It’s a good job Hardcore Justice wasn’t presented as a
pay-per-view this year. Had it been I think TNA would have had a lot of
unsatisfied customers. It was not a good show. There were no matches that rose
above average and far too much time was dedicated to the progression of storylines
that are hard to care about.
The worst offender there was the Main Event Mafia and
Aces and Eights plot. MEM ate up a ridiculous number of segments throughout the
show. It was entirely unnecessary. The same things could have been accomplished
with half the screentime they got. The way they’re presented doesn’t help
people to care about them. They come across as swaggering, egotistical idiots
more interested in how they look than anything else. Sunglasses indoors? C’mon
guys.
The chief problem with the MEM is that they try so hard
to be macho. It always ends up verging on ridiculous. They are not an act
people feel they can invest in.
The show opened with the first of three multi-person
matches. It was a four-way ladder match involving leather-loving loner AJ
Styles, frequent face-heel flipper Austin Aries, run-in bump fodder Frankie
Kazarian and facepaint aficionado Jeff Hardy. As matches of this type go it
wasn’t bad. The trouble is that we see so many ladder matches these days that
it’s tough to care about them. One means little more than another, and it
doesn’t help that both TNA and WWE more often book them to fit with the theme
of a show than because they fit well with a programme.
Through a combination of this fact and a lack of
memorable spots this match failed to rise above the average level of ladder
battles. And again, this is not the guys’ fault. It’s because the modern pro
wrestling product has become oversaturated with gimmick bouts.
Frankie picked up the twenty points (amusingly
represented by a clipboard with 20 written on it) after interference from old
pal Chris Daniels and new pal Bobby Roode. ‘The It Factor’ dashed an appletini
(easily the greatest foreign object currently used in pro wrestling) into
Hardy’s face, causing him to fall off the ladder and giving Kazarian a free
shot to the top. Why Hardy feel
because liquid was thrown into his face wasn’t clear. Perhaps it was secretly
acid.
Now is as good a time as any to discuss the commentary
work of the evening. It was bad. Really bad. Tenay spent far too much time
hyping Bellator. He mentioned the Bellator show that airs after Impact a
nauseatingly high number of times. He wittered on about the Rampage Jackson v
Tito Ortiz Bellator match that will happen in a few months too, but that at
least made a little sense as they’re both on the TNA roster.
He also decided to kick things off by discussing a
“hardcore three-way” between three Knockouts. It was accurate but his wording
could have been less evocative. Similarly his claim that Hardcore Justice was a
pay-per-view on free TV could have been better. If it’s on free TV it’s not a
pay-per-view, Mike.
Tenay’s not a bad play-by-play guy. Whoever’s producing
him is doing a horrible job. He spends too much time shilling for irrelevant
things or focusing on storylines. The amount of time he spent talking about
action in the ring was minimal. Taz was awful too but by this point that’s
expected.
Backstage, TNA world champ Chris Sabin put Bully Ray and
Devon over as vicious guys. He said he won’t take them lightly but warned they
shouldn’t take him lightly either. It was one of many inconsequential interview
segments. It accomplished its goal of hyping the main event and was kept short.
I don’t think we could ask for more than that.
The Main Event Mafia got the “already in the ring”
treatment next. They were joined by Dixie Carter. She was there to inform
everyone that Kurt Angle had checked himself into rehab after his latest brush
with the law. She, the company and the MEM are all in full support of the guy,
apparently. Personally I find it hard to sympathise with Kurt’s position. It’s
entirely self-inflicted and it’s happened too many times for Kurt to deserve
the benefit of the doubt. He’s clearly not learnt from his mistakes.
The Dixie-related fun was interrupted by Aces and Eights.
Mr Anderson cut a boring promo designed to hype this coming Thursday’s MEM v
A&E match. The man who takes the losing pinfall there will have to retire.
The rest of Aces just stood around laughing and nodding, as bit part players in
large heel stables tend to.
The segment ended with a brawl. Because they had a one
person advantage Aces and Eights came out on top.
Match two (yep, we’re only on the second match) was the
three-way Knockouts match that had so excited Tenay at the start of the
broadcast. It saw Mickie James tangle with Gail Kim and ODB. The title was not
on the line but that didn’t become clear until James was pinned and a title
change didn’t occur. ODB went over with her Bam (TKO) finisher.
Again this match failed to be anything special. It was
proficient but nothing happened that we haven’t seen before. It was just a
solid match that we were given no particular reason to get into.
Cutting backstage again we saw Sting chatting to Austin
Aries in a locker room. ‘The Icon’ asked ‘A Double’ to join the Main Event
Mafia and help them fight Aces and Eights. The final shot was of Aries
smirking.
Elsewhere in the building Bobby Roode said he has to win
the twenty points available to him tonight. Doing so would help him leap from
amongst the bottom scorers in the series to second place. This was the best
interview segment of the night. It was kept short and Roode explained his point
clearly and concisely. He’s got more than enough charisma to get through promo
segments like this with no trouble at all.
Back in the Main Event Mafia’s pokey shared dressing room
(hardly a main event aura, is it?) Sting returned to inform his cohorts that
Aries had turned them down. Rampage said he had one last option but it had to
be taken care of in the ring. Of course it did.
The backstage segments wrapped up with Bully on the
phone. He referred to the mystery person as honey and said he’d bring the world
title. He ended the call by saying “I love you too, Brooke.”
Oh noes! We were meant to assume that Bully and Brooke
Hogan had swerved us all. My initial reaction was that I’d missed an important
plot point revealing that they’d got back together at some point (because, y’know,
this is TNA and everything). I hadn’t missed anything and neither had you. It
will be revealed on this week’s show (taped last week) that Bully Ray was
actually on the phone to Brooke TessmacherI.
Brooke Hogan has been written off TV because she was released from her TNA
contract last week. Apparently someone in the company realised they’d had to
release some wrestlers for financial reasons and that Brooke should probably
have gone too.
So there we are. The payoff to the months’ long Bully Ray
and Brooke Hogan romance-slash-divorce plot culminated in a backstage segment.
How thoroughly TNA.
Rampage Jackson finally made it out to the ring. For no
reason at all Samoa Joe was with him. Rampage talked about how MMA fans have
called him a sellout by joining TNA but that he doesn’t think that’s true
because he’s always been a wrestling fan. After he’d rambled on about that he
called out Tito Ortiz.
For those who don’t know, Ortiz rocked up in TNA a couple
of weeks before. It’s part of a cross promotional deal set up by television
company Spike with MMA outfit Bellator. It heavily
favours the MMA league. I’ll avoid repeating my feelings on the signing. You
can find them here if you're interested.
Ortiz came out in a T-shirt that read Wrestling Is Real.
Take that however you want to.
Even Joe was bored by this segment
Rampage talked up their Bellator match but said that’s
separate, it’s not TNA business. Tito repeated back everything Rampage had
said, which never makes for a good promo. It also made him look thick. Bully
Ray then came out and got himself some heat by saying if he had time he’d get
into the ring and beat all three men. Rampage and Joe then did the hold me back
routine on Tito as Bully sauntered to the back.
It was yet another boring segment.
Back from a break Anderson and Magnus had joined Joe at
ringside and Bobby Roode was making his entrance. The match would be fought
under table rules. The first man to put one of his opponents through a table
would gain twenty BFG series points.
Magnus and Joe, MEM members both, worked together during
the match. Anderson and Roode mostly stayed separate and when they did interact
it was to confirm that they’d work together. So the bout effectively functioned
like a tag match, Magnus and Joe swapping between their heel foes. It wasn’t a
bad effort but as was the case with the previous in-ring offerings there was
nothing on display that we’ve not seen before and we were given no reason to
care about the tables stipulation. It had been added for the sake of it as
opposed to being a logical heightening of drama in a continuing feud.
Repeating the finish of the evening’s opening match, Bad
Influence headed to ringside at the match’s conclusion. Daniels threw his
appletini (he certainly gets through those things) into Magnus’s face, allowing
Roode to power bomb him from the second rope through a table in the centre of
the ring. Twenty points went to Mr Roode.
Looks like Roode's doing a little dance, doesn't it? Well he's not. He's doing a power bomb
The evening’s final backstage interlude saw a camera crew
catch up with Sting for his thoughts on Tito Ortiz. Sting said the guy’s an
asset wherever he goes. He also said he felt Ortiz would join up with the MEM.
We were then treated to a shot of Bully and Mr Anderson.
They bickered and ‘Calfzilla’ finally admitted (supposedly not aware of the
camera crew filming him remember) that he was unsure if he could beat Sabin
because the guy’s pinned him twice already. Bully said he wanted support from
his club and that Anderson appeared to be more of an enemy than a friend. The
message we were meant to take from this was that trouble is brewing in Aces and
Eights. Not that it was subtle or anything.
The main event finally got underway with twenty minutes
left of the show. The challenger controlled the first half of the match, overcoming
occasional flurries from the champ. An attempted power bomb turned the tide of
the match: Sabin reversed it into a sleeper and then spiked Bully with a
tornado DDT. Sabin then blasted the Aces’ president with punches, kicks and an
enziguri before whipping him with his leather gang coat.
Bully came back with a big boot and a Samoan drop. He
tried to climb out of the cage but got stopped, which just so happened to place
the two in the perfect position to botch a hurricanrana, which they managed
wonderfully.
Moments later Bully was up on his feet trying to walk out
of the door. Sabin stopped him and tried a walk out of his own. That got
stopped too. Referee Brian Hebner (surely the unluckiest official in wrestling)
took a bump as Bully scooped up the champion. Sabin came back with a missile
drop kick but couldn’t get the win because there was nobody to count it. He
shouldn’t feel too hard done by: when was the last time someone won a match off
a missile drop kick?
Sabin tried to win via exit but Anderson appeared and
slammed the door closed. Instead of simply climbing over the cage wall on the
opposite side of the ring to Anderson, which would have guaranteed him victory,
Sabin stood and stared incredulously at the Aces member. He looked an idiot.
Rampage Jackson and Tito Ortiz ran out at this point.
Rampage threw Anderson off the ramp and down to the concrete floor then got blasted
in the back of the head by a rubber hammer wielding Ortiz. Sabin, who’d stood
and stared at this development like a slack-jawed mark, was rammed into the
side of the cage by a recovered Bully Ray and then power bombed in the centre
of the ring to lose his title.
Yep. Another TNA swerve turn
Tito Ortiz and Taz joined Bully in the ring to celebrate
his victory. Ortiz raised the champ’s hand. The champ raised Ortiz’s hand.
Nobody raised Taz’s hand. Back on commentary Tenay feigned disbelief at Ortiz’s
“shock” betrayal. It had been a setup all along. The final shot of the show was
two time world champion Bully Ray posing with his championship belt. That he regained
it surprised precisely nobody.
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