9/24/09 iMPACT
-For those of you keeping score, Sarita & Taylor vs. Kong & Saeed was the highest rated segment last week. If this continues we could be hearing about that Knockout spin-off show before too long.
-There's a new intro video at the start of the show. Sarita & Taylor are included in it now. Booyah.
SARITA & TAYLOR WILDE © vs. TARA & ODB ©
-Good, albeit too short match. I'm digging SariTaylor's double team moves. It looks like they're still ironing out the kinks in a few areas, but for them to be as good as they are together after just a few matches is pretty impressive.
-Did they really need to bring out Kong that soon? Couldn't they have let the match go for a few more minutes first? The champs' first title defense was just used as a backdrop for Tara/Kong/ODB and that's not the way it should be.
-So does this mean the Tara/Christy Hemme tag team is no more? Wow, they didn’t last too long, did they? Not surprising. At this point it seems like all the random makeshift teams created for the tournament are toast: Traci/Sharmell, Hamada/Bolt, Tara/Christy -- all done. I basically predicted that none of those teams would last beyond the tournament since they were obviously thrown together just for the sake of filling spots in said tournament and it looks like I was right on the money.
-I hope TNA will keep Alissa/Daffney together though. They were a good team and were certainly much better than Velvet Sky & Madison Rayne.
-My favorite part about Sarita & Taylor being the champs? They're getting more TV time, which means I get to keep seeing that entrance. ;)
-I have to say I’m really disappointed that there was no segment where Taylor & Sarita were officially presented with their new titles. Remember this?
TNA needed to do something like that to put over the new champs and the new titles to really make what happened at No Surrender seem monumental because lord knows they didn’t bother to do that on Sunday. So far, TNA have done a lousy job of making the Knockout tag team titles look important.
ALISSA FLASH INTERRUPTS HAMADA BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW
-Oh, man… An Alissa/Hamada feud? I'm salivating. I'm drooling on my keyboard as I'm typing this. The matches those two could have together... TNA, get them in the ring yesterday!
-This was awesome! Alissa is such a badass; she beat the piss out of Hamada! Kudos to Hamada as well for taking some stiff shots and bumping so well for her. This one segment was proof of why Alissa should be the one to replace Angelina as the new top heel on the women’s roster.
-Alissa linked to a video of this segment on her twitter page, citing it as the reason why she should be the Knockouts champion and it’s pretty hard to argue with her.
-I couldn't be more thrilled that the writers are finally doing something with Alissa instead of wasting her as enhancement talent. Plus, Hamada needed a damn feud already. No complaints from me.
-Something else I'm happy about is that even though the women now have a singles title AND tag team titles, we can still get a non-title feud like this, which was something I was afraid we’d seen the last of. I have no idea where TNA will find the TV time for it though.
-One thing I'm wondering about is how this is going to affect the teased Kong/Saeed break up angle. If Alissa is going to feud with Hamada then that could delay her potential feud with Kong. I'm happy she'll be wrestling Hamada soon, but I still want that Awesome Kong feud.
KEVIN NASH ©, DAFFNEY & DR. STEVIE BACKSTAGE SEGMENT
-I. Love. Daffney. For punking out Kevin Nash. Daffney is a goddess. End of story.
-I loved this. Not because it was a good segment necessarily, but because these skits of Nash seducing random women just felt so pointless and self-indulgent. I mean, is Nash a guy who really needs his ego stroked more? In a word: no. Seeing the Scream Queen make him look like an idiot made this whole thing worth while.
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10/01/09 iMPACT
DR. STEVIE & DAFFNEY BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW
-Daffney looks like an evil burlesque dancer this week. It’s so hot it’s scary.
DR. STEVIE (w/ DAFFNEY) vs. KEVIN NASH ©
-Kevin Nash is still getting pushed. Shoot me. Equally as frustrating, the Motor City Machine Guns were barely on the show this week. TNA still refuses to acknowledge the potential gold mine they have with the Guns, thus drawing the ire of wrestling fans everywhere.
-Once again, Daffney is given practically nothing to do and yet still makes herself stand out. She continues to be criminally underutilized which depresses me because she’s so talented, not to mention so sexy she should be illegal.
TRACI BROOKS vs. CHRISTY HEMME
-“Battle of the Playboy models”? What is this, TNA or WWE circa 2004?
-Were those bunny ears they were wearing really necessary? In a wrestling ring they just look stupid.
-It’s a pretty safe bet that jobbing to Christy Hemme means your push is over. Sorry, Traci.
-To Christy’s credit, that role up she used to get the pin was a new move from her and it didn’t look half bad.
-This match wasn’t good, but at least it was short. With Bound for Glory just a few weeks away a match like this just feels like an incredible waste of time, especially on a show when the writers were obviously struggling to cram in a lot more stuff than they realistically had time for.
AWESOME KONG (w/ RAISHA SAEED) vs. ODB ©. TARA SITS IN ON COMMENTARY
-Since ODB and Kong have fought on PPV several times before, this match really should’ve had some hype or at the very least a pre-match interview. And I can’t believe that the fact that ODB had never beaten Kong before until tonight was never even mentioned.
-This was way too short, especially considering the history between these two. Every match on this show felt rushed, with the exception of Traci vs. Christy, which couldn’t end fast enough for my taste.
-Though it wasn’t focused on or mentioned by the announcers this week, the tension between Kong/Saeed is still ongoing. That look Kong gave Saeed during their entrance pretty much said everything.
-I guess it’s more or less official now. ODB vs. Kong vs. Tara for the title at BFG. Seeing as how they’ve been teasing Kong/Tara for so long I can’t believe they’re going to have their first PPV encounter in a triple threat match. I know I’ve talked about not seeing much chemistry between them, but all that build up leading up to them in a triple threat with ODB just seems so pointless when the fans want to see them go at it one-on-one.
BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, SARITA & TAYLOR WILDE © IN-RING SEGMENT. LACEY VON ERICH DEBUTS
-Lacey Von Erich is so delicious and now TNA is wrestleicious!
-Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Anyway, I figured they’d be adding someone else to the Beautiful People after Angelina was released. I assumed it was going to be Trina Michaels since they’d been teasing her for a while, but whatever. To be honest, I’m not happy about this. Lacey Von Erich is third generation and comes from a great wrestling family, so there’s no reason why she shouldn’t be a good worker, but for all our sakes I really hope she’s improved a LOT since the last time I saw her in the ring. That’s all I’m going to say…
-I think Lacey needs to refrain from using the claw. I know it’s a signature of the Von Erich family, but it really doesn’t look good the way she does it. She was just holding onto Sarita’s head by her fingertips; there’s no way that would hurt. It didn’t even look like it hurt. To Sarita’s credit, she sold the claw like it killed her, but there’s only so much that covers up.
-What also didn’t look good was Lacey’s beatdown of the babyfaces -- there was nothing devastating about her offense whatsoever. Frankly, I was wondering why Taylor & Sarita didn’t just spring right back up.
-Instead of someone like Lacey, who is gorgeous but has in-ring skills that are questionable at best, I really wish they had gone with an enforcer type of character like Moose briefly played last year. That way they wouldn’t have to worry about finding someone who’s swimsuit model-pretty; just someone who can wrestle.
-On a completely unrelated topic (caugh), you know who would be just great in an enforcer/bodyguard type of role? Sara Del Rey.
-Why were Taylor & Sarita wearing their ring gear if they didn’t have a match tonight?
-Why are Velvet & Madison getting a rematch for the titles at BFG when they were beaten pretty quickly and easily at No Surrender?
BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW
-Well, at least Lacey can talk decently. I’m not too sure about her acting though.
-No Alissa/Hamada follow up this week? Boooo!
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10/09/09 iMPACT
ABYSS, MICK FOLEY, DR. STEVIE & DAFFNEY IN-RING SEGMENT
-So Daffney might have something to do at BFG after all. I guess I’ll take what I can get at this point.
ELIMINATION MATCH: HAMADA, CHRISTY HEMME, SARITA & TAYLOR WILDE © vs. THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, TRACI BROOKS & “FUTURE LEGEND” ALISSA FLASH. LACEY VON ERICH INTERFERES
-Pretty decent match, but probably not as good as it should’ve been considering Sarita, Taylor, Alissa and Hamada were in it. And it certainly didn’t help that two of the best workers in the match (Alissa & Hamada) were eliminated early on. The problem is the match was like practically everything else on this show -– way too rushed. What kind of 8-person elimination tag match can you have in less than 7 minutes? Not much of one. Rapid fire eliminations with no tension or build up, former singles champ, Taylor, getting pinned after one DDT; the end result is that no one in the match really looks good, no matter how it’s booked.
-Something really important that was missing here was that “oh $h!t” moment when they really sold that Sarita was screwed with all her partners gone and her being all alone, facing near impossible odds. They at least needed a close up shot of her as she just took that in. It sounds so simple, but things like that can really heighten the drama of a match. Yet another installment in a very long line of wasted opportunities by the production team.
-There was a weird spot early on where Traci hit Christy with a jaw breaker. I’m not sure what happened, but the way Christy sold it just looked really strange to me. Christy’s still a work in progress apparently.
-There goes Sarita’s undefeated streak. It’s really disappointing that it had to end so unceremoniously without the announcers even acknowledging it. There was a great potential storyline with the other Knockouts all trying to be the first one to beat Sarita and the writers could’ve really done something cool with that. To have her streak end like this just seems like a waste and IMO it really should’ve been Alissa who ended it. At least she was instrumental in ending it anyway.
-On the plus side, Madison Rayne finally gets her first win in TNA. I’m hoping this is a sign that the writers are going to have her be the workhorse for TBP. Now that Angelina’s gone, Madison is easily the best worker in the group.
-Sarita ends up in a three-on-one situation against Traci, Velvet & Madison, pins two of them by herself and only loses because of interference from Alissa and Lacey. Even though TBP went over, the writing is pretty much on the wall: Sarita > Velvet & Madison.
-I don’t like that Sarita took her first loss here, but it would’ve made the TBP look at least somewhat credible if Madison had pinned her cleanly. Sarita would still look strong by eliminating Traci and Velvet, but TBP wouldn’t have ended up looking like complete losers like they did here, despite the fact that they won the match.
-If Velvet & Madison with Traci’s help couldn’t even beat Sarita all by herself, no one’s going to think they have a chance in hell against Sarita & Taylor together at BFG, and let’s be honest, they really don’t. TBP aren’t winning any tag titles on October 18th, nor should they at this point.
-The production team had to edit out a spot where Lacey tripped and fell on her way to the ring. Unfortunately, they couldn’t edit out the pitiful love tap that was Lacey’s kick to Sarita’s back, which looked so weak that I’m not 100% sure if she even made contact. Her chokeslam was fine but, geez, Lacey really needs a lot of work.
-Diva-dirt.com reported today that Dixie Carter is a proponent of Lacey and basically hired her because she’s really hot. While I am greatly appreciative of Ms. Carter for all the positive changes she has made to TNA in recent months, I do feel the need to point out that being really hot doesn’t mean much if you can’t wrestle, and from what I know about her, Lacey isn’t even remotely ready for television. All due respect to Ms. Carter, but I think she will come to regret her decision to sign this woman.
TARA vs. ODB ©. AWESOME KONG INTEREFERES
-Decent enough for the 90 some odd seconds it lasted before Kong showed up, but just like the 8-woman tag, it was way too rushed to mean anything. The matches on iMPACT are just getting shorter and shorter and it really hurts the product. If every single match on the show ends before the audience can even get into it then what are we watching for and why should we order the PPVs? I know TNA have longer matches on PPV, but new viewers and casual viewers won’t know that and they’ll probably never bother to find out if this continues.
-The crowd was into the match at first, but they were dead by the time the finish came around. I’m taking that as the audience telling TNA that they want more clean finishes without all the constant interference.
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10/14/09 Webmatch
TRACI BROOKS vs. TAYLOR WILDE (w/ SARITA) ©
-A Knockouts webmatch and ODB isn’t in it; I must be seeing things. Now that ODB is the champion I wonder if Traci will be taking over her spot as the unofficial queen of the webmatches. I suppose it would make sense since her role in the Main Event Mafia has amounted to absolutely nothing. Besides, there’s no real point in continuing Traci’s “push” since she was bumped off the cover of Playboy so they could go with Marge Simpson instead. Yes, you read that right. Marge Simpson.
-Kind of strange that Taylor’s working a singles match tonight but she still comes out to Sarita’s music. I know Sarita accompanied her to the ring, but it still seems odd. I guess I’m still trying to comprehend the idea of Taylor being in a tag team where it’s not her, but actually her partner who is the “alpha”. Taylor’s always been pushed so strongly, so it’s a weird thing to get used to -- weird, but not bad. This puts Taylor in a new position for a change and could help keep her character fresh.
-Why was Sarita wearing her ring gear if she wasn’t wrestling tonight?
-Not bad at all as 2 minute matches go. It was fast paced and the crowd was into it. Even though Traci was so obviously outclassed, Taylor tends to bring out the best in her opponents.
-She’s always been a very hard worker in the ring, but Taylor seems to have stepped it up even more since she started teaming with Sarita. She’s been pulling out some moves lately that I haven’t seen from her before. It’s so impressive that, as good as Taylor is already, she’s still getting better.
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10/15/09 iMPACT
-The 8-woman tag elimination match was the highest rated segment of the show last week. Too bad the match was so damn short. Seriously, what was the point of giving that match a 20 minute time limit if the writers were only going to devote 6 minutes and change to it? For that matter, what is the point of instituting time limits on matches in the first place when pretty much every TV match TNA puts on is way too short as it is?
THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE vs. TARA, AWESOME KONG (w/ RAISHA SAEED) & ODB ©
-Not much of a match and a predictable finish. This was just about building tension between Kong/Tara/ODB and letting TBP get a win to give them some momentum before they lose at BFG. In that capacity it was fine, but when you have a 3 hour show there is absolutely no excuse to have a match this short.
-No Kong/Saeed break up tease this week. I hope they haven’t dropped that angle.
-Lacey makes her in-ring debut and does absolutely nothing. Looks like it didn’t take TNA management long to realize how bad she is in the ring. And it’s not helping her case that she’s completely out of sync with Velvet & Madison when they do their posing routine.
FALLS COUNT ANYWHERE MATCH: HAMADA vs. “FUTURE LEGEND” ALISSA FLASH
-The WWE Divas wish they were this badass.
-Great match while it lasted, but once again, it was just too damn short. I get that they didn’t want to devote too much time to it since neither of these women are on the BFG card, but still, this could’ve easily been a PPV caliber match if they had just given it another 5-10 minutes. Couldn’t they have saved this match for next week when they could’ve devoted more time to it? What’s with all the short matches tonight? They get an extra hour for iMPACT this week and so far none of the matches have been any longer than usual, and by that I mean that they’re not nearly as long as they need to be to really mean anything.
-Did they have to job out Alissa again here? I can tolerate it if this is just the start of a feud and Alissa gets over on Hamada later, but Alissa’s been jobbing so much, it’s ridiculous. All due respect to Velvet Sky, but the fact that 'Velvel' is being pushed as a title contender and Alissa is a glorified jobber is an absolute farce.
-This better not be the only match these two have because I want a rematch on PPV with more time. A LOT more time.
-Right now, Alissa is like the female version of the Motor City Machine Guns, meaning that she’s always able to get really over with the crowds no matter how the writers try to bury her and no matter how many times they job her out. You’d think the writers would’ve gotten the picture by now. Sigh…
-Tenay said that Alissa & Hamada were jockeying for position on the Knockout food chain and could be angling for a future title shot with a win here. TNA still seem to be pushing the fact that Alissa is a very tough and brutal competitor, but that’s going to become harder and harder if they don’t start giving her some actual wins. So far she’s lost every match she’s had except the one against Cody Deaner (which wasn’t even really a match) and that’s not the way it should be because she’s one of the most talented women in the industry and she should be in the title picture. The writers are just wasting Alissa as enhancement talent when she should be ruling the Knockout division and I’m really getting sick and tired of it.
DAFFNEY, DR. STEVIE, MICK FOLEY & ABYSS BACKSTAGE SEGMENT
-Predictable swerve that everyone but Abyss saw coming, but Daffney gets her requisite 60 seconds of screen time for the week. She’s probably the one woman in TNA that’s being wasted as much as Alissa right now. What happened to their tag team? That pairing had real possibilities and certainly had a lot more to offer as a heel faction than Velvet Sky, Madison Rayne and the ridiculously inexperienced Lacey Von Erich.
KNOCKOUTS TAG TITLE MATCH HYPE VIDEO
-I love that TNA made this. WWE would never bother to make a video like this for a Divas PPV match because they just don’t consider the Divas important enough to warrant such things. Often times WWE will leave the Divas off the PPVs entirely, but TNA has two Knockout matches on their biggest show of the year and has made an effort to make sure both matches actually mean something. I much prefer this to the asinine Miss Wrestlemania battle royal match (which was won by a man in drag) that assaulted my eyeballs at Wrestlemania 25. That was pretty much a huge slap in the face to the women. This, however, is not. Thank you, TNA.
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10/18/09 Bound for Glory
-Yesterday, ODB posted a message on her facebook page that would seem to indicate that she could be leaving TNA soon. It will be interesting to see how that affects her title match tonight.
BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW
-If there’s one positive about Angelina being gone it’s that Madison Rayne is no longer being overshadowed in the group. She’s never gotten more mic time than she’s had since Angelina left.
SARITA & TAYLOR WILDE © BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW
-I like that Sarita cuts parts of her promos in Spanish. It doesn’t seem important, but little things like having wrestlers display their nationalities in a positive light (even though Sarita’s technically Canadian) really help show off the diversity of the TNA roster and, if you ask me, they’re a big part of why TNA has such a large fanbase internationally.
SARITA & TAYLOR WILDE © vs. VELVET SKY & MADISON RAYNE (w/ LACEY VON ERICH)
-Who knew Earl Hebner had such a way with the ladies? lol
-No swerves with Lacey sneaking back to ringside. They just kicked her out and that was it. It looks like TNA management has smartly decided that the less involved Lacey is the better a match is likely to be.
-This match was even shorter than their No Surrender match. I think we all expected it to be short, but not THAT short. I understand that management doesn’t want to expose TBP to too much ring time, but that does beg the question of why they were even in this spot to begin with.
-Not much heat for this, but that was to be expected. These women had the unenviable task of following the absolutely insane Ultimate-X match.
-I heard scattered “Beautiful People!” chants in the crowd. Those people were wasting their time with the chants because there was no way the heels were going over here. It’s painfully obvious that Velvet & Madison as a tag team really just aren’t that good.
-This was not as good as their No Surrender match. It was sloppy at certain points and it looked like Taylor got her bell rung at the end there. She seemed a little woozy afterward.
-For the record, Taylor is now 2-0 at BFG, retaining her championships two years in a row.
-With them taking their second decisive loss in as many months to Sarita & Taylor here, TBP have absolutely no grounds for another rematch and word is that management plans to scale them back and have them focus more on vignettes and backstage skits and less on wrestling. All things considered, that’s probably the right call. However, this creates a big problem because there are only two tag teams on the Knockout roster and now the champs have no one to feud with. This is exactly why I thought it was a bad idea for them to start a women's tag team division before they were ready to do it right. They’ve already exhausted the only feud they had to work with and now they’ve got nowhere else to go.
-The writers need to create some viable new tag teams and they need to do it now. Or failing that, they need to sign some new teams from the indies. There are plenty of great ones out there; take your pick. For the record, I still really want to see Portia Perez & Nicole Matthews (the Canadian Ninjas) get signed and be pushed as the new Team Canada. TNA staff, if any of you happen to read this column, feel free to steal that idea.
AWESOME KONG vs. TARA vs. ODB ©. RAISHA SAEED INTERFERES
-I was all set to call this Tara’s best match in TNA so far, but then they had to add in an angle where she got into a fight with Kim Couture in the crowd and got taken backstage for a minute. I get that TNA is trying to attract the MMA fans and Tara/Couture have had a war of words online in recent months, but this ended up hurting the match. The action was heating up, the fans were really behind Tara and then she left for a few minutes and the crowd kind of died.
-PWinsider is reporting that TNA staged the incident this way on purpose to sell it as a shoot. If that’s true then they did a really good job of it. I wasn’t sure if it was worked or not and Kong & ODB looked legit confused. The problem is that this completely killed the flow of what had been a really good title match up to that point and they never really got it back. I’m not saying involving Kim Couture was a bad idea, but the way this played out just didn’t work IMO.
-Having said all that, Tara’s got to be loving all the free publicity TNA’s giving her for that Kim Couture fight. Strikeforce needs to make that fight happen already. TNA is thisclose to having their second official two sport athlete and I’m actually more interested in seeing Tara vs. Kim Couture than I am in seeing Lashley’s next fight.
-It’s just too bad that Tara couldn’t go over here because the crowd definitely wanted her to win more than Kong or even ODB.
-The finish was the perfect setup for Kong to finally turn on Saeed and unmask her. I just wish she would’ve done it after this match. The unmasking of Saeed could’ve been a great BFG moment. At any rate, they haven’t dropped that angle and the unmasking has got to be coming soon, which makes me very happy.
DAFFNEY INTERFERES IN MONSTER’S BALL
-Poor Daffney. Her BFG spot amounts to nothing more than her handing a taser to Mick Foley and then getting chokeslammed from the ring apron, through a barbwire board to the floor with the camera completely missing the spot. They showed it on the replay, at least, but damn… Seriously, is Daffney ever going to get anything in return for taking all these sick bumps? I hate to see her doing this to her body for nothing.
-Apparently, Daffney suffered a bad concussion, a swollen arm and has numbness in her left hand from taking that bump so she’ll probably be on the shelf for a while. I’d like to think that her sacrificing her body for the company will be rewarded and she’ll be in for a push when she comes back, but I’m not holding out hope at this point.
-PWinsider is now reporting that someone hacked ODB’s facebook page and posted that fake message about her leaving TNA. That answers that.
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