TNA Telegraph: Impact 21st April 2011 – I have a fever and the prescription is more pipe.

Welcome along to the third regular instalment of the TNA Telegraph looking back at all the action from the Impact airing 21st of April in the good old U S of A and heading to Challenge in the UK this coming Tuesday. There’s spoilers both of Lockdown and obviously the Impact show itself so if you haven’t seen the PPV yet read my special report on it here!

Unsurprisingly we get a Recap from Lockdown but only of Angle V Jarrett, Immortal V Fortune and the world title match. Interesting that they did the old pause the shot affect for the major moment of the world title match since in essence any form of recap would have basically been the whole match.

Show actually opens with AJ styles dropping into the ring like a case of imported bananas. The ring is set up like at Lethal Lockdown but with no top. He calls out Bully Ray taunting him over costing Immortal the match at Lockdown. Bully Ray out and gets the Austin WHAT chants which must annoy the TNA guys somewhat. Chris Daniels charges out and throws Bully in the cage and AJ beats on him. Gunner out for some reason to attack Daniels with the only piece of piping in the whole of TNA and they brawl to the back. AJ to the top of the cage but Bully legs it out cage and the scene ends with AJ atop the cage like a lost old lady.

I can see my house from here…. wait, who’s that with my wife?

Rob Terry on the mic…. boyo. Makes me laugh, sorry Rob, I guess I’m so used to anyone from the UK being forced into having an English accent that hearing his lovely valley lilt is a bit of a surprise. Terry calling out beer money for a title match and the champs come out and accept. Match was ok actually and I think Terry/Murphy make a decent enough heel team. How long were Roode and Storm in the ring to set up the finish? That was really stupid although it happens in just about every promotion. An easy enough win for Beer Money which was predictable but at least executed well.

Outside of the impact zone and we cut to JJ and Karen in a horse drawn carriage, now this was a good promo. The sickly lovey dovey stuff was great and for the first time it felt more like a proper angle than the over hyped “It is personal” sh*t they’ve tried to pull. Overly lovey couples are vomit inducing so this was played perfectly.

The budget cuts show as clearly TNA only have one piece of spare pipe lying around as Hogan comes to the ring. The stupid posing and guitar stuff from Hogan is just… I don’t get it. It doesn’t generate more heat than he’s already getting so what’s the point? It worked in WCW as the NWO but now its just lost its impact.

It was the pipe or Jay Lethal….

Hogan calls out RVD, still love his music. RVD with the heel references and rating references? I don’t get it, it’s so utterly smarky and Russo-esque. Hogan smiling in the middle of that segment for some reason, maybe a contact high or something. I don’t know if I liked it because of the smarky-ness of it or hated it because of exactly the same thing! I’ll go for digging it, a nice little dig at a general opinion that RVD just doesn’t have what it takes and I quite like RVD’s work.

Sting out as well now so that’ll be the end of the smarkyness at least. Woah, Sting has revealed he can choose his title opponents as part of his contract and chooses RVD for Sacrifice? How is that going to work in future when they’ve done this whole Network thing? Hogan makes RVD V Abyss and Sting V Hardy for tonight which sounds like it should be ok.

Ok so whether or not you like the smark references and whether or not the “choose my opponent” stip is a bit ludicrous in practice that was, for me, a really excellent set of promos. Hogan was really on it 99% of the time with only a minor repeating of himself. Sting was good and RVD, again for me at least, came across well on the mic more focused and more intense. Really it was just a simple promo but for once everyone played their role spot on and so for once it worked like it should.

Angle outback searching for JJ and Karen. 20 seconds of my life I won’t get back.

Next its Rayne and Tara, now they are dressed for the ring but if you literally turned over just now you’d assume they were getting ready and being peeped on. Rayne, in general I like her work but she’s got the occasional habit of coming up short in her promos or is searching for the cue line to end her bits backstage. On the mic in the ring she seems better and I assume that’s because it’s less scripted so she doesn’t have to hit so many marks. Anyway Rayne and Tara going for the tag belts later.

Ahhh Eric Young, that’s a proper gimmick. He’s brilliant. Makes me wonder if the WWE had done this instead of Eugene whether poor Nick Dinsmore would actually have a career right now. Feeding the horses beans, school ground stuff but still amusing. The wheels turn in Kurt’s mind repeating buckets over and over. Could be an RVD promo…

Yes, they did really have a knockouts tag title match. No, you didn’t actually see any of it

Knockouts Tag match and… Well that was disappointing. Clearly most of it went on during the break and so we get about 30 seconds of match as Tara doesn’t help Maddison and Sarita wins the match with a double team clothesline. Usual after match tension between Tara and Maddison.

Now to the crowning of Queen Karen, Sloppy Seconds chant from the crowd. As you can already guess manure covers Karen from the rafters and Double J stays as far away as possible which was fun. Kurt out and Angle Slams Jeff. I assume Jeff was supposed to go into the manure but took the throne instead which looked seriously painful. The throne didn’t break or split so it didn’t seem like a prop. Angle on the mic and… Angle has a mistress? Bit late for that crap now really. I can’t possibly see how Karen in the ring is going to be good so the further continuation of the angle fills me only with dread.

Anderson…. Get off my TV screen. He talks over people, drops unanswerable lines and generally only cares about his lines. He’s got to be the most frustrating person to work with when trading lines in a promo. Waste of space at the moment as a face and would be bearable as a heel because he such a giant douche.

RVD V Abyss now. Hogan interferes within seconds which was a bit unsual as usually the outside wait a few minutes before stepping in. Hogan is still clutching the pipe by the way, is it platinum plated or something? Back and forth from RVD and Abyss, Hogan gets sent to the back but that’s a cover for Abyss getting the pipe. Ooh, Abyss bleeding from the moth from an RVD kick it seems. Abyss with the pipe shot and Black Hole slam for the win. Hogan and Abyss go to beat down RVD but Crimson slides in and spears Abyss for the save.

“What’s that behind you Hulk?”

“I’m not falling for that one!”

“No, look it’s another piece of pipe!”

“Ha! Now I know your lying!”

Oh dear, all this stuff with Sting saying he thinks Jeff is the greatest and how he wants him back. It’s just awful. No one believes it and it makes Sting look retarded. He’s also going a bit warrior again with this promo but I can dig that as a Warrior mark!

Please, Please, Please tell me Morgan isn’t destined for the world title picture. I really couldn’t care less about him. I love that he had to think for a second or two to give the advice that he should be number 1 contender to the title. Scott Steiner out which combined with Crimson and Abyss seems to be the end of that “team” (hooray!). Anything that means Steiner is on the mic making me laugh is a good thing for all the wrong reasons. Scott basically rips Morgan as a nothing with no respect, Morgan counters saying he has respect for Steiner but that isn;t a weakness so Steiner kicks him in the nuts. So Steiner is heel now? Well at least it’s not another face…

Miss Tessmacher, well that’s a new one for me although the blandness is all too familiar. Nothing made of her return on commentary so nothing made of it here either.

Velevet Sky and Winter promo and it’s horrible as usual. Love wins this segment because she didn’t say anything.

You tell that b*tch Angelina no one walks around with their t*ts out but me… or possibly Flair when he’s got no shirt on.

Sting V Hardy and bit it’s of a Charlie Foxtrot to start off with but it ends with Gunner smacking Sting in the leg wit… yeah, it’s the pipe again. Hardy works the leg and throws his old V.1 hand sign which just makes him look like he’s in fortune. Sting with the quick reversal to the SDD for the win from pretty much out of nowhere. Pleasantly good match for what it was and what Sting can do these days. Hardy is looking his usual solid self. It was a nice touch having him come out with Jeff’s old belt. I could live with a Matt V Sting angle if they’d just drop the title to RVD or someone else.

Anderson takes out Sting and Hardy with the mic check. Another nothing promo but at least there’s a tiny chance this might possibly be a heel turn. Having said that we’ve still got the reactions at the end of the show left and usually that’s where it all goes pear shaped.

After Impact reactions. Karen and Jeff goes on too long and Karen runs out of different things to say about being covered in crap and someone beating her ass .Didn’t she get covered in poo about 30 minutes ago? Are there no showers in the Impact Zone?

This pretty much says it all about this angle to me; fake sh*t and real pain and everyone lying on the floor wondering if it’s really worth it.

Hogan says Anderson is a dead man so he’s still face then one assumes, sigh. He also mentions a “double fisted kangaroo”? That has to be a euphemism for something really disgusting.

Who the hell is that dumb ass reporter/interviewer? Kill him please. Anderson, what you feel about Sting is how we feel about you, we just don’t care. Shame Sting doesn’t feel the same and goes on at length about it, still he totally ignored idiot interviewer man so that’s sensible at least.

It sounds like I’m being really negative about this show and I think in general there was a lot of passable stuff in here but there was an equal or greater amount of awful promos and nearly no wrestling again. Hogan was much better than he has been tonight for whatever reason so credit there, the Hardy/Sting thing could be much more interesting that this stupid 3 way face thing if they really ran with it. Everything else was either predictable or ran on longer than it needed to. There was no X-division at all which when you consider that’s really there number one USP it’s dismal that it didn’t appear once. The frickin’ pipe had more airtime than the X division!

The X-division? Yeah, they’re pretty good…. Lol JK, imma gonna say asshole for teh lulz

You could sell TNA to someone on the strength of the show tonight and if that’s a forward trend and Spike are looking to make changes to how they program then that’s a major worry for their TV deal.

Pipe!