TNA Telegraph – 4th August 2011 – Shilling Angle/Sting like a $9.99 sham-wow

So first off an apology about last week’s missing blog. Tiredness and general real life meant I didn’t even start to watch the show until Monday and by then it seemed pointless to review the show. This week back to normal. Going to try and cut some of the detail of the matches out and give a flavour of what happened and my thoughts as if you want to know exactly what happened then watch the show! Hope you’ll stick with the blog in this change as it’ll help get the blog done and out more quickly and with all the stuff you want to know like whether you should bother tuning in or not!

Show start time and we’re recapping that Kurt Angle has never beaten Sting cleanly and that Sting is Caesar Romero… I mean The Joker…. I mean insane. Watching the old footage makes me think 2011 Kurt Angle is really very much a shadow of what he was.

WARNING: IF you don’t want to see the following two men talked about for the next 2 hours DO NOT watch this show!

Oh look, Immortal are in the ring so as usual we’re going to start off with 10 minutes of talking. Bully Ray, who knew that when he started introducing all the members of Immortal he’d barely give Anderson any time. Well that would be everybody. Seriously what the f*ck is the point of Bully Ray V Anderson unless it means Bully ends up out of Immortal? I mean he actually reminds us Anderson held the title for a week. Why bury the guy completely? Not that Anderson does himself any favours since his response ends up being some nonsensical singing. What? And now they’re going to have a match? That’s the great plan? Oh and they’re brawling now..

Ah here comes fortune with Kaz on the mic and, yep, it’s another Immortal/Fortune brawl. Storm “tweaks” his back throwing a punch at someone which seems all that the brawl was designed for. Again why does this have to happen nearly every show? We always spend 2 minutes recapping the big feud like the audience has Alzheimer’s and then we get 10 minutes of someone from Immortal speaking about stuff which should be split over the show and take a maximum of 3 minutes.

Taz is drooling over Tessmacher doing some stretches which is fair enough I guess. You wouldn’t get that pleasure from her in the ring. Madison Rayne vs. Miss Tessmacher is next.

Mickie James is doing commentary so who predicts that we’ll see Winter and Angelina love in the next 5 minutes? Tessmacher’s new entrance music is awesome. Maddison screeches so loudly it’s amazing. Why do Tessmacher and Tara kiss all the time? Did we not have enough of the faux-lesbian stuff with Love and Winter already? God, Tessmacher is doing that horrific “grinding her ass into opponents face” spot again. I’m with Jimmy Redman in that the Knockouts really needs to be renamed the Skank and Whore division. Maddison loses via the worlds slowest rollup from Tessmacher. Waste of three minutes really. Maddison beats down Tessmacher and so Mickie James tries to come to the rescue. Well she would do if Winter and Love hadn’t have whooped her ass. I love that we don’t even cut back to the ring to see what’s happening to Tessmacher during all this. Maddison could have beheaded her and we wouldn’t know.

Bound For Glory highlights. Some people won and some people lost. Sensible to include house shows in this as it does promote the off camera live events as having a point. Next it’s AJ v Devon in a BFG series match.

Pope out to sit with Devon’s family which nearly causes AJ to steal the win. Why does Taz go on about Devon being in great shape? Clearly he wears a T-shirt to the ring because he’s not in great shape. And now Daniels is out and sat on a chair at ringside. AJ “tweaks” his knee as he springs into the ring and Devon rolls him up for the win. I love Pope, criminal that he’s being used like this instead of being on the mic and being awesome. AJ and Daniels have a bit of a tiff. AJ says “that was a BFG series match” and Daniels is all “I know it was BFG series match but I want an answer!” which really has no answer does it. “yeah I know this was an incredibly important match, so what?”. No idea what Daniels wants but hopefully it’s not another Daniels/AJ match because really at this stage Daniels isn’t at his best and probably never will be again and fo me I’ve no interest in seeing it again.

Oh look, yes another video hyping the Angle V Sting match. It’s almost like we’ve basically seen this before. Ah yes, I remember it was about 15 minutes ago right at the top of the show.

Pope tells us that it’s him V Devon at Hardcore Justice in a BFG match. Are TNA really running out of ideas so fast that they need to put BFG matches on the PPV? Well obviously since that’s what’s happening. Still at least its Pope on a PPV card.

Speaking of Pope (seems like I’ve done that a lot already!) it’s Pope V Joe in a BFG series match, hoorah! Wow, Joes gets zero entrance. I love Popes falling money entrance and the dude looks awesome doing it. Pretty good offence from Pope to be fair, he’s not getting murderised like you’d expect. Rollup is countered into the Koji Clutch and Pope taps. Ten points to Joe…. no wait, Joe won’t release the hold so the ref throws him out. So that’s 3 points to Pope and minus ten to Joe. Now I know the old “ref reverses the decision” spot is a tried and tested way of allowing someone to win and lose at the same time but wouldn’t it have been better if Eric or Hogan had come out and just stripped Joe of the points instead? I mean really if the ref can reverse the decision like that then how come he doesn’t do it every time? Oh Matt Morgan was on commentary here and was shocking.

Joe’s complaining that it’s actually management screwing him over in the tournament (doubles my point about having Eric or Hulk do the stripping…. of points….. wish I’d thought more carefully about my wording. Will someone pass the mind bleach?). So now the blood is on their hands. You know Joe has been teasing this ultra-violent thing for weeks and he’s not delivered so far and I’m getting a little bit bored waiting for it.

Storm and Roode discuss Storm’s “tweaked” back. Roode says he wants Storm to be in top condition to defend the tag belts on Sunday and asks Storm what’s more important than the belts. What storm should have said is “The world title which, you know, I have a shot at in the BFG series” but instead says that nothing is more important. Roode says he’ll take Storms place against Hernandez tonight in a street fight. Isn’t Roode still recovering from his arm injury? Oh well…

Bully is on the phone to Bischoff who tells him to apologise to Anderson. What is that means Hulk and Eric are only in the office once every two weeks at best?

“Huh? What do you mean do I realise I could be saving thousand on my utility bills?”

Now we’re to the street fight, always struck me as odd saying street fight when you know 90~% of the match is going to take place in the ring. Actually not that bad for your typical streetfight affair, the weapons come into play about halfway through but it’s not dominated by it. There’s a ref distraction which doesn’t work in the match because it’s automatically no DQ so if Rosita wants to attack Roode she can so why is the ref trying to get her out? Hernandez pins Roode with his foot on the ropes and Anarquia helping. Well, that wasn’t terrible but it was pretty long for a match that technically had 6 people in it.

Bully apologises to Anderson and kicks him in the nuts. What exactly is the point of that then? Bischoff and Hogan clearly know what’s happening so they aren’t going to be fooled by that?

It’s Aries V Shelley now ahead of the triple threat for the X div title on Sunday. Tidy match so far, Shelley going through his repertoire of moves. Nice spinning figure four move from Shelley, not seen that before. Aries gets the win after low blowing Shelley whilst he’s sat on the middle turnbuckle and then hits the brainbuster. Aries beats on Shelley after the match (no ref reversal here!) but Kendrick chases him off. I find it a bit weird that they went with Aries as a heel, not because he can’t do it because he is doing a great job, but more for the fact the fans clearly love him. Then again there aren’t any other X division heels that I can think off of the top of my head. Match of the night by a long way, Shelley looked awesome and I can watch Aries do anything.

Rumours abound that Vince Russo was pimp slapped to death after the show. Police are looking for suspects… but not very hard.

Eric Young doing his whole Hollywood thing. Here’s another criminal waste as Young is hugely entertaining both in the ring and on the mic and these stupid pre-taped moments do him no justice. It’s also burying the TV title and whilst the TNA TV title is probably about the most worthless thing in TNA bar the knockouts tag titles it’s still their second tier male division belt.

And now ladies and gentlemen because TNA really has no clue and clearly has no one else who could use the TV time to get over we’re going to recap the Sting V Angle empty arena match from 2 years ago.  0_o

Oh and you’ll never guess what runs after this… yes, it’s a hardcore justice ad that focuses on Sting V Angle and then shows Sting turning up in the arena.

Crimson & RVD vs. Scott Steiner & Gunner is next and it’s a BFG match. This was the bit that I didn’t like about the series in that only the guy who gets the fall gets the points because it’s a dynamic that only really gets interesting once. Crimson is wearing white this week, I don’t know why that’s interesting but there you go. Nice bit at the start where both RVD and Steiner trade being cocky and getting caught. Steiner really does know how to work a crowd even if he doesn’t always know what day or the week it is or what language he speaks.

There are a lot of people who laugh at the fact that Gunner is getting a decent push but to be fair to the guy he’s no worse than half the wrestlers that get pushed as big stars. Same with Crimson but I think both guys need some time to train up with the big guys to really perfect themselves,. This match for instance allowing RVD and Steiner to pace and call the match with the two younger guys popping in their two pence now and again works great. Anyway winners end up being RVD and Crimson with RVD getting the pin.

A few words after the match, sounds stupid but I quite like a post match interview. Makes it seem more like a proper sports contest where they do this kind of thing. RVD V Crimson in a BFG match at Hardcore Justice. Seriously? Can’t we just call this PPV “Sorry, we forgot to book this one. We promise the next one will be better”?

Look! Look! It’s something that isn’t about Angle V Sting!

Now we’re into the contract signing with 7 minutes on the clock to go I can’t help but feel we’re going to have dragged every single second of this out before the match. Did you know both guys respect each other? No? Well find out just how much they can suck each others…. ego’s. I mean, it;s Angle V Sting, it’s not like you have to hard sell this match,. Even without knowing the MEM history between the two it’s still one of “those” matches that you know will be good to watch. Even as a face v face match up.

This whole show felt like it should have been the show 2 weeks before the PPV. We’ve known it’s Sting V Angle for the last month now but we only sign the contract 3 days before the event? I mean, I guess you can excuse the lack of build for anything on the basis that clearly no one remembered that TNA even ran a PPV on the 7th called Hardcore Justice this year and had to cobble together probably one of the weakest PPV cards of the year. Then you have to consider how big the main event is in terms of TNA and then you wonder how the heel they can waste that match on this PPV. Again it all feels like Russo has left his booking instructions on a napkin and someone has just managed to read that actually they need Kurt Angle to be champ leading into the next set of PPV’s.

“Sh*t guys we’ve just put the belt on Anderson but he’s not supposed to lose it to Angle!”

“No worries, we’ll have him drop the belt in a week to Sting and then have Sting lose to Angle at the next PPV. Everyone wins!”

“Errr, do they?

“Well, no obviously but have you got any other ideas?”

“The X Division?”

“Ha ha! Any real ideas?”

“Errr, no?”

“Right then…”.

Plus isn’t Hardcore Justice supposed to be a bit of a hardcore themed PPV yet we have no hardcore, street fight, no DQ type matches on the card. Then again I suppose “Normal Everyday Justice” doesn’t have the same ring to it.