Home ▸ Drowgoddess ▸ “Impact” Impressions 12/18/08

Yes, it has a name now.

It’s that time of the week, so find the nearest line and cross it!

Woo hoo! We open with a wrestling match! Yaay! Oh. It’s Lance Rock versus Rhino. Less yaay.

Match #1: Rhino defeats Lance Rock. Total squash, this. Seriously, under two minutes, I think. He may be improved, but Lance Hoyt/Rock/Dallas whatever has never done much for me. Maybe it’s that chick tattoo. It almost doesn’t matter, because Rhino calls out the Front Line, who march out to the ring. The Motor City Machine Guns lag behind, and stay on the ring apron. Rhino, AJ Styles, and Samoa Joe talk about the Main Event Mafia and the brutal beatdown of Brother Ray (they still call him “Bubba,” though), and how they will raise the bar on the level of violence. They will do whatever it takes to beat them. Uh, guys, the Guns said this weeks ago, and when they acted on it and it didn’t quite work out, you went after them for it. No wonder Alex Shelley was making those faces in the background. He heard those words before! When he was speaking them.

JB interviews Kurt Angle in the back. Don’t care.

Lauren interviews the Motor City Machine Guns. Oh, I care now! Chris Sabin asks her how she would like to be the meat in a Motor City Sandwich. She looks disgusted. She clearly has neither class nor soul. The future Mr. Drowgoddess reminds everyone that he has been X-Division Champion four times, and that if he doesn’t win it again, his (and I quote) “hetero life mate” Alex Shelley will. A Jay or Silent Bob reference is always great. Alex Shelley gets the mic and points out two things. Firstly, that it was a given that he and Sabin would meet in the finals, and that Mick Foley was doubtless pleased because Mick thinks this will destroy the team. Mick is wrong. As long as one of them wins, which one doesn’t matter. Secondly, that people in Detroit aren’t talking about the auto bailout, they’re talking about which one of the sons of Detroit will be bringing the X-Division Championship home.                          

****RANTING SIDE NOTE**** This was a fun promo. I read another review of the show on another site earlier today, and the reviewer hated everything about everything. He went on at great length listing the things that people in Detroit would care more about than the X-Division title or the MCMG. It was a pretty long list. While he expressed his opinions well, the reality of the situation is not the point. Every wrestling promo is not going to be a nod to real-life current events. I don’t usually get involved in the “that’s offensive / get a life” flame wars that go on amongst wrestling fans, but I would be remiss here if I didn’t say that criticizing that promo in that way was a bit much, regardless of who made it. Is that even worth writing about? Jeebus, what else is Alex Shelley going to talk about? It fit the characters and the situation, so it doesn’t have to be true! Ok, rant over. As you were.

Match #2: Chris Sabin defeats Sonjay Dutt. Chris Sabin advances in the X-Division title tournament. Sheik Abdul Bashir watches from a chair on the ramp, bloodt towel on his head. Tenay and West actually talk about the number of phone calls between Dutt and Bashir that have taken place lately. For pete’s sake (whoever he is), are we throwing them together because they’re both brown? Is that it? The Evil Foreigners Convention? What year is this? Sheesh. Anyway, I’m probably reading far too much into this, but when Alex Shelley won his match against Jay Lethal, Chris Sabin interfered a lot. Alex Shelley didn’t get very involved in Sabin’s match tonight, and it seemed the tougher match of the two. Considering that Val got involved on Sonjay’s behalf, it seemed worth mentioning. Who cares, Chris Sabin won a match that didn’t suck, and on tv! All is right with the world.

Lauren interviews the Beautiful People and the fake Sarah Palin. Click. The only way this whole thing will be less of an abomination unto gods and men will be that if Daffney lets out a scream and reveals her true identity, and proceeds to mock the Beautiful People for weeks over how stupid they were to fall for her fake Sarah Palin, and it gets a Daffney/Angelina Love feud going. Then, I might consider forgiving them.

ODB’s Angle. Terrible name, please change it! Christy Hemme talks about getting into wrestling by winning the Diva Search, her Playboy cover, and so on. I didn’t know that she had been one of the “girls jumping on trampolines” from “The Man Show.” Raisha Ssaeed and Rhaka Khan come in and trash the set, beating up Hemme and ODB. I had no desire to see Rhaka Khan’s butt crack. None whatsoever. Oh, damn my eyes!

JB interviews Mick Foley and the Main Event Mafia in the MEM locker room. Everyone is laughing and partying. Booker is completely bad accent-less. Foley makes the MEM promise to stop beating down the Front Line. Oh, this is going to go well.

“Rough Cuts” segment for Robert Roode. Again, great segment, wrong guy. Is there a face turn in the works for Beer Money? I can’t see it. At all. A guy can’t be an effective heel if he gets portrayed as a likeable and sympathetic guy. At least James Storm got to stay true to his “Cowboy” gimmick. Robert Roode did not appear to be rich. Another bad idea. *sigh*

Match #3: Scott Steiner and Booker T (w/ Sharmell) defeat Matt Morgan and Abyss. Honestly, why not just rename the guy Abitch. That’s precisely what they’ve made him. Why did Morgan and Abitch lose? Sharmell grabbed him while he was down on the floor, and he swung back, not coming within a mile of hitting her. She sold it like he punched her in the face, and he freaked out over what he thought he did. The distraction allowed Booker T to use a metal pipe to hit Morgan in the ring, and a really sloppy axe kick to get the win. Is this situation inherently bad? No. If the announcers had played up the deviousness of Sharmell in deliberately tricking Abyss, and pointed out the pattern of no-good, scheming, cheating ways of the MEM, then it might have been worth something. But no. No, Tenay and West cannot ever criticize or blame the Main Event Mafia for anything that they do. They actually claimed that “once again, Abyss lost his focus.” Uh, no, Sharmell played him! The complete failure of the announce team to condemn any actions of the MEM is the single most frustrating aspect of the program for me, and I know that as far as most of you are concerned, that’s up against some pretty stiff competition. Oh, for a good heel color commentator to force Tenay back into a proper play-by-play role!

Kurt Angle promo about Jeff Jarrett and his three lovely daughters. I’m not crazy about involving non-wrestling family members on a televised wrestling show to begin with, but children rarely have anything positive to contribute as far as entertainment goes. We know Jarrett is not going to be murdered. We know that Angle is not going to adopt these children. It just comes off as creepy in a pedophile sort of way. Jarrett gets angry and fights his way to the ring, where he is held back by BG James, Scott D’Amore (for one night only, I’m sorry), and Terry Taylor. The only plus out of this whole segment is Jarrett questioning Foley’s allegiance and his association with the MEM recently.

Match #4:Kiyoshi defeats Consequences Creed. Kiyoshi is the latest version of the Great Muta, but I always dug Muta, so I’m ok with that. He looks really cool, with the black face paint and silver Kanji over it. Kiyoshi advances in the X-Division tournament. Now it’s Alex Shelley against Eric Young and Chris Sabin against Kiyoshi, with the two winners facing each other. It absolutely has to end with the Guns against each other. Creed got pwned. Plain and simple. That’s what happens when you steal Fritz Stephey’s AMP, Creed! He brings in Japanese guys to destroy you!  

More Beautiful People and fake Sarah Palin. See previous comments on this segment.

Tenay interviews referee Shane Sewell. Good interview. No way Sewell isn’t getting “fired” as a ref to be rehired as a wrestler. Otherwise, what’s the point to the Sewell/Bashir thing?

Match #5: Christy Hemme and ODB defeat Rhaka Khan and Raisha Saeed. Barely a match, this. Another two minutes or so. Do they really feel that they have no one else to push besides Christy Hemme? Rampant hotness aside, once you get them in the ring, Christy Hemme + Rhaka Khan = claw out my own eyeballs bad. Awesome Kong comes to the ring and lays out Hemme and ODB. Suicide makes his entrance. Wow, he beats up people who are not Chris Sabin or Alex Shelley. Who knew? Kong looks like she just got cast in the Reese Witherspoon role of the stage musical version of “Legally Blonde” when she sees Suicide, and the chick monster bails. Hmm. Someone has to make a joke about “Suicide is painless.” Anyone? Anyone? When the lights go out, Suicide vanishes.

JB interviews Sting and Kevin Nash. Yawn. Sting has nothing to say. He passes it to Nash. Basically, Sting is a craven tool. I have no interest in him and his supposed “conflict” over a war that he personally started.

JB interviews Mick Foley about his relationship with the Main Event Mafia and where he stood. Mick says he is not comfortable with what happened to Brother Ray. However, he has been disrespected by Alex Shelley more over the past several weeks than he ever was by anyone in the MEM in the 23 years of his career. When financial times are rough, you go with a proven seller, which the MEM is. He will be making decisions that are good for business. The analogy and the continued tease of a Foley heel turn are good, but the big problem is that if you break it all down, the things that Alex Shelley has said and done over the past weeks warrant none of the vitriol that Foley directs toward him. For all his ranting about how Alex Shelley is obsessed with Foley’s ass, Foley comes off as the man obsessed. Shelley really hasn’t done much. Maybe that’s the point, the old veteran guy is overreacting, and it’s supposed to be obvious. Dunno.

Match #6: AJ Styles and Samoa Joe defeat Sting and Kevin Nash. This is a Six Sides of Steel cage match. I absolutely despise with an unholy fiery passion of burning cage matches that can end in ways other than having to climb over the top and have both feet touch the floor. Otherwise, what point is there in doing a cage match? Yes, I include “escaping out the door” on that list. That’s stupid. This one allows you to get the win via pinfall. Grrrrr. AJ gets the win by climbing out of the cage, but the MEM went back on their word to Mick Foley about “no more beatdowns,” and proceeded to attempt breaking Joe’s arm in a chair. Sting didn’t help with this, but held off the rest of the Front Line. Yes, one guy held off the entire rest of the Front Line, who, it seems, forgot everything they ever knew about climbing things like cages, despite the fact that many of them have been in those sorts of matches as recently as this year! As usual, the show ends with the Main Event Mafia annihilating the Front Line, so the fact that the Front Line actually won a match was forgotten before the show even went off the air.

That’s it for this week. Next Thursday is December 25^th, and as many of us may be occupied, I don’t promise when my review of the Tivoed Christmas Day “Impact” will be up. It will, however, be up. In the words of my friend Arthur,

Happy Christokwaanzakkah!

Drowgoddess

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