TNA Impact Wrestling Coverage: Still Champ

Bully Ray isn’t happy about his World Heavyweight title loss to Chris Sabin last week, so much so that he’s hired a lawyer.

That can cut promos.

If that doesn’t make sense, TJ Perkins’ promo before his X-Division title match was completely illogical, as he continued to break the fourth wall in terms of his Manik persona. If everyone knows you’re under the mask, it’s not sexy,

While the show’s storyline was a bore, the in-ring competition was solid enough to make sure you didn’t change the channel.

With the Bound for Glory series heating up and the battle between The Main Event Mafia and The Aces and Eights continuing to develop, there’s always the possibility that something cool “could” happen.

That wasn’t the case this week and it’s unknown when it’ll happen again. But with their solid in-ring product, hardcore wrestling fans will continue to try and squeeze as much enjoyment out of the product as possible. That, or watch the company’s slow descent to termination the old-fashioned way- match by match.

At least Chris Sabin gets to keep the title, for now.

Matches:

Ultimate X for X-Division Title: Manik vs. Greg Marasciulo vs. Sonjay Dutt: This match was all high-impact and spots, in and out of the ring. Manik was his Spider-Man-esque self, but Marasciulo hit his Package Buster on him on the outside to take him out of the match. At this point, the match became Marasciulo vs. Dutt, with both of them trading offense. With Manik still down and out, Dutt and Marasciulo climbed the top of the Ultimate X structure. After a few strikes, Marasciulo looked to have the advantage, and even tried to suplex Dutt off the top of the structure. With Dutt and Marascuilo fighting amongst themselves, Manik climbed across the X and won the title.

Bound for Glory Series: Anderson vs. Hernandez: Anderson kicked out of Hernandez’s signature Backbreaker, but soon caught Hernandez’s massive Shoulder Block. Just when it seemed he was done for, Anderson countered Hernandez’s outside-inside dive and hit the Mic-Check for the win.

Knockouts Champion Mickie James vs. Gail Kim: Talk about evenly matched. These two had an excellent match by simply trading offense. In the ring and out, these two wrestled a counter-based, chain wrestling, heel-based match that was a ton of fun. Trying to out-cheat each other, Kim even slapped ODB. That’s what ultimately led to Kim’s demise, as James rolled up the unsuspecting Kim for the win.

Bound for Glory Series: Samoa Joe vs. Christopher Daniels: If you’ve ever watched TNA over the last decade, you’ve seen this match before. It was still good, damn good, but it’s been done before. Interference from Anderson changed the tone of the match and allowed Daniels to hit the Best Moonsault Ever, twice, to gain the win.

Bound for Glory Series: Jeff Hardy vs. AJ Styles: The different-look Styles, combined with a few new moves from Hardy, including a Alley-Oop, made for an interesting match. After a nice back and forth for 15 minutes where Hardy hit his signature offense, Styles eventually went back to his old repertoire, hitting a Pele Kick, before going to his new Calf Killer submission move, earning a big time win. After the match, he refused to shake Hardy’s hand.