The Impact Insight: 01/20/2011

Welcome readers to this week’s edition of the Impact Insight, for all of your TNA news exclusive to PWPonderings.com. To start off, I will run down some of the more noteworthy news items in the world of TNA this week
Arguably, the biggest story of the week is that it has been confirmed that on 2/24, TNA will be taking Impact on the road for the second time since 2008 in the show’s near seven year history in Fayatville, North Carolina. This is certainly a good thing to at the least attempt. In 2008, TNA took eight PPVs on the road that year before reverting to four in 2009 and two in 2010. None in 2008 particularly drew good numbers, so they reverted back to the Impact Zone for almost all of their shows. However, for making this attempt, bringing the show to the middle of Flair Country and Hardy territory is a good thing.
According to the Wrestling Observer, it is said that they may attempt this 8 – 10 more times throughout the remainder of the year and the decision was made when Spike TV executives went to a house show in New York City and saw how hot the crowd was. The main problem with this is, the house shows strictly promote wrestling on the show whereas Impact…well, it is not always about wrestling (as soon to be seen in my review of tonight’s show.) How it turns out obviously remains to be seen, but is certainly worth a shot.
In injury related news, Alex Shelley reportedly broke his collar bone on Sunday at a house show when he and Sabin wrestled The Young Bucks. With the fact that TNA is seemingly going to use The Young Bucks and the Machine Guns in X-Division matches currently, it is probably not something that will affect TV too much (even though it seemed like a Sabin/Shelley break-up was being teased), but with that said, I hope Shelley recovers soon. He and Sabin were two of TNA’s MVPs last year, being one of the one redeeming qualities about the show.
Continuing, with injury related news, AJ is expecting to “hopefully be back by the next PPV.” Much like the Machine Guns, AJ for years now has been a go to guy for match quality on TNA’s shows so this can only be seen as a good thing for them.
On that note, let’s get this Impact review underway.

Tonight’s Impact Title: “Dirty Laundry”
SEGMENT ONE: Kurt Angle clears the air and gets escorted out of the building
Kurt Angle arrives in the Impact Zone and he immediately goes to the ring to clear the air of Jarrett and Karen’s potential lies. He makes it clear that this is about him and Jeff. Nothing that Karen or Jeff do will take away Kurt’s character. He defends the fact that he was a great father and husband. He says if he could, he would have spent more time with his family. He did not because he “wanted to give his family everything they dreamed of having.” He says to Karen that they can do it the easy way or the hard way where they make amends and go their separate ways for the kids OR Karen continues to provoke him and will cause Kurt to “pull out every skeleton in her closet.” This leads to Jarrett’s cronies surrounding the ring and getting lit up by Angle. Kurt calls out Jeff, but instead Flair and Bischoff walk out to the ramp and they bring cops out to have Angle escorted out of the Impact Zone.
THOUGHTS: This was a good promo until everybody else got involved. Kurt seemed very legitimate in what he was saying. When everyone else got involved, it turned into a bit of a fustercluck.
SIDENOTE #1: They promote Bound For Glory 2010 being released on DVD as being the show that changed “everything.” I fail to see how it did.
SEGMENT TWO: Jeff Jarrett/Karen Angle arrive, Sarita/Velvet Sky/Mickie James/Madison Rayne *
Match result: Mickie James beats Madison Rayne via roll-up in almost five minutes.
SIDENOTE #2: Madison and Mickie’s themes are still awful. Madison’s would actually be alright if not for those god-awful vocals. Sarita sadly got the jobber entrance.
Jarrett and Karen are shown arriving, who seem completely disheartened over Kurt not being able to see what they are going to present tonight.
The Knockouts four way was not so good. Towards the end it got especially bad. Tara laid out Mickie James with her cast, Velvet and Sarita had some weird miscommunication (where it almost looked like Velvet felt the blow from Tara’s cast), and a pretty blown three count by Earl Hebner. Just very awkward stuff all around.
They show Beer Money who vow to beat Anderson + RVD tonight.
Kurt Angle is shown walking around backstage. Great job by the police in escorting him, apparently.
SEGMENT THREE: Samoa Joe talks with Kazuchika Okada (?!) /Matt Morgan squashes Rob Terry/NJPW highlights/More on THEY
Match result:
Samoa Joe is seen talking with someone backstage, telling them to continue to do what they have been doing with Pope and it is….OKADA?! Seriously, that is the best way that he can be used?
Ric Flair brings out Rob Terry to take on Matt Morgan. Matt Morgan is fired up and boots Rob Terry back to the undercard. After the match, Flair tries chopping Morgan but can’t harm him. Abyss runs out and cannot do much. Morgan beats up the three of them until they finally get the upperhand and stand tall above Morgan.
Tenay and Taz promote TNA’s involvement of being involved with NJPW’s Wrestle Kingdom V in front of “47,000” fans (more like 18,000. Still 18X bigger than the usual TNA crowd). Based on Hardy’s performance against Naito, that is not something I would want to promote. Beer Money did well though.
They show a graphic for Jeff Hardy vs. Tommy Dreamer later tonight, which is a first time ever. I am honestly surprised that did not happen in some capacity in the Hardcore Division in 2002.
Backstage we see AJ and Kazarian talking praising Fortune and talking about Bischoff. Kazarian walks off and Crimson shows up and chokes out AJ saying that THEY are coming on February 3rd.  I wonder if THEY are already in the company. *eyeroll*
SEGMENT #4: TNA X-Division Championship Match: Frankie Kazarian (C) vs. Jay Lethal **
Match result: Kazarian retains via roll-up while holding the ropes in about five minutes.
Decent match here. The X-Division needs (and has needed) an adrenaline shot in the arm. It has followed the same formula for quite a while. Heel wins title, Jay Lethal challenges, wins title, drops it to the same heel, or a different one, repeat. Nothing you didn’t see already at the PPV though.
RVD/Anderson/Dreamer are all talking backstage about how all of them want Hardy, but Dreamer got him tonight.
Kurt is seen walking back into the Impact Zone. Well done, police.
SEGMENT #5: Jeff and Karen air their story (but not really), and Angle attacks
Karen and Jeff Jarrett come out. Jeff puts Karen over as the victim in this whole situation, as the crowd chanted “Sloppy seconds”. Karen also makes it clear that since Jarrett is partial owner of the company, “you know what that means.” As she is about to bring it back to ’97 when Kurt won his gold medal, Kurt shows up and hits a German Suplex on Jeff. Karen takes off her heel to hit Kurt with it, but Kurt stops her and the two share a staredown. Jeff hits a low blow on Kurt, and lays into him with punches.
Thoughts: They are really trying to promote this feud. It is not necessarily something new, but to me, it is at least interesting. It feels somewhat awkward watching the three of them, knowing how everything supposedly went down in the past couple years. With that said, the main thing advertised for this Impact was Karen telling her story, and then that did not even happen. False advertising everywhere.
SIDENOTE #3: I find it sort of funny how they are promoting this Eliminate The Hate campaign while having a character named Bully Ray. If it resulted in Bully Ray getting eliminated, I would not mind.
Backstage, they show Kurt throwing a fit over what just happened. How has the police not escorted him out yet again?
SEGMENT #6: Jeff Hardy vs. Tommy Dreamer *1/2
Match Result: Jeff Hardy defeats Tommy Dreamer via Twist of Hate in about four and a half minutes.
Not much to speak of here really. This match was solely used to have Hardy get a win going into the February 3rd Impact.
SEGMENT #7: Pope steals a laptop/Flair ices AJ
Pope steals a laptop. That is pretty much it.
AJ and Flair were talking about the new THEY that is coming. Flair says that THEY is “Us.” Flair ends up icing AJ, who is very annoyed over it. Kurt Angle shows up knocks down AJ and demands Jarrett.
SEGMENT #8: Beer Money vs. Mr. Anderson & Rob Van Dam **3/4
Match Result: James Storm pinned Rob Van Dam in about eight minutes.
Needless to say, this was much better than last week’s match against the Hardys, mainly due to Beer Money being fantastic. RVD continued to be boring to me throughout the match. The match ended when Jeff Hardy distracted the ref, and Matt hit the Twist of Fate (or Hate? Not sure if Jeff owns the copyright to that) on Van Dam allowing Storm to get the pin. Matt Hardy was also wearing this blue flannel jacket and due to the shape that he is in currently, it would almost seem like him and Mick Foley could be twins. With this match though, at least Anderson did not get pinned two weeks in a row. Probably the best segment of the show overall.
SEGMENT #9: Bully Ray commences the hate on Kendrick, and beats up Devon
I really hate this feud. In the back, Kendrick was giving Ray some anger management advice, and got pushed into a locker for his efforts. Devon came out to the ring and called out Ray to finish what they started at Genesis. Ray was trying to get Devon to come to the ramp until Kendrick ran from the back and jumped Ray to no noticeable effect. Devon had gotten the chain that Ray carries around until security stopped him. Ray hit Devon from behind, put Devon’s head in a chair, and hit the chair with the chain sending Devon into cliché Devon convulsions. Kendrick seemingly disappeared during the last half of this segment. I really cannot wait for this feud to be over with.
SEGMENT #10: Angle/Jarrett (again) and Abyss is dead
Angle was in the ring waiting for Jarrett who came out (in his wrestling gear…for some reason?) with Gunner & Murphy. Angle brought the fight but was outnumbered. Jarrett got in the ring, but Angle fought back and put Jeff in a choke as Karen ran down screaming for Kurt to stop and screamed for help. Immortal hit the ring, and it took the ENTIRE GROUP to take down Angle. Eventually, Abyss walks out onto the stage with his outstretched arms, fell to his knees, and reveals that Janice has been STUCK IN HIS BACK. Crimson walks onto the stage and yells to the ring that THEY are coming. Angle got back to his feet and cleared the ring as we fade to black.
Thoughts: All of Immortal is seriously afraid of Angle? Oi ve. Well, Abyss being taken off of TV gets this segment two thumbs up from me out of principle. Beyond that though, this segment did its job in building towards February 3rd (Remember that PPV called Against All Odds that takes place the 14th?). I am just happy that someone completely fresh in Crimson is seeming to get pushed.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
This episode may as well have been called The Angle Show, vintage The Truman Show starring Jim Carrey. Cameras were following Angle around everywhere he went and the stuff with him and Jarrett occupied about one third of the show. They pushed towards February 3rd pretty nicely, but it feels kind of dry in terms of feuds. With it seeming almost all but completely obvious that this is going to lead to the return of the MEM, I honestly do not know how to feel about it. If you are actually interested in the Angle/Jarrett feud, I’d say give this show a look. If not, you can probably skip it and not feel too upset over it.
Best Segment of the Night: Beer Money/Anderson + RVD
Worst Segment of the Night: The Knockout’s Four Way
REVIEW REQUESTS
If there is anything that you, the reader, would like to see reviewed by me related to TNA (IE: a PPV from the past) feel free to request it and I will do my best to get to it. I had thought about reviewing some of the weekly PPVs from back in the day that I liked, but that remains to be seen. Until next week, later.