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TNA Impact returned last night live from the Impact Zone in Orlando, Florida with their Destination X special.
DJ Z wins the ladder match to become #1 Contender for the X Division title.
After the match, Jeremy Borash is interviewing Dat DJ when Mike Bennett ambushes Z from behind and beats him up a bit. He grabs the mic and says he’s going to burn this show to the ground.
This was a pretty fun ladder match, but doing it one week after that really good Ultimate X match (that had much more of an in ring story being told) made this one feel like a bit of a let down. It wasn’t bad, but the match last week had the bonus of
During the match, I was actually thinking about how DJ Z has looked really good as of late and that win he got over Trevor Lee when Lee was champ was the start of him becoming a more serious contender. Because of the way they’ve been featuring him, this win didn’t seem out of the blue. Instead if felt more like something they were building to a bit.
This was just the thought of Bennett trying to make good on his threat to hold this show up this week, which was a prevailing theme throughout the night.
Jeremy Borash is in the ring with Bobby Lashley and Eddie Edwards. Lashley tells Edwards that the knee Eddie delivered last week was "a lucky shot" that only managed to piss him off. Edwards tells the Destroyer that he's never backed down from a fight and he's not starting tonight. Lashley informs Eddie and the crowd that the underdog doesn't win. That only happens in movies. Eddie starts giving an impassioned speech about how that title and this ring his life.
Lashley takes that moment to clobber Eddie and hits a running powerslam on the smaller man. He then grabs a chair... but Davey Richards runs in grabs the chair and hits Lashley. The Wolves stand tall in the ring.
This promo segment felt extraneous, adding little to the good segment they had last week. It takes a bit of prestige from an advertised title main event to march the guys down the ring to do a promo segment for a match an hour later in the night. This match had a fine build last week and if they were going to try to build it more, backstage segments here and there would have done just fine.
The segment felt like it was just to show people that Davey Richards was back and given the fact they did that in this segment and not in the main event where it’d make more of an impact, it seemed to telegraph a screw job. The fact that didn’t end up happening makes me wonder the purpose of having this segment, which didn’t seem to fit in with the flow of the rest of the show or this story.
Bram defeats Abyss.
Rosemary did not come to the ring with the rest of Decay. Instead she came down mid match, touched the face of Steve, crawled into the ring and says something to Bram.
After the match, Rosemary rubs the chest of a confused Bram as the rest of the Decay is upset in the ring.
Last week, I said I’d give this story time but I just don’t like the direction this seems to be going. And while they revealed very little, it leaves me even more worried about where this story is going. When you have Josh Mathews, who is the person directing the narrative, asking “What’s the relationship between Bram and Rosemary. Let’s get TMZ in here,” it sure feels they’re giving the some of the most interesting characters in TNA a high school drama.
And that sucks. Decay has more stories to tell besides, “Rosemary is into this guy and the guys she’s usually with are jealous.” Of all stories you could tell with this faction, this is one of the bad ones. Hopefully it veers off this path and heads into a different direction.
Sienna defeats Jade, Marti Bell, & Gail Kim to retain her Knockouts championship.
This match was enjoyable. Gail hit Eat Defeat on Marti Bell and looked to have it won. But Allie was able to place Marti’s foot on the rope to break up the pin. As Gail geared up to run at Allie outside the ring to neutralize her, Sienna hit a big shoulder block (dubbed The Silencer) for the win.
It was a fairly short but fun match. And we got some time of Gail vs. Jade, which is always a great match up.
At the open of the show, Matt Hardy is talking to the dilapidated boat... and names it Scarsgard! He takes Scarsgard out on the lake and Vanguard One brings remains of Brother Nero's shirt. He drops the shirt and a bag of other material remains of Brother Nero and drops them in the lake.
Later on, Matt Hardy is in his in home movie theater. It’s filled with people he invited from the town. Reby and Maxel slide into the theater from a fireman’s pole. Everyone watches the Final Deletion and Matt is filled with absolute glee. He then lifts Maxel up and starts a “All Hail King Maxel!” chant.
The Hardys are eating in their dining room. Matt is upset there are no green beans. He also strongly dislikes mustard. He has his scribe pen a note that tomorrow (which is tonight) on Impact he's going to make sure the public knows that Jeff is completely deleted.
Matt Hardy's awesome piano music plays. He comes to the ring and says he’s decided to bring the Evil Enigma out one last time so the ants can see the pitiful, broken, weak Brother Nero.
Jeff comes out and as he walks to the ring, with no music, Reby chants "obsolete" at him. Matt tells Brother Nero that he's considered the punishment for the crimes against him and he has decided that Jeff's TNA contract is terminated. But as Brother Nero is leaving, Broken Matt tells him to stop. Matt says that he knows Jeff will just make a new pseudonym and go work for Vince McMahon or in New Japan. So he decides to keep him around to make him his obsolete mule and work him until he can't make any more money off him. He'll learn that deletion is a worse punishment than death.
I almost wonder if they should have gone light on the pre-tape stuff this week after they went so heavy to a pretty positive response with it last week. Weird, dumb, and strangely entertaining videos are one of those things that can easily be too much of a good thing. After the buzz of the Final Deletion last week, it may have been something better left underrepresented for a couple weeks so people are really excited when we get them.
Not that the off-site videos were bad this week, but I didn’t feel they hit like last weeks, which seemed all to be gold. There were definitely some funny parts, like the naming of the boat or Matt’s personal scribe, and in general, Matt Hardy has been hilarious in his actions. (I love his giddiness re-watching the Final Deletion as kids give him weird looks.) But there were three of these videos crammed into the first hour prior their live stuff. That’s a lot of Hardy weirdness in a short bit of time. And not all of it hit because that happens most of the time in comedy.
The stuff in the Impact Zone was interesting, though why Matt can now control Jeff is a bit confusing. Is it because the contract is still under “Jeff Hardy” and Matt owns the Hardy name and therefore can control him when he’s under contract under that name? Or does TNA management not bother at all getting involved in the Hardy brothers issues because it’s so weird that they want nothing to do with it? Even Josh Mathews asked “Can he do that?” when Matt talked about the termination of Jeff’s contract so as of now, part of the story is no one knows what the Hardys are doing.
The fact that it’s the Hardy brothers and these dudes are nuts, it doesn’t detract from the story. But despite being out of this world, the story telling leading up the Final Deletion last week made sense. It just happened to make sense in the fantastic world of the Hardys.
Either way, it looks like Jeff Hardy is back to being at someone’s beck and call this summer, which was a place he found himself last year when he was EC3’s personal assistant.
Backstage, Mike Bennett is looking for Eddie Edwards to continue to mess with the show. DJ Z stops him and tells him that he shouldn't deal with Eddie because he has a problem with him. He tells the Miracle to meet him in the ring, which Bennett agrees to.
DJ Z defeats Mike Bennett. Bennett looked to leave the match when DJ Z was gaining control but the members of the X Division came out to prevent it. When The Miracle gets back into the ring, Z rolls him up for the win.
Looks like the elevation of DJ Z continues, which is good. He’s been in TNA for a long while and deserves a bit of a push. Plus, anytime they can elevate some talent to bolster their roster and this X Division, that’s a good thing.
Like last week, Bennett “getting his” from the X Division doesn’t feel like an earned moment because the “Bennett as X Division champ story” was rushed over 2 weeks. So these moments kind of feel whatever when they could feel really big.
Drew Galloway and EC3 have an unsanctioned brawl in the middle of the ring. It leads to the back where they are eventually separated by a bunch of people.
The brawl itself was fun because both guys hit hard an had some fun moments. But within the story, it made little sense. Two weeks ago, these two were suspended for a week for having a backstage brawl, which was probably the first time in the history of pro-wrestling that someone was suspended for having a backstage brawl. Then last week, they announce in their via satellite interview that they were going to do it again this week.
That was apparently fine with TNA, since they didn’t try to stop them and even played their ring music as they guys walked out for their announced unsanctioned brawl. But then after they fought for a few minutes, TNA sent a referee to try to stop them and it fizzled out in the back when a group of people stopped them. The idea of them having a brawl was a good one, but it didn’t fit into the details of the story at all.
Eddie Edwards (with Davey Richards) vs. Bobby Lashley ends in a no contest when Bennett and a debuting Moose attacks everyone involved. After easily dispatching the Wolves, Moose stands face to face with the TNA champ. The Miracle takes the time to hit a low blow and Moose hits a thunderous clothesline on Lashley.
Being interviewed in the back, Dixie Carter says that the fans will get an outcome to Lashley vs. Edwards next week in Six Sides of Steel.
Moose! Moose! Moose!
Honestly, I’m not a big Ring of Honor guy and when I watched it, Moose was losing and in some meandering stories, so he didn’t feel like a big deal. But this debut made him feel big. He wrecked the Wolves pretty easily (though with Eddie just working a tough match and Davey not yet cleared, it didn’t make them look like chumps.) Then he stands face to face with Lashley and looks huge next to the champ... who while not tall, is a big dude. And that clothesline he delivered the champ was massive.
It looks like he’s siding with Bennett in their war against TNA management. I don’t think this is going to be an ROH guys against TNA thing but instead that two dudes who happened to be free agents from ROH and are trying to make a statement. I look forward to seeing how TNA uses Moose.
What may have been more surprising than the Moose debut is the fact that Davey Richards didn’t screw his partner, even though that first segment seemed to set up for it. And there was a backstage segment where Davey told Eddie that they weren’t just friends, but family. I mean, that screams “I’m going to betray your ass in 30 minutes.” But in this case, they didn’t go that route. Instead, when the ref was down (because of course the ref went down), they hit their double team finisher on Lashley but the ref didn’t come to in time for them to get the 1-2-3.
This was a fun match and I’m glad the feud continuing next week. It would have worked as a one off match, but it had enough going for it that it’s worth extending it. Plus it makes sense to book a title match the week they switch nights so people may try to seek it out more.
And it gives Davey another chance to screw his partner.
Pros of the Show:
- Moose debuted!
- The Lashley/Eddie feud is a good one
- The elevation of DJ Z
Cons of the Show:
- The Decay becoming more of a high school drama
- The set up of Galloway and EC3’s street fight made little sense.
- So why can Matt Hardy make Jeff do whatever he wants?
The Moose debut and the main event was good. The direction of the Decay was very disappointing and muddled stories/contridicting details held up the Hardy feud and the EC3/Galloway story.
Grade: C