TNA Impact Review March 1st - Kurt Angle Hates Jeff Hardy
Overall, Impact is again middle of the road but not majorly remarkable.
Impact Wrestling - March 1st 2012Freakin Arm SocksKurt Angle hates Jeff Hardy. We needed a reason why he attacked Jeff Hardy a few weeks ago and we got it in Impact's opening segment. In fact he had so many reasons that he wrote them down on cue cards. 1. Jeff Hardy has lots of hair and I dont. Having coloured hair does not make you a champion. 2. Jeff Hardys dress sense and make up He wears freakin socks on his freakin arms! HAHA! 3. He hates Jeff because he shows up late to signings and fans flock to him 4. Girls just love him. Girls dig me too I just choose to be a one woman man. 5. The Number one reason: His son has loads of Jeff Hardy merchandise including make up and FREAKIN SOCKS on his FREAKIN ARMS! I cant argue with those reasons to hate Jeff Hardy. But really I just got five more reasons to love Kurt Angle. He called out Jeff, who obliged as the cameras showed the ONE same Hardy Rules poster about three separate times. This all led to Kurt challenging Jeff for Victory Road. In response, Hardy slapped him across the face and we got our weekly appearance by Al Snow and the TNA officials to break it up. The Anti Sting AllianceAustin Aries and Bobby Roode got together backstage and agreed about Sting playing up what Aries wrote on Twitter about Stinger. Later on, Bully Ray was berating some random woman about being ugly and Roode and Aries came along to recruit him too in their crusade against Sting. At the mid point in the show, all three came to the ring. Bully Ray: Forget the pigeons being loose, Let the calves loose! Roode claimed that there wouldnt be a match at Victory Road because HE is done. Bully said it was the biggest embarrassment he ever faced and then showed it to everyone from multiple angles. Idiot. Bully said he and his calves were done too. And just in case you didnt see it coming, Aries said he is done. And so the three men sat down in the ring in protest. The lights went out, and when they came back on Sting was in the ring with them and a microphone. Predictably, Sting pointed out that they would be stripped of their titles and lose their jobs. They didnt really think this through. Sting put all three in a match against Magnus, Samoa Joe and James Storm. So Magnus and Joe have gone full face at the expense of Morgan and Crimson. This match had quite a few nice spots, most of which included Austin Aries. Joe was the one isolated until Roode made the mistake of charging him in the corner. You never charge Joe in the corner. After that, it was all about everyone hitting their finishers, until Storm got the one that worked and Pinned Roode. After the bell, Bully Ray took a chair to everyone and left them laying. The closing image of the show was Bull Ray standing tall, but what I took most from the match was how fluid Joe and Magnus have become. Magnus didnt look out of his depth in the Main Event, and he and Joe continued their forward momentum as dominant tag champions. As well as that, Austin Aries put in a good showing for himself as a credible Main Event wrestler. The Big Styles SecretAJ had challenged Kaz and Daniels to a Gauntlet Match. Before the match, AJ challenged them to reveal what the big secret is if he beat them both. Daniels was about to deny him but Kazarian stole the mic and agreed. The first fall was AJ vs. Daniels and Styles looked like the had the win in hand. Kazarian ran into the ring, and dropped AJ with the Fade to Black, eliminating Daniels by DQ. But this allowed him to instantly pin Styles easily for the second fall. So at first, Kazarian was fighting AJ under orders of Daniels to protect this secret, now hes actively protecting it himself by becoming more vicious as it goes on. Like I say, this is all well and good, but its success relies on how good the secret is, if we ever hear it. Either way, its letting us watch great matches between the three every time. The Knockout Matches Gail Kim did Madison Rayne a favour by getting her the gift of a match with ODB. Madison and ODB had an awkward Bronco Buster reversal and weirdly, TNA replayed it. Way to help your stars out. Madison tried to get Gail Kim into the ring to hit ODB but Kim dropped her belt by accident and so couldnt help. The tension between champion and challenger continues. In other Knockout news, Velvet Sky was complaining about being screwed in the Battle Royal when Angelina Love and Sarita (who just happened to be in the room behind her) attacked from behind and threw her into a wall. Mickie James ran in to help, dressed like a hippy WNBA player. This turned into a tag team match, for which Mickie had changed back into her failed country singer outfit. Mike Tenay again couldnt help but talk about TMZ and Girls Gone Wild throughout this match to get over his new creepy old man gimmick. Otherwise known as the Jerry Lawler. Velvet pinned Love after her sit out Pedigree. In Other NewsRic Flair gave Garrett Bischoff one week to come to his senses and get out of his life. Garrett, being the fearless Bischoff that he is, told Ric Flair that he was his own man. Looks like Garrett is going to come up against whats left of Immortal next week. This was all we saw of "Immortal" this week, which was a welcome change instead of giving them a promo just for the sake of it. After another emotional Jesse Sorensen video with him and his mother, Zema Ion said hed do it again in a promo. Whatd that take, like two weeks to exploit it? I guess its nothing new, Benoit got a whole nickname out of accidentally injuring Sabu all those years ago. Zema then took on Shannon Moore. After Shannon slowly missed a slow motion moonsault, Ion used his high impact knee to the face to continue the winning momentum. No disrespect to Zema, but I hope Aries keeps the title, he's bringing a certain level of prestige and attention to the belt that it hasn't really had in a while. Also, TNA finally acknowledged Abyss being missing with a video package of the build up to Genesis and him winning the match against Bully and Tenay and Tazz acted completely bewildered as to where Abyss could be. To me, TNA are missing an opportunity to cross promote their other project RingKaKing on Impact. I know they probably want to hide the fact that Jeff Jarrett is there despite being forced to "leave" TNA but it wouldn't hurt to put in a bit more promotion. Not to mention it would let the fans know where all the missing stars are. There's been zero mention of Scott Steiner and others, might be nice to let people know that they're still active rather than just letting everyone forget about them. On top of that, I can't help but wonder how long it'll be before they start bringing stars from RingKaKing over to the TNA brand. Chavo Guerrero for example seems like an obvious person whose experience could help TNA Impact out. Overall, Impact is again middle of the road but not majorly remarkable. There were thankfully a lot less references to Twitter this week and the matches all accomplished something working towards the next big event. Match of the night was probably the main event 6 man tag, with the tag champions working well in tandem and Aries bringing an interesting (and welcome) variable to the guys who have been in the main events in recent weeks.