involved. Sure, that's TNA's fault, but they've had massive brawls before like this - he should know how to shoot them by now. A lot of the stuff just came off as guys re-enacting a classic WWE match, but screwing up stuff more often, which hurt the match. However, I do like the booking - 3D shouldn't have lost the IWGP tag belts to begin with, so they win them and get another world tag title reign added to their list, plus New Japan's happy, plus TBI wins the TNA Tag belts, which I'm all for because they're a great team. I just hope they don't Freebird rule them and count Rob Terry as a champion.
I didn't have high hopes for the Knockouts match before because they just haven't meshed well together, and they found a way to sink beneath those low expectations. Much of that is due to Tara missing 90% of the match to fight with Kim Couture. While I'm glad they at least got her in after teasing her when Tara did commentary, I don't like any avenue this can go in. I can't imagine TNA having a shoot match on a show, and I don't think Kim could do a good worked one since Tara probably can't carry her to a good match - let alone that is good but has to look believable because of the MMA background of each. It really took away from this match, which was mostly ODB vs. Kong, which has never been good, although I liked the finish, even if I was annoyed by the referee NOT GETTING RID OF THE CHAIR despite having all this new authority. He just stood there like a moron and let the thing come in and out of the ring, then ODB hit a bad-looking facebuster for the win. And now they're doing Kong vs. Saeed in their match ever after a multi-year partnership for free on TV. Fail.
Lashley-Joe was better than I expected given Lashley's bland regular matches and Joe's illness. They each worked pretty hard here, and surprise, surprise - when Lashley's actually booked like an MMA-style guy, his matches are better for it. He busted out a bunch of submissions, which I liked because it gave them a chance to establish some new ones for him as major moves and got away from the trend that I hate where guys in submission matches only go for ONE MOVE the entire match. Here, if one thing didn't work, they went on to something else. Simple, logical, and rarely done. The side choke used to finish the match struck me as a bit odd in a way because it wasn't the submission they'd built up for him that I was sure would end it - however, had they used the dragon sleeper, they couldn't have done the ref's discretion finish as well because Joe had to be prone on the mat afterwards to make it work. So what they did here was a bit jarring, but smart because they at least tried to get new stuff over in both the move and that style of finish.
Foley vs. Abyss wasn't even one of Abyss's best matches, let alone Foley's. This thing reminded me a lot of the ONS '06 tag match that varied between being really awesome and memorable at times and then just becoming awful at various times as well. It started off insane with the barb wire bat being used to wear down Abyss so Foley could hit him with a neckbreaker. Logically, things should have been reversed there, but whatever, the neckbreaker at least placed Abyss where he needed to be so Foley could jump on top off him off the set (which was TNA's best one yet by the way).
Then Abyss cut him off, Foley knocked him THROUGH THE STAGE and dove on top of him as Abyss twitched. This all happened in about the first three minutes, which reminded me of the insane Genesis '07 match Abyss had with Black Reign that OPENED THE SHOW and had about 1,000 stupid things happen - not the least of which was the debut of Rellik, whose name was indeed Killer spelled backwards. Stuff happened with a barb wire board, people bled, I wondered why I was watching this, and why people with actual talent outside wrestling like Stevie (who is a tech blogger and professor at a college) and Foley (best-selling author) were participating in this garbage match. Then Daffney came out to get chokeslammed through a barb wire board. Which we had to be told about because the director missed it. So yeah, that sucked in about every way imaginable. It was disgusting AND they missed it. And they can't even use it on TV for video packages because of the man-on-woman violence thing...so why do it?
Then Abyss won after black hole slamming Stevie onto tacks to take him out so his chokeslam onto the barb wire board could lead to him dragging Stevie over to count the pin (ala WWF OVER THE EDGE 1998). So again, like the tag title match, this wound up feeling like an homage to a better match in another company. It did, however, blow off the Abyss-Foley/Stevie/Daffney feud really well, so at least this show settled one feud.
Angle-Morgan was Morgan's coming out party as a top-level guy thanks to the second-half of the match. The first half was nothing special at all, but the second-half featured a ton of finishers being attempted, kicked out of, and then the match ended with a victory roll after Morgan tried to hit Angle with an Electric Chair Drop. He came off as more Angle's equal here than he ever has before, and the handshake was a nice touch - it seemed like even after all the shit Angle's been through with Morgan, he had to give him his due which helped give Morgan a rub. Angle definitely put Morgan over without losing to him here, and they built up a rematch perfectly since it was just a lucky rollup that won. The only thing I didn't like outright about this was them announcing a 15 minute time limit, ending the match within 30 seconds of that...and not mentioning it at all. A simple "10 minutes have gone by, 5 minutes are remaining in this contest" announcement would have helped things out and added to the drama.
Sting vs. AJ was good - not up to the level of AJ's match with Angle on Impact, or Angle's match with Sting two years ago, but pretty close to Joe-Sting last year, minus the stupid bumps and stuff. I liked the fight over the reverse DDT - that made sense since both men have it in their arsenal as major moves, and the booking was fine face vs. face stuff. The finish though...wow did that ever suck. AJ hits the Pele on the apron (finally actually hitting it out of nowhere as opposed to the same way he's hit it forever) and then Sting walks backwards. And keeps walking. And keeps walking. Then he kinda falls down after about a minute and AJ splashes him. For one thing, the finish just looked absurd. For another, AJ's used a far more awesome springboard 450 on FREE TV to win, but on the BIGGEST PPV OF THE YEAR he does a basic splash? I'm not sure if it was done for his safety, or to protect Sting, but it just added to things being anti-climatic. Then AJ gave Sting the mic, he said some stuff, the crowd kind of ate it up, he basked in the spotlight for maybe a minute then they played his theme and the show ended. I really hope that they don't try to do a Flair sendoff-style deal for him because with how frantic this company paces stuff they'd do it during a commercial break and then air highlights when the show came back on the air.
Here's the newest Observer Radio show with a BFG 2009 review and AN HOUR AND A HALF INTERVIEW WITH PAUL HEYMAN talking about Lou Albano, sharing stories about him, the history of managers in the Northeast, their role in the company, and how Lou revolutionized the industry. They also talk about the Shane McMahon deal and he reveals that in July of 2000, he was in talks to have Shane buy ECW and he would run it - but Vince nixed that feeling it would be smarter to let the company go under so they could buy the assets out of bankruptcy for less money. When ECW was relaunched in '06, the original idea for it was to not only be web-only as has been known since that time, but for it to be run as a separate company within WWE - ala WEC being owned by the same parent company as UFC, but run as its own entity, with Shane running it. Fascinating stuff, and easily the best Heyman interview I've ever heard. -
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TTN32Z5P
ing great. Showed more emotion than Cena or Orton combined!
at th "technical difficulties"
