TNA Impact Wrestling Coverage: Hidden Birds and Red Suits

Last night’s TNA Impact Wrestling featured one of the best cards the show has seen all year. Overall, the wrestling was solid enough for any hardcore fan to be satisfied.

In spite of that, TNA continues to make serious creative mistakes every week on Impact. Rather than lead with their impressive arsenal of young wrestlers, they continue to give veterans such as Kurt Angle, Sting and Hulk Hogan the most time on screen. This formula has never worked for the company, yet they continue to shove it down the audience’s throat…every week.

And even when they give someone fresh an opportunity to do a promo, it ends up being Velvet Sky, who is engaged in one of the worst feuds of the years with ODB and Jackie Moore.

It felt like something stolen from an ABC after-school special.

Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

At the same time, it was nice to see TNA have Sting in the red and black outfit in order to sell the Joker gimmick a bit more. How he’s positioned himself at the top of the company is a complete wreck of a storyline however. It’s even more proof that TNA is having serious problems creatively.

Matches:

Bound for Glory Series: Gunner vs. Rob Van Dam: A quality opening match that pushed a good pace. Both competitors hit a nice amount of moves, but Gunner showed the most ingenuity with a Tully Blanchard-esque slingshot suplex and several high impact strikes. However, RVD won after he hit a five-star frog splash from quite a distance away. While the match was solid, what does TNA have to gain by pushing a “made” veteran like RVD over Gunner, who is in need of being put over? Like the amount of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop, the world may never know.

Bound for Glory Series: Crimson vs. Bully Ray:
A weird match that is proof that TNA is attempting to make Crimson their very own Randy Orton-type performer. After Bully Ray spent most of the match working on Crimson, the rookie came out of nowhere and hit his Sky High Powerbomb for the win. Too bad it lacks the same power and impact as the RKO. Crimson has potential, but needs a better finisher and soon. With the way he’s being pushed, every match counts and he needs a spectacular finish to stand out.

Tara w/Miss Tessmacher vs. Winter w/Angelina Love: A decent match that had a surprising outcome. After she hit her spinning Irish Curse-type finisher [It was sloppily executed however. It appeared Winter had trouble picking Tara up for the move.], Winter got the win. At first, it appeared she was having one of her best matches in the company, but by the end, it’s obvious she still needs to work on her technique.

Brian Kendrick vs. Abyss in an Ultimate X match for the TNA X Division Title: Probably one of the least entertaining Ultimate X matches ever. But that’s only because Abyss is the last person you’d want to see in the contest. You have to give TNA credit though, the finish was intriguing, as Abyss appeared in the drivers seat, until Kendrick reversed a chokeslam in mid-air and was able to take the title off the ropes.

Kurt Angle vs. Mr. Anderson in a steel cage match: A match that dragged. After 15 minutes of offense and Bully Ray’s interference, Angle was able to rise above it all and still win the match. At this point, Immortal is at its weakest. Why would the company have Sting and Angle fight for the title when the biggest angle is between Sting and Immortal? The only way this could make sense is if Angle swerves and goes heel. If that is the case, it smells of typical Vince Russo storyline writing.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14229 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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