TNA Bound for Glory - 10/22/06
by Scott Christ
I've been sitting around recently, watching some playoff baseball, chillin', doin' stuff. You know how it goes, man. The life of the stylish young bachelor. Apartment living with some bros. Spending 90% of the time doing nothing more than bullshitting.
And it was during this time that I realized something: I really love pro wrestling, it's just that I hate RAW and since I spent so many years not being ABLE to watch Smackdown, I always forget that's on, even though I think it's decent when I do watch it.
So I've watched a lot of the DVDs I bought over the last few years. Flair and Bret and Jake and Benoit and Foley, plus some of the indy wrestling that rekindled my lurve in 2004, and I was making pasta Sunday night when, at 8:03, I remembered the TNA PPV was on that night, and having watched the Joe/Angle thing on youtube, I went, "Fuck it, I'm ordering."
Could I have spent my $30 wiser? Sure! But couldn't I always have done that? Pro wrestling can be not unlike a drug even for someone as simple as a dumbass fan in Podunk, Michigan. Sometimes you just gotta have it, man. $30? Fine, $30.
Comcast is terrible so I missed like the first 12 or 15 minutes. I came in in the middle of the first match.
KEVIN NASH OPEN INVITATIONAL X DIVISION BATTLE ROYAL
This was useless. I noticed Zach Gowen was in the ring so I decided I could just finish preparing the pasta and catch on after this. Nash was funny enough on commentary and him awarding Austin Starr (your winner!) a bowling trophy for his great accomplishment was pretty great, but other than that and NorMAN SmiLAY bringing me back to the glory days by performing the big wiggle with a midget, I didn't get much out of this.
THE NATURALS v. THE JAMES GANG v. AMERICA'S MOST WANTED v. TEAM 3D
Four teams that always get hyped as great, to varying degrees. "AMW, the greatest team in TNA history!" "The James Gang, they've done it all!" "The Naturals are like AMW lite, BUT THAT'S GREAT!" "Team 3D was so great before they got to TNA!" It was action-action-action so I can't really complain about the match itself other than it wasn't any good, really. The Road Dogg/Bubba Ray punches spot was the best thing in the entire match. Predictably, the Naturals ate the fall on a 3D.
MONSTER'S BALL
ABYSS v. RUNT v. RAVEN v. SAMOA JOE
What the mother freaking heck is Samoa Joe doing in this match? Have we not proven over the last year that he can beat schmucks on this level? Why is (in)arguably the hottest star in the promotion slumming it with these dipshits on the biggest show in the history of the promotion? Rhino was doing something more important.
Furthermore Raven is maybe the worst fucking wrestler on the planet right now. He's slow on everything, his character ideas are pathetically dated. Everything about him is absolutely terrible. There was a time when Raven was kind of innovative as far as promos and characters go, but it sure isn't now. There was also a time when he could have a great ass match with Chris Benoit or even a pretty good match with someone super shitty like Tommy Dreamer, but it is not this day. If Raven were on Smackdown and wrestled Benoit, it would suck. Raven is beyond bad.
Runt took some bumps and Abyss got his face smushed into the tacks and Jake DDT'd Raven and Joe pinned Raven after a muscle buster. The match stunk and was not even close to the level of last year's Monster's Ball with Abyss, Rhino, Hardy and Sabu. Joe's twisting dive to the floor where he landed on his feet is one of the more impressive feats of athleticism and coordination you'll ever see though. Why follow up one four-way with another? At least they stopped pretending that these four combatants had been kept in isolation without food or water for 24 hours though.
ERIC YOUNG v. LARRY ZBYSZKO
People kept saying how funny and entertaining Eric Young is, and holy crap are they wrong. The guy isn't funny, there's nothing interesting about him, and he's your regular average OK wrestler. Then I remembered that most of the wrestling fans I've ever seen at shows and the great majority of those I met are some of the most clueless people on the planet, so it makes sense that Eric Young would be funny. These are the type of people that shit a brick for Napoleon Dynamite when we all know that that movie is not 1/50th as funny as Billy Madison and not even half as funny as fuckin' Wayne's World 2. The world has really gone to pot, honestly. Young won and got Larry fired by using Zbyszko's own foreign object against him.
Backstage Jake Roberts and Jeremy Borash had one of the world's most uncomfortable moments outside of Samoa Joe's locker room.
X DIVISION TITLE MATCH
SENSHI (champion) v. CHRIS SABIN
Exactly the same as every other Sabin match I've ever seen, which is to say it was perfectly OK and that his gymnastics routine is kind of impressive and he doesn't suck at all because everything he does LOOKS GOOD, but it is the most unmemorable "good" ever. The only things I remember now about this match are Senshi kicking out of the cradleshock, Sabin kicking out of the double stomp, and Senshi getting cradled to give Sabin the title. No Jackass stuff.
8 MILE STREETFIGHT
CHRISTIAN CAGE v. RHINO
I love a streetfight as much as anyone. And I don't hate either of these guys or anything. But let's be honest about this thing here.
The last time I watched a TNA PPV was Genesis in 2005, and Christian Cage made his earth-shattering TNA debut. Since then he's won the title and had a terrible reign, then he turned heel and now we're where we are today, with Christian mid-carding against Rhino on the big show.
Christian's TNA run has been a joke, and the WWE has been proven very, very right for keeping him where they did on the totem pole. He's not a good enough worker to main event, if you want to be ideal about it, but neither is John Cena or a lot of other guys that do or did. They get by in other ways. I always figured that combining Christian's competency with his great charisma led to a surefire breakout star for TNA since he'd get his chance. Now his chance was kind of mucked, but he'd be back here by now anyway. What I didn't know then that I can see now is that he had completely peaked during the last year or so of his WWE run. That was as good as he gets. He wasn't being held back, really, it's just that that's his ceiling.
He's a gatekeeper. And you have gatekeepers so that guys like Rhino don't get to the top of the card either. The match was fun enough as most matches between good pals tend to be since they want it to be good for each other, I figure, and the right guy (Christian) won in the right way (beating Rhino's head in with a chair onto a ladder and a chair and another chair and a road sign and I think there was a rubber tree plant), but I didn't come out of it wanting to see Christian back on top or anything, I'd just rather he stay here and make occasional stabs into the main event scene, the same as he was doing in WWE. The same as Scott Hall did forever, although Hall was much better than Christian in just about every way and had a whole different set of problems. HHH is a gatekeeper run staggeringly amok. He's a heel again now, which he's better at, and maybe he'll really put on a great run of matches or something, but he's had plenty of chances to do that and he never has. I could be President someday too.
SIX SIDES OF STEEL
NWA WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH
HOMICIDE & HERNANDEZ (with Konnan) v. AJ STYLES & CHRISTOPHER DANIELS (champions)
That thing that Styles and Daniels do where they peek out from under their hoods and then look at each other before flinging them back and embracing life is without any question the single gayest thing I have ever seen in professional wrestling. Before this match Konnan called Gail Kim an "Oriental bitch" and people failed to shit their pants.
The match was really great. Homicide is a goddamned wrecking ball of kickass, Hernandez is fine in his role, Konnan is probably the best promo in the game today, and Styles and Daniels are perfect in their role of whitebread gringos raising the ire of the angry minorities. Konnan did some radio interview with a gay and a lesbian (why do we differentiate between the two? Oh, society!) and it was a good interview. He's right about a lot of things. Wrestling writing is always way, way, way behind the curve, and "(Chyna's) clit is as big as (his) cock, bro." But really, LAX is so over because, yeah, it's confrontational and amped up, but it's also real and it's smart and it strikes nerves. Plus because they're fucking awesome and have great music.
Anyway, again, the match. Lots of dives, all four bled, there was a fork, a proper use of a bottle of tequila, a coat hanger. Wonderful stuff. Truly exciting, very hateful, they worked it like they really wanted to beat the shit out of each other and really hated each other. Awesome. One of the few TNA matches I wanted to see again right away. I don't even want to talk about this that much. LAX won the belts. These two teams could wrestle 50 more times for all I care, but I assume we're getting AMW going for revenge on LAX for flinging that Oriental bitch around.
NWA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH
JEFF JARRETT (champion) v. STING with KURT ANGLE as the special enforcer
Earlier in the night there were a couple more Angle/Joe confrontations, including a great pull-apart brawl. When that match finally happens, it is going to feel truly big. Hopefully they don't fuck up and have them in some meaningless tag match on opposite sides on their lame ass Spike show before they square off on PPV down the line.
To get it out of the way, of course Angle eventually became the referee. Sting was wearing one of his old robes (it's ugly) and had some red in his face paint, plus his pants (no singlet) were red and black. He looked very lean, sort of like a natural body for a 45-year old man that works out a lot, which is the most bizarre thing on a wrestler. As far as Jarrett goes, I started kind of liking him last year, and I still kind of do, which is weird because way before TNA was ever even a thought, I always had an irrational hatred of Jarrett except for his tag team with Owen.
Jarrett is way overexposed, obviously, but there is nothing at all bad about him as a wrestler. He's still solid in the ring, he's a good promo, and his matches do not fail to put over his opposition. Yeah he holds onto his spot, but so what? Who the fuck else is gonna be up there, Rhino? Abyss? Raven? Jarrett's better than Christian. Jarrett's better than Sting. Jarrett's probably better for this spot than anyone on the roster except for Joe and Angle. I like AJ Styles just fine, but no. Chris Daniels does not have it. A lot of other guys aren't there yet, and aren't even really close. Jarrett is a professional.
This match was better than I thought it would be. Sting was outclassed early on, which makes sense since he's old and has been gone for like two months, but once he got his head into the match it was even. Sting went to use his bat, but Angle stopped him. I was waiting for Angle to turn, but it didn't happen. Jarrett got his guitar and whacked Sting, but Sting merely stood his ground and struck a most muscular pose before annihilating Jarrett in short order and tapping him to the scorpion deathlock. So Sting is the NWA world champion. The crowd went nuts for Sting no-selling the guitar shot, and I have to admit I did too. Vintage shit and a fine match.
I doubt that I'll be making a regular habit of paying $30 for these shows, but whenever Joe/Angle hits PPV, I'm there. I had fun watching this, but no matter how much I loves the wrestling, I am older and wiser and realize that $30 is generally just too much to spend on something where at best I'm going to really love two matches, and that's so rare that it's not worth the gamble. But Joe/Angle, man. I'm in.