TNA Impact Results, Review, & Video (April 6, 2017): All About the Announcers

TNA Impact returned last night (Apr. 6) with their 5th episode from their last round of tapings. You can find all the results at the live blog here.

Announcer BS

After a short opening match, Jeremy Borash and Josh Mathews went from bickering over the match to a full blown shouting match on microphones. It was as irritating and channel changing inducing as you may guess.

So what would add to this garbage? Oh, Bruce Pritchard coming out and run them both down and try to talk over both of them! He told them that we’re all sick of the fighting, and I think we were supposed to be on his side because of that.

Here’s the rub though: He’s the one booking this bullshit. And this is time spent in the ring with three (count ‘em three) non-active wrestlers. There are wrestlers in the back and this is what we are watching? Come on. So, Bruce, I’m not going to cheer you because you’re saying everyone is tired of something you booked.

This set up a match for next week where both guys will captain teams to find out “who knows everything.” Likely it means the losing captain leaves the announce table but that was never actually specified.

At this point, I don’t care about Josh Mathews getting his at all. I care about watching a wrestling program and not having to fight the urge to change the channel because of how grating this all is.

And you can believe that the bickering continued throughout the show during all the in-ring action.

They would pick their teams later in the night. In fact, it was the main event angle! Now, despite having JB, Mathews, and Pritchard all in the ring at the same time, the announcement of the picks was fun... at least the ones we saw.

Because while it was fun seeing different wrestlers show up and stare down other wrestlers, they ended with stupidity.

Josh picked Lashley first and JB countered with Alberto El Patron. Makes sense. Josh then picked Bram, and Borash followed with Chris Masters. Josh’s final two picks were Eli Drake and Tyrus and before JB could announce another, Mathews sicced his entire team on Patron and Masters.

Then out came the Blue Print Matt Morgan to clean house! I’ll admit, I’ve always been a big time fan of Matt Morgan so despite seeing him as a pawn in this announcers feud, I’m glad to see him back.

Then they showed the final member of Borash’s team getting out of a car in the back, but only showed his feet. And then... end show. Pope told us to go to their website to find out who.

Yup, they ended this on a cliffhanger, folks. How lame is that? After actually creating some excitement for this match next week, despite the fact it’s connected to the story that’s been ruining our ear drums for the last month, they tell us to go on-line to see it end.

Here’s who it was:

Yes, Magnus is such a big time player that he didn’t even make the cut to debut on TV. He was relegated to the internet. Get excited about Magnus, everyone!

So let’s recap the main story of the show, and yes, JB and Josh were the main story of last night’s show. They pretty much opened Impact after an extremely short Eli Drake match. They bickered about their issues the entire show while other things were going on in the ring. And then they closed the show. Instead of just getting away from this horrible story that is ruining their shows, they lean into it hard.

We can only hope that next week will be the end of it and they can use that match to spin off some feuds for all the talent in the match.

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Last Man Standing

The Wolves had their blood feud Last Man Standing match and it really delivered.

While the feud lost steam this set of the tapings, the start of this story was really personal, even involving Davey Richards’ wife Angelina Love and Eddie Edwards’ wife Alisha. Because the personal nature was established, a brutal Last Man Standing match was the perfect way to conclude the feud, or at least advance it.

This type of match often suffers from the lulls that come with the referee constantly counting and one competitor standing there watching the count. This match avoided that by employing very few counts early on. They also allowed the man in control to stop the count to inflict more punishment, speeding things along there. These two guys are used to fast paced matches and did well to prevent this from dragging due to too many referee counts.

Of course, the Wolves’ significant others got involved, which was called for given the build to this match. Angelina Love had no problem helping her husband as much as possible. Finally, Eddie’s wife tried to neutralize Angelina, but only briefly succeeded before getting tossed into a guardrail by a belt wrapped around her neck. As I said, they made sure to amp up the brutality.

It was Angelina’s influence over Davey that factored into the end of the match. Both men were willing to brutalized the other during the match. Hell, Eddie Edwards delivered a double stomp onto Davey’s head, which was trapped in a steel chair, from the top rope.

Nasty!

But when Davey wrapped a steel chain around his ankle to go for a loaded kick to the defenseless Eddie (who was being held up by Angelina), he had second thoughts. He stepped back and was clearly conflicted whether he should do this to the man he considered a brother for years.

Angelina had to get up and put her husband’s hand on her heart and kiss him. Then she said “Do it for me” and Davey nailed his former partner with the loaded boot. That was enough to keep Eddie down for the 10 count.

This match received a good amount of time, captured the very personal feel that was set up when this feud started, and helped round out Davey’s heel character. The tease of conflict within Davey was also an nice touch to the match.

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Battle Royal

ODB eliminated Madison Rayne in a Knockout’s gauntlet battle royal to become number one contender.

This match crowned a #1 contender but otherwise wasn’t worth watching. Early on, the ring was stacked with names we didn’t know such as Ava Storie (who was on Impact as Kayci Quinn just 3 weeks ago), MJ Jenkins, Amanda Rodriguez, and Rebel. Only Madison Rayne was a name of note early on.

Of all of those unknown to TNA fans, Jenkins looked quite impressive. Quinn and Rodriguez didn’t have much action but didn’t look too bad. Rebel still looks like she’s thinking way too hard about each moves she’s about to do.

Brandi Rhodes was last to enter, likely to hide how green she is. She hit a couple of moves and even eliminated Diamante (which was a bit of shame given how much more talented Diamante seems from the brief moments we’ve seen of her).

Came down to the old guard of Rayne, who is now a heel because her husband is such a douche nozzle, and ODB. ODB got the win and will face Rosemary.

That could be a good match to build Rosemary as champion. However if the new regime is looking to take the title off Rosemary to put it on one of the old guard, that will upset me.

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The Death of the DCC

The DCC imploded tonight, to the surprise of no one.

When Storm came out as full Cowboy last week, the writing was on the wall. Then he cut a promo last night, straight out saying he’s the Cowboy now.

Bram and Kingston interrupted him and Kingston unloaded on Storm for being a liar: A liar for telling them there was a plan to the DCC and then abandoning it. After spitting in his face, he received a Last Call Superkick. Bram tried to hit Storm with a chair but took a superkick as well.

This was Kingston’s best work. It’s a shame it ended with him getting laid out by Storm because his promo was passionate. It was a “pissed off” style promo but in a controlled manner. He’s got a wild charisma to him and hopefully he’ll come out of this with a decent spot.

Storm transitioning to the Cowboy is fine, I guess. I’m not super into it, but the crowd seems to be and Storm is a talented enough wrestler to make the return to the Cowboy work. When wrestlers revive their glory personas, it has the potential to fall flat if the spark is no longer there. But it’s not like he was going anywhere with the DCC so may as well go for it.

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An X Division Story

You know, the X Division may be running one of the better stories on Impact.

It’s a basic story, where Shane Helms is making Andrew Everett jump through hoops before granting him an X Division title match against Trevor Lee. Last week, Everett defeated DJ Z. This week he defeated both Suicide and Marshe Rockett in a triple threat match. It was a fun X Division match.

Building up Everett for a title match with Lee is a good story. It makes Everett look more impressive and will make the eventual title match feel like a big deal. All in all, this is a well told X Division story.

It helps that Bruce Pritchard or Karen Jarrett haven’t inserted themselves into this story yet.

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The Rest:

Eli Drake, with a bit of help from Tyrus, defeated Caleb Konley in the opening match. There’s very little to say about it. It’s good to see that Drake is part of the main event angle as well. It would be a shame if he got lost in the fray.

Alberto El Patron defeated a guy who’s name I really never caught, but it doesn’t matter because it was a squash. He then called Bobby Lashley out, but they then played his music and cut to something else, so it was a rather ineffective call out.

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Pros of the Show:

• Last Man Standing match
• X Division focus on the title story
• Matt Morgan returns!

Cons of the Show:

• The announcer feud dominating everything about this show
• Ending with a lame cliffhanger
• Underwhelming KOs battle royal

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Tough show to grade. There was a lot of stuff to hate and much of that was every time Josh and Borash would ruin a match with their own crap. However, I did much enjoy the Last Man Standing match and despite it being about the announcers, they set up some interesting match ups in the main event... until it went to a cliffhanger. But since the announcers bickered over everything, I’m going with:

Grade: D+

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