TNA Impact Wrestling Coverage: A Wedding, More Guns and RVD’s Return

“I vow to love you, even when you fart,” Eric Young

“I promise to not take your last name, but I will take your ring music,” ODB

A near-naked wedding in a steel cage? TNA is wacky, but Eric Young and ODB are wacky personified. But unlike most of their co-workers, they’re actually entertaining. TNA’s first couple, the duo were charming on Impact, fueling the show creatively once again.

Now that they’re a couple, it’s time to give both ODB and Young real shots in singles competition. Enough of this Knockouts Tag Team nonsense.

Speaking of nonsense, Abyss’ Penn and Teller angle is stale. Even more Jeff Hardy shouldn’t be allowed to cut promos if he’s going to be boring. Screaming “creatures” isn’t enough. Have something smart or intriguing to say. “Smart” isn’t exactly a common word used in combination with Hardy, but intriguing always is. Time to step it up hardy.

The Motor City Machine Guns have given a flaccid Tag Team Division a much-needed lift. But as solid as both the Guns and Samoa Joe and Magnus are, there needs to be more. Joe and Magnus work well together, but their finisher is a bore. The Guns aren’t ready to go full throttle just yet either. The match between these two at Lockdown will be good, but ah, if TNA just let the Guns get their bearings first before the title shot, damn, it could have been great.

This wedding and a damn good Austin Aries/Christopher Daniels match saved an otherwise decent show. The battle between the Bischoff’s at Lockdown is a snore creatively. The way these teams were put together is completely representative of how this promotion does business. It makes no sense. Eric Bischoff’s team consists of Bully Ray, Kazarian, Christopher Daniels and Gunner. I understand how Bully Ray and Gunner got there- former Immortal members, but Kaz and Daniels? Former Fortune members? It just doesn’t work. When you put them all together, what do they equal? How about boring? Even better- three has-beens and an up and comer?

Garret Bischoff’s team isn’t much better, but at least they’re entertaining- Mr. Anderson, Austin Aries, AJ Styles and RVD. Sadly, Anderson and RVD have been misused and Styles has been essentially forgotten. Aries is one of the best workers in the company and truth be told, all four of these guys are immense talents. It may not work creatively, but either way you look at it though, this should be fun to watch in the ring.

The same thing can be said for the Robert Roode/James Storm World Title match, but in all fairness, there wasn’t enough captivating promo between the two on Impact. That’s the main event this weekend; there needs to be more showmanship there. TNA needs to sell those two. They failed miserably in that regard.

Matches:

Best of Three Series for Man Advantage at Lethal Lockdown: Gunner vs. Mr. Anderson: Gunner was on the offensive early on, but Anderson got the upper-hand on the outside. Once it got back in the ring, the contest evened up. At this point, Gunner is proving he can hang with someone like Anderson, but is still a ways away. Botching a roll-up, he still needs more ring time. It didn’t matter though. Anderson got DQed after he refused to stop pounding on Gunner. Lame.

Best of Three Series for Man Advantage at Lethal Lockdown: Christopher Daniels vs. X-Division Champion Austin Aries: Best match of the night. Aries is a golden god. Daniels had one of his better matches on Impact in easily a year. Daniels worked the back well with unique submission holds and maneuvers. Aries was quick to counter and looked smooth. Both got caught puling tights towards the end of the match, but Daniels missed the BME and Aries countered with a monster Missile Dropkick, followed by a standing dropkick in the corner and his signature Brainbuster for the win.

Best of Three Series for Man Advantage at Lethal Lockdown: Bully Ray vs. AJ Styles: What’s with the gloves AJ? Just looked weird. Despite that, this was a solid match. Both guys “brought” it. Ray hit a Samoan Drop and it appeared he had the upper hand about eight minutes in, but Styles hit a sloppy frankensteiner to gain the advantage. After that, members of both teams fought on the outside. Styles then hit the Pele for the near win, but with the ref distracted, Bischoff gave Ray his wallet chain- naturally, he hit Styles for the win. Well, not exactly. Hulk Hogan hit the ring soon after and made the match for Lockdown a five on five, eliminating the whole reason for the best of three series in the first place.

Knockouts Tag Team Match: Velvet Sky and Mickie James vs. TNA Knockouts Champion Gail Kim and Madison Rayne: Growl- no pigeons again, but a good knockouts match nonetheless. Rayne and James work well together and they did the majority of the heavy lifting. Sky and Kim looked good together too, even when Sky delivered a weird-looking DDT. After some routine maneuvers and some counters, Sky hit her sit-out pedigree for the win.

mm
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.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*