TNA Impact! Delivers Its Best Show In a Long While

I'm sure jlamb will be covering Impact! with his Good, Bad and Ugly series but I just wanted to throw a few thoughts out there regarding tonight's show.

• That was one of the better pro wrestling shows that I have seen in a long time. From top to bottom it was an entertaining night. Evenly paced, with a mix of great matches and the crowd was really hot for the entire night. Reports were suggesting as much but you never know how that will translate to TV. Well, it translated very well.
  
• They finally decided to go without the ramp leading up to the ring and that was a damn good decision. That ramp just looked horrible and they needed to dump it. Good on them for actually doing it and hopefully this sticks.
  
• AJ and Kurt did what they've done a billion times before it seems like; had a great match. The fact that they opened the show with it was a nice touch.
  
• Shannon Moore doesn't add much to the TNA roster although he did manage to have a decent match with Jeff Hardy. One wonders how much of that has to do with Hardy though. We'll see how this plays out but don't expect much.
  
• Going into tonight all the talk was that the Motor City Machineguns and Beer Money had a Match of the Year candidate. I didn't expect it to be that great but they seriously delivered. They were hitting every spot and the crowd was insane for the match the whole way through. Easily the best free TV match so far this year and probably the best match overall.
  
• RVD-Abyss wasn't the worst thing but it wasn't as good as advertised. Abyss took a few hardcore shots that just didn't look good enough to make it worthwhile. When I say hardcore shots I mean the stock barbed wire boards, and thumb tacks and all that. It was essentially just a lead in to the Fortune vs EV2 angle that was also much talked about. It didn't get a lot of screen time on the initial show but they covered it quite a bit in the reaction show immediately after. It was well shot and well executed by all involved. This is the kind of thing that's easy to mess up with so many people out there flying around but they did really well. Having Flair screaming at Dixie that it was all her fault was really a nice touch. 

It was a great show and I'd love to see them keep this momentum going. Curious to see how it will have done in the ratings. It was almost weird how much better the show was with the lack of backstage segments and interviews clouding everything and taking up all the screen time. These guys delivered tonight.