Home ▸ Drowgoddess ▸ “Impact” Impressions 3/12/09 & “Destination X” Predictions

—————————–X————————

“Final Destination for the Main Event Mafia?” Is TNA doing a crossover with the “Final Destination” movies, where everyone not in the Main Event Mafia dies in mysterious, bizarre ways?

To the ring! Kurt Angle strides with purpose to the ring, looking very not happy. He said that last week, Jeff Jarrett crossed the line by suspending him without pay. Shouldn’t everyone in TNA be crossing the line? Angle tells us that he’s sick. In the head. He’s ker-azy! His ridiculous facial expressions make me crazy. In a bad way. “The world is mine,” he says repeatedly. Like in the really bad “Alexander” movie, where Angelina Jolie tells Colin Farrell that “the world is yours!” Yes, I saw that. Someday, my retinas will grow back. Jarrett starts to come out, but is persuaded to return to the hotel instead by BG James and Mick Foley. Mick tears into Angle, telling him that when he joined TNA, he did it to help a company. Angle and the rest of the Main Event Mafia are bringing the company down with their arrogance and greed. He thought that he could talk to Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner, and Booker T, but they were just as bad as Angle. The only one who showed any sense was Sting. Foley challenges Angle to fight it out with him, begging for a chance to “go Cactus Jack on your ass,” but Angle backs off.

To the back! Jeremy Borash and Sting are in Jim Cornette’s office. Cornette tells Sting that he has to answer to a lot of people, and those people are giving him grief about the complaints of the younger wrestlers that, because of Sting/Angle dominating every show, they don’t get matches, tv time, or paychecks. I like this acknowledgement. On paper, TNA may be doing everything right, but when locker room morale is in the toilet, everyone not MEM or Jarrett family friend fears for his job, and there are seventeen minutes of wrestling on a two-hour program, something does need to change. Cornette tells Sting to pick a representative, and Angle will do the same. The two representatives will fight each other in the ring, while Sting and Angle remain in their respective corners. That way everyone gets a part of what they want. Sting agrees and leaves. JB asks Cornette how having Sting and Angle at ringside is going to be any better than letting them fight. Cornette grins his “I have a cunning plan!” grin, and says that if you’re going to have chaos, it needs to be chaos that you create and control. “Business is about to pick up!” Can JR sue over that? I hope not.

To the back! It’s Jenna Morasca, the chick who won Survivor: the Amazon in 2003. What? It isn’t 2003 anymore? Oh, curses! She tells Lauren that she and Mick Foley hit it off at a business conference, and that’s why she’s here. A chick who won a million dollars by getting naked for peanut butter on a reality show, and then being in Playboy certainly sounds like a savvy business mind to me. When Lauren asks her if she had been a fan of TNA wrestling, her words may have said “yes,” but the body language and the delivery screamed “no.” Honestly, she said that her favorite wrestler was Kevin freakin’ Nash! Sure, lady, we believe you. Foley hurried her out of the area to “talk business.” Hello, new female investor who was mentioned in the TNA Mobile service! Well, once they announced it, they had to swerve everyone who thought that it would be a returning Karen Angle. Right?

Matt Morgan approaches Lauren as Foley and Skanky McUseless leave. Morgan grills Lauren as to why “your boyfriend” Abyss hadn’t accepted his challenge for a “Match of 10,000 Thumbtacks” for the pay-per-view. Lauren says that Abyss has made too many advances in his therapy to turn back to that sort of thing now. Morgan promises to confront Abyss about the match later tonight. In the meantime, he grabs Lauren on the ass and tries to kiss her before she slaps him and gets away. He says that he always gets what he wants. Matt Morgan, creepy date rapist. Cross the Line.

Match #1: Rhino defeats Sheik Abdul Bashir: This match barely went four minutes. Considering that a feud between these two was at the top of a ppv card not that long ago, throwing it out there with no reference to anything was sad. Rhino won the match, but Bashir hit him with a low blow and a chair shot to the head afterwards. He lay his turban over Rhino, “burying” him, as the announcers put it. Hmm, interesting choice of words. The match itself didn’t end up mattering much to TNA either, as it seemed to exist mainly as a backdrop to the Tenay/West saga. Don West showed up three sheets to the wind (trashed out drunk), and Tenay took him to task. Don West is a jolly, happy drunk, it seems.

To the back! JB is with The Beautiful People (on their golden thrones), Cute Kip, and Madison Rayne. Velvet Sky says that they set up Madison Rayne turning on Taylor Wilde as part of their revenge for “the Governor” trick, and that the group of them are now the sorority of My Pi Sexy. Tonight is Madison Rayne’s initiation. Why am I certain that the trousers of every guy watching just got smaller? Angelina Love talks some trash about Traci Brooks as the referee, and how limp JB’s “microphone” was. Poor JB.

To the back! Kurt Angle looks for a suitable representative for tonight’s match. He tries the MEM. Steiner and Booker already have matches, and Nash still has a tube in his arm from the staph infection. Angle send security out to go find him someone.

To the back! Jim Cornette gives Booker T his “Legends” title back, but only on the condition that Booker signs a waiver that he will not press charges against AJ Styles or involve law enforcement any further. Fair enough, but that title belt is actually Booker’s personal property. It isn’t an official TNA title. Or is it? Bugger! Booker talks major trash about AJ and Cornette and possibly several others as well, but unintelligible barely describes Booker’s linguistic skill. Cornette tries to get Booker to sign another contract, this one for a match against AJ Styles at “Destination X.” Booker refuses, insisting that his queen and his lawyer be there. Cornette takes it back, and tells Booker that he understood. Booker’s getting older, and this younger, faster guy will probably beat him anyway. Booker grabs the contract and signs it, leaving in a barrage of further incomprehensible verbiage. Cornette is happy.

To the back! Eric Young asks Sting to be his representative in tonight’s match. Sting is reticent, given Angle’s frame of mind. EY responds with the best promo he has ever done in his life (probably), saying that people don’t think that he takes himself seriously enough, but that tonight, he wants the chance. He is the future, and the future is now. Ric Flair gave Sting the ball once, and he ran with it, when he was just a bleached-blonde snot-nosed punk. Eric wants that same chance, and he will run with it. Sting is impressed, and agrees to let Eric Young be his man in the ring. I don’t hate Eric Young. Far from it. I just don’t understand why TNA management seems to be so sold on pushing him at this level at the expense of so many others who would likely be better. If someone not already legendary gets elevated, there are a number of better choices than Eric Young.

To the video package! Samoa Joe talks about his “Nation of Violence,” and how, in three days, nothing will be the same. Really good video package. Joe talks about how he was considered the future of the business, and left a trail of carnage like no one else. Then something happened. That something had to do with him. He has abandoned his fear, his associations with others, and everything else that could hold him back. Joe’s gonna kill you! I hope so!

To the back! Lauren is with Lethal Consequences. Black Machismo needs to go. They insult the Main Event Mafia. Creed calls Steiner a “roided-up Rick Astley” and Booker T is “Milli Vanilli.” Because so many people watching “Impact” will get those references. Lethal cuts in and announces that their mystery tag team partners for the eight-man tag match tonight against the MEM are “Santana and Morales,” er, LAX. Homicide and Hernandez enter the picture, and say something about “Welcome to the donkey show!” No, seriously, they did. Hooray, ethnic stereotyping!

To the back! Kiyoshi and Team No Limit (who still have not been explained properly) are in Kurt Angle’s locker room. Angle tries to get Kiyoshi to fight for him, speaking slowly and loudly to compensate for the fact that Kiyoshi does not speak English. Kiyoshi and No Limit bow every time Angle speaks, which annoys him. Angle punches Kiyoshi in the face, and throws all three guys out, yelling about how people who come to America should learn to speak English. Way to make yet another X-Division guy look like a complete bitch.

Match #2: Matt Morgan and Beer Money defeat Abyss and Team 3D in an Elimination Tag Team Match: The first elimination was Brother D-Von, after Jacqueline low-blows him. Next out is James Storm, who gets disqualified by the referee for spitting beer in Brother Ray’s eyes. Robert Roode is eliminated next by Brother Ray. They actually call the move the Bubba Bomb. Cross the line. Brother Ray is chokeslammed by Matt Morgan and eliminated. We’re down to Matt Morgan and Abyss. Coincidence? I think not. Morgan brings in a bag of thumbtacks, but Abyss gets the bag and teases using it. Lauren (who is not supposed to be Abyss’s actual girlfriend, he just thinks she is) runs down to the ring to stop Abyss from using the tacks. She accidentally distracts him just long enough for Morgan to nail him with the Carbon Footprint. After Morgan gets the win, he throws the referee out of the ring and teases chokeslamming Lauren onto the thumbtacks. Abyss rallies in time to save her, and accepts Morgan’s challenge of a “Match of 10,000 Thumbtacks” at the ppv.

To the announce table! Drunken Don West laughs about the Morgan/Abyss/Lauren situation. He mocks Lauren for being so stupid as to get between two guys that size and trying to stop them. He refers to women in general as having the viewpoint of “I am woman, hear me roar.” Tenay acts disgusted with chauvinist Don West and tells him to leave like he usually does. Usually? West cheerfully agrees to leave right now and go to the hotel bar. Anyone who remembers WCW’s attempts to heel up Tenay by having him play the disdainful, aggressive chauvinist with all the females on the roster (Midajah in particular) finds Tenay’s outrage at this point laughable for all the wrong reasons. Mick Foley joins Tenay on commentary.

To the back! Abyss screams and spits at the camera. He will make Matt Morgan his bitch on Sunday, he says.

Match #3: Taylor Wilde defeated Madison Rayne: In two minutes. Two minutes. Wilde caught Rayne in a sunset flip, and Rayne tried to hold on to referee Traci Brooks. Brooks had enough, and pushed Rayne into the pin. After the match, The Beautiful People and Cute Kip ran in. Roxxi and The Governor responded by crotching Kip on the ring post. He recovered entirely too quickly, and sprayed hair spray in their eyes. Angelina Love hit Roxxi with the Lights Out, and Velvet Sky let The Governor have a Beauty Mark. They pose.

To the back! ODB’s talk show has been renamed “Trash Talkin’ with ODB.” If they’re going to keep the segment, a new name was needed. JB asks ODB what a guy has to do to get to first base with her. Line of the night: “I dunno, ‘hello’ usually works.” The segment ended with ODB on top of JB, which is wrong in so many ways. Yet funny. Sort of.

To the announce table! Kevin Nash, Booker T, and Sharmell come out to yell at Foley. Foley and Booker argue heatedly until Steiner sneaks up and cracks Foley in the skull with a metal pipe. Foley’s head looks to be busted open, but he refuses to get in the ambulance and leave.

To the video package! Last video for the Ultimate X match. Alex Shelley, Consequences Creed, Chris Sabin, and Jay Lethal talk about their plans to win the match and the X-Division title. Jay Lethal’s Macho Man voice killed any credibility here. While the package was very good, it should have been made so much more of a deal than it was. These video packages have happened for several weeks, and the announcers don’t play it up as a huge deal. The wrestlers involved barely have any air time to promote the match. Make a better effort to sell this match and the guys in it, and people will most definitely buy it.

Match #4: Lethal Consequences and LAX defeat the Main Event Mafia and the Motor City Machine Guns: This match went about five minutes or so. We don’t know why the MCMG teamed up with the MEM. We don’t know why the MEM let them. We don’t know anything about anything. One short promo or segment could have settled everything. Why didn’t they get one? It’s not like there’s too much wrestling going on for promos to happen. Steiner and Booker were on tv the whole night. Tenay practically orgasmed over “the Front Line defeating the Main Event Mafia,” but Hernandez pinned Chris Sabin after a Border Toss. Neither Steiner nor Booker got pinned by a Front Line member. LAX hasn’t had anything to do with the Front Line. The MCMG have wrestled and behaved like (cocky) babyfaces whenever Alex Shelley has defended the X-Division title. This is not “shades of gray” character development. This is bad booking.

To the back! Mick Foley is in Jim Cornette’s office with JB. Foley goes very “Cactus Jack” as he says that, while it wasn’t supposed to happen like this, he’s happy about it. Foley’s going dark and twisted. Good.

To the back! Kurt Angle tries to get Brutus Magnus to fight for him. Magnus refuses, not wanting to get on the bad side of Jeff Jarrett. I actually liked this. Magnus is a heel, but he’s a heel who knows who pays him. He knows who his boss is, and the MEM ain’t it. Angle apparently can’t ask anyone else, and there aren’t any other potential heels who could use the match, so he asks the big fat MEM security guard, Rocco, to do it. Rocco agrees. Yeesh.

To the back! Mick Foley walks down the hall. He does not look friendly.

Match #5: Eric Young (w/ Sting) defeated Rocco (w/ Kurt Angle): This match went about three and a half minutes. Sloppy. The big deal was postmatch. Angle attacks Young. Sting attacks Angle. Rocco and Sal (the other MEM security guy) get involved. Foley comes down and gets involved, still selling his head injury. Steiner and Nash attack Foley. Jarrett comes down and laid out Sal and Rocco with chair shots. He went for Steiner, but stopped. Sting wouldn’t let Jarrett hit anyone else. Jarrett got the mic and told Angle that the three-ring circus was over. To make sure that Sunday’s World title match was legit, he was going to be the special referee, and Mick Foley was going to be the special enforcer. Angle was very not happy over this. And so we go to “Destination X.”   

Predictions for “Destination X”:

WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH (Special Enforcer Mick Foley, Special Referee Jeff Jarrett)
Kurt Angle vs. Sting(ch)

Angle wins. Too much has been stacked against him. Whether Foley turns on everyone or not, something is happening in this match that shakes up the Main Event Mafia, and Angle gets his title back. I don’t necessarily WANT this to happen, but I predict that it will. Is it bad when you really don’t care who the World Champion of the company is? It should be bad. I just can’t punish myself for thinking it.

ULTIMATE X MATCH FOR THE X-DIVISION TITLE
Chris Sabin vs. Jay Lethal vs. Consequences Creed vs. Suicide vs. Alex Shelley (ch)

This will be the match of the night, hands down, and is alone worth the price of the show. I predict that Suicide wins and becomes the new X-Division champion. I’d prefer that he didn’t, but I just have a feeling that he will. No X-Division champion has ever retained his title in an Ultimate X match when the title was on the line, so history is not on the side of Alex Shelley retaining the belt. He could pull off something miraculous, but it’s unlikely. Yes, I want Chris Sabin to win.  He’s participated in more Ultimate X matches than anyone on the TNA roster (this one will make his 9^th out of 16 Ultimate X matches), and has won three. Ultimate X is his match. I could see either Jay Lethal or Consequences Creed almost getting it, and Sabin pulling off a last-second piece of brilliance to keep the title in the Motor City Machine Guns, as well as to stick it to Lethal Consequences. If TNA seriously wants a renewed focus on the X-Division, the champion should reflect all the positives of the X-Division.

LEGENDS CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
AJ Styles vs. Booker T (ch)

AJ wins. He absolutely HAS to win here, or everything that has happened so far with his “return” has been wasted. If anyone not in the Main Event Mafia can be considered a “Legend,” it’s AJ.   

“OFF THE WAGON CHALLENGE” FOR THE WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES
Team 3D vs. Beer Money (ch)

Team 3D wins. Oh, please, as if anyone thinks for a second that they’re leaving! This was the one thing NOT to do with the “Off the Wagon Challenge,” which was actually working rather well. The tag team to defeat Beer Money for the belts should have been someone less legendary, who really could have left. The entire gimmick has just been killed. Well, it’s not like there are any tag teams still in TNA who could have been used to do this instead of Team 3D. Right?   

KNOCKOUTS TITLE MATCH
Sojourner Bolt vs. Awesome Kong (ch)

Kong retains. The split of the Kongtourage was almost off the radar. A title should not change hands with no build. There was one match. One. Sojo Bolt won the title shot, and that was pretty much it. There needs to be more to this story, and Kong needs to keep the belt until that story plays out.

MATCH OF 10,000 THUMBTACKS
Abyss vs. Matt Morgan

Abyss wins. Again, he pretty much has to win here, especially after all the times that he has had glimmers of his “Monster” self and not followed through. Seriously, what if there aren’t precisely 10,000 thumbtacks? Who counts them? How do we know? Can we complain of false advertising if they don’t produce evidence of 10,000 thumbtacks? Just wondering.

Samoa Joe vs. Scott Steiner

Joe wins. In fact, Joe’s gonna kill him. Or at least he should, after all the recent business. There’s absolutely no way to keep Joe moving forward without getting this win. It needs to be brutal, nasty, and short. You know, like that one guy said that human life was in the Middle Ages.

The Beautiful People & Madison Rayne vs. Roxxi, Taylor Wilde & The Governor

The Beautiful People and Madison Rayne win. My Pi Sexy, as they seem to be called now, is on a roll, and it shouldn’t stop here. Personally, I’d like to see the MPS group handing the babyfaces their backsides for a few weeks result in “The Governor” completely snapping, stepping out of character, and becoming Daffney or whatever other name she can have, and announcing that she’s had enough fun, she means to clobber some sorority skanks. Or maybe that’s just me.

Finals of One Night with ODB

Who cares??? Get that one indy guy that everyone except me knew about and put him on the roster already! If they cut the Ultimate X match short for this, Samoa Joe won’t be the only one killing people.

Check back on Monday for a full report on “Destination X,” from someone who actually watched it!

Peace out,

Drowgoddess

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS Feed today and never miss another!