Mission Accomplished…almost: TNA Genesis 2011

Photo from Slam! Sports

Immortal had one goal in mind going into Genesis – get all of the titles in TNA to serve as a bargaining chip once Dixie Carter returns to her company.  For most of the show, the plan went off without a hitch, with each member of Immortal – Kazarian, Beer Money and Abyss (subbing for an injured A.J. Styles) – winning their title matches and claiming the gold.  But it was Eric Bischoff’s plan to close the show that actually cost the stable its crown jewel, Jeff Hardy’s TNA Championship.

After Mr. Anderson pulled off what could be seen as an upset win over Matt Morgan to claim the #1 contender spot, Eric Bischoff announced that the title match would take place immediately, assuming that Anderson would be far too exhausted from his 15 minute match against Morgan to put up any kind of a challenge for Hardy.  Unfortunately, Anderson would not stay down, and as Immortal’s panic over their situation grew, all of the factors they themselves had put into place began blowing up on them.

Matt Morgan, still at ringside, got a hit in on Hardy for good measure, then as Jeff went for another chairshot which caused Anderson’s problems to begin with, Mick Foley ran down and took the steel.  As Foley argued with Ric Flair over the matter, Jeff called his brother Matt (who debuted earlier in the night) out for the assist, but he was cut off by Rob Van Dam, whom he had cheated out of a win during their match.  Now desperate to stop Anderson’s momentum, Eric Bischoff himself tried to stop him with a chair, only to receive a Mic Check for his efforts.  One more Mic Check to Hardy, and Mr. Anderson was the new TNA Champion, which he was more than happy to announce to the crowd via his drop mic.

Rest of the show after the jump.

Fourtune: Tarnishing the legacy

On June 17, Ric Flair gave a nearly incoherent rant about rebuilding his legendary stable the Four Horsemen, but would instead be calling it “Fourtune” (most likely because the WWE owns the trademark to the Four Horsemen name). His normal goon squad of A.J. Styles, Kazarian, James Storm, Robert Roode and Desmond Wolfe all seemed to be likely candidates, as they had been aligned with Flair for months.  Flair assured them that their spots were not guaranteed, and threw Wolfe out of the group in the first week.  The other four?  They all made it in without having to really try.

Back in WCW, the Four Horsemen was something Ric Flair was linked to throughout much of his lengthy tenure – and for good reason.  When Flair was the golden child of the franchise, the Horsemen were the perfect stable for him.  The blonde-haired, shimmering robe wearing pretty boy surrounded by an army of goons in Arn and Ole Anderson and Tully Blanchard.  Flair could say anything he wanted and the others would decimate any that challenged him.

As the original Horsemen faded away, the roster went through shifts with some questionable additions here and there (Paul Roma, anyone?), but it remained a highly touted name in the company.  It was a pretty big deal when the stable became yet another sacrifice to push the nWo (in the memorable addition of, then betrayal by Curt Hennig).  In 1998, when Ric Flair returned from a forced hiatus to reform the Horsemen (again to combat the nWo), it was a huge deal.  The reformation happened over the course of several weeks as Dean Malenko went to each former Horseman and convinced them to reunite.  The entire time, fan excitement built until the night where Arn Anderson reintroduced the members of the stable – Chris Benoit, Steve McMichael and newly inducted Dean Malenko – all clad in tuxedos, then welcomed Flair back to the company.  The atmosphere was electric, and the stable did quite well for itself – especially the tag team of Benoit and Malenko.

No fan would dispute the matter – the Four Horsemen were wrestling’s elite.  Even Mongo McMichael had an air of dignity to him when he was involved with the others.

Whatever: TNA Impact 6/4/10

Every once in a while it seems as if the last thing TNA wants to do is put out an episode of Impact.  Contractually obligated, sure, but really they’d rather just sit around playing Donkey Kong 64 and collect golden bananas.  So what do you do with the two hours on Thursday night?  Eh, whatever.  And that’s what we had this week.

The show started off with Sting in the ring, going on about how not everything was as it seemed and how eventually, he would explain everything that he has been doing.  I’m sure he’s just waiting for those last four people to quit caring.  This brought out Eric Bischoff (on crutches) who lectured Sting about truth (and justice, I believe) before announcing that he would be in a match immediately.  The opponent was Samoa Joe, back in babyface mode, who beat on Sting for a few moments until Matt Morgan came out to beat on Joe.  About this time, Rob Van Dam recalled that he was feuding with Sting and got around to coming out, complete with music.  And for some reason, the referee of the Sting/Joe “match” did not call for a DQ and just hung around for a while.

Apparently as amused as the rest of us, Eric Bischoff announced a tag team match with Sting and Morgan taking on Joe and RVD, but RVD doesn’t like having friends (they mooch off his stash) so he asked that it be changed to a 4-way match instead.  This brought out Hulk Hogan who told RVD that being the champion had some stroke and he would allow the 4-way.  Why Bischoff couldn’t have just said that is beyond me.  This was Hogan’s only appearance on the show.  As for the match itself?  Eh, nothing special.  Samoa Joe hit Matt Morgan (who was distracted by Hernandez appearing in the crowd) with the Muscle Buster, but was kicked by RVD, who nailed Morgan with the Five Star Frog Splash for the win…which means absolutely nothing of any consequence took place.  It was simply a match designed to kill time.  Whoopee.

As for the rest of the show…

TNA’s Ranking System

I’m going to go ahead and call BS on the whole ‘ranking system’ right now in terms of actually looking at fan’s votes on their little survey site.  As numerous ‘dirt sheet’ sites reported, the totals of the votes (which you can opt to see) have been purged several times, and Desmond Wolfe has repeatedly gotten staggering numbers of votes.

The ranking results debuted last week on Impact, giving Sting the #1 contender shot for Slammiversary.  TNA must have been quite confident in the fan’s favor of Sting, being that they released the poster with him on it weeks ago.  I showed it while making fun of the numbering of Slammiversary back on May 10th.  But let’s ignore that for a second, and pretend like this is an actual ranking system and see just how TNA’s top 10 contenders got their spots.

#10: Samoa Joe
Samoa Joe had been on a staggering losing streak until he was kidnapped by a bunch of terrorists masked men in a white van.  He was gone for quite a while until Eric Bischoff called him up (apparently he knew the masked men’s number) and brought him in to fill a gap on Team Hogan.  Since then he’s not had an actual match, but instead just goes around beating people up.

What do you mean by ‘faces’ and ‘heels’?: TNA Impact 5/27/10

Okay, so I took a week off.  Trust me, if you were stuck watching Impact week after week, you’d likely need a week off once in a while too.  Here’s a rundown of what I didn’t cover last week:

• The ranking system came out and it was led by Sting, who was conveniently already on the Slammiversary poster.  Whoa, how’s that for lucky?
• Kurt Angle dropped out of the ranking system saying that it was never about glory or ego, but being the best.  Apparently, the full year he spent leading the Main Event Mafia was a dream.
• Mr. Anderson tried to be trusted.  Nope, I’m not buying it either.
• Kazarian tried to impress Ric Flair and won an X-Division Battle Royal to be #10 in the ranking system.  That’s right – the entire X-Division competed to be the least important person in TNA.
• Brother Ray is a dick.
• Abyss had to beat up Desmond Wolfe to get Chelsea, even though he already won her by beating up Desmond Wolfe.

Okay, now for this week.

The big point of the show here was the strange relationship between Jeff Hardy and Mr. Anderson (not like that).  Anderson admitted that he may just be screwing around, or he may not be.  Good convincing there, pal.  He tried to convince Hardy to embrace his inner-asshole and began dancing until Ric Flair and his crew (AJ Styles, Beer Money, Desmond Wolfe) entered, with AJ Styles complaining about his match with Anderson later in the show and even called him a ‘butt munch’.  What is this, 1994?  (TNA Timeline Comment: Yes.)

Since not a whole lot happened for the rest of the show, I’ll go ahead and say the main event was the most important thing and mention that Styles defeated Anderson by putting his feet on the ropes.  Anderson attacked post-match (of course), which brought out Beer Money, which in turn brought out Jeff Hardy.  The heels fled, and Hardy and Anderson shook hands.  Congratulations, TNA – you have made Mr. Anderson, your most convincing heel, a face.

Rest of the show after the jump:

Too much of a good thing – TNA Impact 9/10/09

There are a lot of good things about TNA, I will admit.  Amongst those things is the international group World Elite, led by Eric Young.  It’s made up of several international faces with a lot of wrestling talent.  Young himself isn’t bad on the mic either, and has taken quite well to his heel role.  Unfortunately, when the group is featured in four seperate segments (along with the British Invasion in the opening match), it gets tiring.  When all four of those segments involve speeches by Young, it gets painful.  But you want it, TNA delivers.

The storyline started with a shakeup of the oft-mentioned ‘agreement’ between the Elite and the Main Event Mafia when Brutus Magnus won the opening gauntlet tag match by pinning Scott Steiner.  Whoops.  First, Young told Jeremy Borash that he wouldn’t apologize for it, then later, he basically repeated himself to Kurt Angle and the rest of the MEM.  At this point, the MEM look like they want no part of the Elite, which could make an interesting feud later – one that could possibly mean a face turn for the entire MEM.  Wouldn’t that be weird?

With that settled (all in the first hour), the World Elite went back to their original angle of trying to recruit Hernandez, only to get a painfully awful rant by Hector Guerrero.  He was trying awfully hard to be Eddie, and after the 20th or 30th ‘Ese’, I skipped to the end for the inevitable beatdown…that never came.  The Elite simply left.  Finally, after the main event, they returned with Homicide in tow, bringing an attack by Hernandez that ended when Homicide betrayed his LAX partner and sided with the Elite.

Now that part I quite enjoyed, and Homicide brings an interesting new face and style to the World Elite.  Overall, though, the group is simply stretched too thinly without enough talkers to balance it at this point.  Abdul Bashir and Kiyoshi are doing nothing at this point, the British Invasion is in the tag team title hunt (with no storyline for the belts they already have) and Eric Young gets to rant on for what felt like three-fourths of the show.

After the jump, we’ll take a bullet point look at the rest of the show.