TNA Gaining Momentum

Aside from a few horrible filler segments, this past week’s edition of TNA Impact was full of energy, gearing up for what looks like an interesting Pay-PerView on September 5.

Even without a World Champion, due to a kayfabe injury to champion Rob VanDam [According to several wrestling websites, TNA used up all of his bookings and has yet to negotiate a new contract with him.], the show had plenty of drama, stemming from the company’s super clique, “Fortune.”

Add in an excellent tag team match between Generation Me and the Motor City Machine Guns, a brutal tag match where Beer Money [who looked more like the tag team of Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard, showing excellent polish and grit] eviscerated the FBI and a match between Jeff Jarrett and Kevin Nash [where Sting and Hulk Hogan ended up showing up, further developing that angle] and this edition of Impact had much better wrestling showcased than what RAW managed to produce.

Right from the start of the show, Fortune’s manager Ric Flair was called out by TNA President Dixie Carter and “The Nature Boy” was on top of his game. Playing the dirty old man to a T, Flair got under Carter’s skin, eventually leading up to an encounter with Hogan, who booked an eight-man tag with Kurt Angle, Mr. Anderson, Jeff Hardy and The Pope against the rest of Fortune. While a bit slow at first, the match ended up ending nicely with a ton of moves being used by all the talent before Fortune ended up fighting with EV2.0, where Sabu ended up partially putting Doug Williams through a table and the four TNA stars tried to put their bygones aside.

Overall, it continues to prove that TNA is dedicated to developing this group of young stars, while incorporating the legends of yesteryear. Will it be enough for the company to hold water with the WWE? History says that just because you have better wrestling doesn’t necessarily mean your ratings will improve. Right now, TNA has to continue to develop its brand and style of story-telling and try to cater to more viewers.

What it can do to have that become a reality is limit its mistakes and keep the action as fast and fierce as possible. For instance, there were some missteps along the way though that held the show back. Firstly, there was entirely too much time paid to the Knockouts, as the angle between the Beautiful People and Madison Rayne needs to be settled in the ring already. The same thing goes for the drama between Abyss and EV2.0, which got extremely boring as Stevie Richards and “The Monster” battled backstage for what appeared to be an eternity.

Eliminating these filler segments or shortening them enough to have another match, even a quick job, could have been enough to make this a great show. In spite of that, this edition of Impact was a solid one.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13820 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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