TNA Telegraph – 5th May 2011 – You can’t say we’re bad if we don’t do anything! Your move reality.By Andrew Pearson| May 7, 2011 TNA Telegraph I can’t lie, last weeks show gave me little hope that TNA really has the direction to pull off what seems to be overambitious angles. Scott Steiner saved the show by being on another planet and you have to worry when your best parts are the bits that should in reality be on the cutting room floor if you are trying to be serious. The talent is there for sure and when they want to things can work out and make TNA look more than just a distant cousin of the big boys of old. There’s been much discussion over on talkwrestlingonline.com on the forums about the supposed major changes that have been reported as coming and as far as I am concerned they can’t come fast enough. That said I’m still watching the shows and doing this blog so lets get into the show. We kick off with a recap from the end of last week starts the show going over the title match and how Bully lost thanks to AJ Styles. Show proper starts with Immortal in the ring and Sting/RVD come out but Al Snow, D-lo and some dude somehow are the only thing stopping the two groups getting together, who knew WWE jobbers were the toughest faction in TNA. Hogan wants info on the network and Sting doesn’t give him it. Immortal start to beat up the road agents. This brings out Fortune who help Sting and RVD clear the ring. Fortune’s music played on the run in, were they hanging around the gorilla position for a while or did they stop to ask for their music to be queued up before they went and helped? Invisible foot long Subway Immortal head to the back but Roode calls Hogan a coward and then mentions how he and his friends built TNA and Hogan and Bischoff came in and stole it all. Says he’s proud to bust his ass in the ring, to put food on his family’s table. He goes on to Say he and America are blue collar workers and what has Hogan ever worked for and says Hulk rapes and steals from TNA. He also mentions Jay Lethal’s firing and rather amusingly that he breaks the forth wall a little by saying Lethal always did what he was told. Fortune’s music cuts over his last line about things changing next week. Also he introduced himself as Bobby Roode. There were reports of Roode going solo now that Chris Harris is back and reform AMW with Storm and him getting nearly 5 minutes of mic time suggest that could well be the case. We cut backstage and Karen confronts Velvet Sky who is just out the shower. Horrible segment where Sky keeps on making noise over Karen talking. Really what’s the point of carrying this on over 2 weeks. Clearly any normal person realises that Sky isn’t involved. This angle needs to be buried as soon as possible in all honesty. Matt Hardy on screen now and he seems to be saying that Jeff will be back at Sacrifice to challenge Beer Money for the tag titles. Quite a good promo really and enough of a tease that anyone could be Matt’s partner so doesn’t necessarily close the door on who it could be. Suicide V Sangriento – Sangriento is supposedly from Tijuana and Tenay tries to put him over as the hottest independent luchadore in Mexico…. it’s Amazing Red under a fairly cheap looking mask so please shut up. You didn’t get Sin CaraMistico don’t pretend you’ve out done WWE. Crowd don’t really care and why should they? We don’t even know if we should be cheering or booing him. A few decent cheers for Suicide during the match. If this guy is Mexico’s hottest export why is all he can do Huricanranas, a few heel kicks and a really a very soft looking finisher? No arm drags of any kind which is kind of the staple of Lucha stuff and only one spring board move. I know a lot of people are down on amazing Red but even he doesn’t deserve to be packaged like this. The lost Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle: Botticelli Backstage and Hogan says he enjoyed hitting D’lo. So did I. Hogan and Bischoff say the network guy could be Flair and then can’t be Flair? Right, glad you cleared that up guys. Mexican America in the ring celebrating Cinco de Mayo. God, the Impact Zone is so small the air cannons are as loud as the guy on the mic. M.A call the Spanish announce team to the ring with some Tequila to celebrate with them. Hector Guerrero gets a nice pop from the crowd which funnily enough goes against the segment is really trying to accomplish Anarquia asks why Willy Urbina is in the ring (well because you asked him to be) because he’s Puerto Rican and he gets a beatdown. Hector protects him and Anarquia says they’ll give them both a proper American burial. Why is Mexican America giving anyone a proper American burial? Ink Inc out to clear M.A from the ring. Jesse Neil gives the “get back to your own country” speech. So Shannon Moore is face now. Nice spastic booking from TNA again. Gunner-ar and Bully Ray V Daniels and Style – decent match which wasn’t all that surprising given that there was only really one weak link in the match and even Gunner did a decent job. Finish comes when Tommy Dreamer comes out and piledrives AJ. Now I must be missing the lead up to this as I haven’t seen Dreamer on the show for 6 weeks so the whole “turn” doesn’t do anything for me. Really by now does anyone really give that much of a crap about Tommy Dreamer? Hemme announces it’s a no contest.. what? So being piledriven by someone isn’t a DQ any more? Even the refs don’t care about Dreamer. Backstage and Dreamer attacks a set of Lockers. Me thinks he really hurt his hand hitting the lockers because he takes time to look at it before the segment ends. Daniels, AJ and Kaz discuss why Dreamer did what he did. AJ sells the piledriver nicely through this segment. Bully and Matt Hardy in the parking lot. More reference to Jeff being on the phone to Matt. Bully seems to indicate that Dreamer is being forced to be in Immortal to keep his job. Well that at least explains that but why not actually build that up BEFORE the turn? Again feels like rushed and spastic booking. Who knows, it could just be a discarded ear plug… Oh God, winter and Angelina Love segment coming up. Winter feeds Love some green M+M’s (could be Skittles… could be a couple of bogeys). Did Winter just blatantly plagiarise Gary Oldman from Dracula? Well that was oceans of time but you’d assume that’s just poor translation from Winter. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8pZfdv3BWg) Now we get the Jarrett’s and they call out Velvet Sky again. Sloppy Seconds chant. Karen says every Knockout has been a champion but her. Karen says that Velvet is sleeping with Kurt to get herself noticed. Velvet really needs to learn to shut up when someone else is talking on a mic in front of her. Velvet denies it and says she’s never been champion but that’s her goal now. Velvet says she has business to take care but Karen drags her back. Again why can’t Velevet learn to shut up and let someone else talk! Apparently Jeff can make matches and so Winter/Angelina vs. Velvet is made. Winter and Angelina come out but before we get going we get Kurt for some more talking. Apparently the Network has made the main event a mixed handicap match with Angle/Velvet vs. Jarrett/Angelina/Winter. 2 things 1: who in TNA can’t book a match and 2: why the f*ck is this the main event?? Velvet gets the last word in and its ‘bitch’, ooh how edgy. Bischoff comments on Angle making matches echoing the thoughts of every sane person watching. Murphy and Terry ask to help and instead Eric puts them against each other with the loser being out of Immortal or possibly TNA, who really knows. Crimson is wandering around with a sledgehammer in the most amazingly lit corridor where apparently fluorescent lights have been replaced with green and purple bulbs because that’s clearly the best way to light dark corridors. He’s looking for Joe after Joe…. didn’t do anything to stop his beat down. You’d have thought Abyss would be more sensible. Anyway onto Terry V Murphy. Murphy doesn’t even get a proper entrance so we’re already clued into who is going to win (if it wasn’t obvious already). Ironically the crowd are definitely behind Rob Terry and so they cheer him winning but really they’re cheering the guy who is still in Immortal… …Oh except he appears not be as Hogan and Bischoff say they weren’t impressed by either of them. So the point of that last match was? More time wasted on them figuring out who the network person could be. We get it they don’t know; we aren’t goldfish who can’t remember back 15 minutes to the last time Hogan was on our screens. Joe appears to be turning up in the last 30 minutes of the show and Crimson welcomes him by saying ‘thanks’ for not helping him. Joe says when he was undefeated he never asked for help. Crimson says he doesn’t need his help and for Joe to stay out his way or else. Joe asks if that’s a threat and crimson says to take it whatever way he likes. Again what was the point of two faces squaring up to one another? This was the only thing she didn’t screw up the whole time she was in the ring. Even Mickie had a look… Tessmacher V Mickie James – Tessmacher’s entrance appears to just be a striptease because nothing says “we respect our talented female performers” by making them get nearly naked on the way to the ring. Not that Mickie James isn’t being portrayed as much more than a pair of tits, a country pair of tits I suppose. Maybe i’m being a bit harsh on TNA here because Miss Tessmacher is awful, seriously bad so what else is there than to get her ass on camera as much as possible. Mickie James isn’t good enough to carry her to any kind of match and it feels good when Mickie hits a botched jumping DDT for the win. James seems to be holding her temple and is giving Tessmacher a good stare down so maybe she botched even more stuff than was obvious. Anyway Maddison and Tara come out and Maddison makes a good job of putting the pressure on Mickie to give her a rematch at Sacrifice. Mickie obliges but says that it’s Title V Tara so that if Maddison loses Tara is free. Well, if Mickie doesn’t win at Sacrifice then I’ll eat my hat. Still it’s simple and effective and ten times better than the Angelina Love angle. Brian Kendrick, Generation Me and Amazing Red are angry about being looked over and about Lethal being fired and are going to see Bischoff about it. Well Eric seems to be Vince McMahon all of a sudden as says the X division need to grow about a foot and half before he’ll take them seriously. So a promo designed to get the smarks hating on Bischoff… except the smarks already hate TNA and this isn’t going to generate any “heat” with them because they think it already. That this is the first time the X division has even appeared since lockdown is bad enough, that the best feud in that division with Generation Me splitting has been totally forgotten in favour of this is just unforgivable really. Now we get a pre taped vignette hyping RVD V Sting. Now I will be the first to say that continuing the face v face title angle was not something i was massively looking forward to but this little video was good. Both guys put over how much they respect each other and how much they want to win. Though String needs to keep his make up on because he does look ancient without it. Dear God, its spreading to the audience! Run for your lives!!! Winter/Angelina Love/Jeff Jarrett vs. Velvet Sky/Kurt Angle – well first off it take 5 minutes to get everyone in the ring and announce everyone so thankfully that means only 10 minutes of match maximum. Well Velvet and Winter start off and basically Velvet goes through her repertoire of poor moves. Her kicks are awful and that thing she does with dropping to one knee and making her opponent headbutt her knee is, in the words of Tough Enough trainer Bill Demott, hokey. Love gets tagged in and she does her no selling schtick until we get Angle tagged in and Jarrett comes in as well. Nice spot of Angle with the ankle lock on Jeff and dragging Karen into the ring instead of Karen pulling Jeff to the ropes. Ok so Velvet tags herself in to face…. Karen…. who’s not a legal person in the match….. wtf…. and now apparently Winter and Love are both legal because the ref isn’t counting them. Double DDT from Velvet Sky and she pins Winter. Thank God that was over because bar Jarrett and Angle it was dull to shocking at best. After the match Angle announces “the Chosen One” will be here next week… whoop-dee-do because eeking out this angle even longer is exactly what we all want. Last segment and Hogan and Bischoff are still talking about the network guy, Bischoff thinks it’s flair, Hogan thinks it’s Russo. Their car has “You’re Next” spray painted on it so they think it’s Goldberg or they don’t because who can tell since they change their opinions every 2 seconds. The X division guys are behind it which is underwhelming at best. Was this show as bad as last week? No but that’s mainly down to the fact that nothing of any note really happened. Nothing was furthered, we didn’t learn anything new. If it wasn’t for Maddison and Mickie there would have been have been zero content really. Sangriento isn’t going anywhere and it’s clearly just another way for TNA to pretend they are duelling the WWE. It’s pathetic really when you think about it given that they could probably sign any Mexican wrestler they really wanted to. The Jarrett angle needs to go away please, it barely had the legs to get to Lockdown and dragging it’s corpse on to Sacrifice is just a desecration. If you’ve read who the Chosen One actually is you already know that it’s not worth the effort. That apparently the original choice for the role was turned down for being too awful in the ring only tells you have poorly the show is booked. 2 weeks before the PPV they are changing their plans when it’s something they should have already known when they came up with the idea. So what was positive? Well no Mr Anderson on the show is good… yeah, that’s about it. Oh and Jeremy Borash’s Rape Face….
