TNA Impact Coverage: A Waste

“Every time I see you, you look worse and worse”- Bully Ray to random TNA employee on this week’s TNA Impact Wrestling.

Funny. The average wrestling fan could say the same thing to the entire TNA promotion.

You could go a month without watching Impact Wrestling. Nothing has changed. It’s the same old song- poor promo and wrestling that doesn’t push the limits it used to.

At this point, it seems TNA is destined to revel in mediocrity.

As a matter of fact, the best part of the show was those catchy FreeCreditScore.com commercials.

It all started off blandly. Kurt Angle’s promo to start this week’s episode of Impact was boring. It was a bad way to start the show and was indicative of what was a mundane 120-minute program.

Between weak promo work from Angle, Robert Roode and Christopher Daniels, TNA seems to be about everything else but wrestling.

Creatively, the show is at its lowest point, ever. At this point, they should steal a page from Ring of Honor and just scrap storyline completely. Let these guys go out there and dance. That’s it. That would be more entertaining than the mess this show has become.

Matches:

Gauntlet Match: Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian vs. AJ Styles: These guys used to tear the house down. Maybe it’s the poor angle the three of them are in, but there’s no magic in the ring either. Aside from going through their routine offense, there was little else here. In typical TNA fashion, Kazarian got Daniels DQed after he hit Styles with his Reverse Piledriver, but was able to cover Styles himself for the victory.

Knockouts Tag Team champion Madison Rayne w/ Gail Kim vs. OBD w/ Eric Young: ODB is one tough woman. On the assault early on, Rayne countered the Bronco Buster in an interesting way, but was unable to truly get the advantage. Quick to score an Avalanche in the corner and a slew of Shoulder Blocks, ODB then hit the Bronco Buster and the TKO, which earned her the three-count.

Shannon Moore vs. Zema Ion: A quick, but entertaining X-Division encounter. Ion is still green, but he’s fun to watch. After Moore hit a top-rope Hurricanrana, Ion delivered a double knee and a Belly to Back Facebuster of sorts for the win.

Angelina Love and Sarita vs. Mickie James and Velvet Skye: Four beautiful women who can all dance…a bit. Love and James did the heavy lifting thankfully, but Sarita was solid here too, hitting some high impact aerial maneuvers and submission holds. Sky has come a long way, but still isn’t in the same league as these three. After James took a bit of a beating, Sky got the hot tag and a hit what felt like a million clotheslines- the only move she does perfectly every time. She then hit a Stunner on Sarita and followed that up with an Angel’s Wings variation on Love for the win.

Bully Ray, TNA X-Division Champion Austin Aries and TNA World Heavyweight Champion Robert Roode vs. TNA Tag Champions Magnus and Samoa Joe and James Storm: Aries made this match. Tonight he proved he could dance with much bigger competitors. Joe also looks like he’s refreshed and back in top form. This was the match of the night, but because the storyline is so flaccid, it’s hard to get too excited. Storm got the win with his Closing Time/ Last Call combo.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 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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