Skip to main content

TNA Slammiversary 2008












Unlike TNA Impact, the Slammiversary pay-per view this year was pretty enjoyable, all things considered. All the wrestling itself was fine. That said, there were a few things that were stupid. Here's a quick recap of the card (the bold indicates winner):

1. X-Division Title: Petey William(c) vs Kaz
2. The Beautiful People vs Gail Kim, ODB, Roxxi
3. TNA Tag Titles: LAX(c) vs Team 3D
4. Awesome Kong open challenge
5. Wedding of Black Machismo and SoCal Val
6. AJ Styles vs Kurt Angle
7. TNA Championship (King of the Mountain): Samoa Joe(c) vs Booker T vs Christian vs Robert Roode vs Rhino

The thing that separated this PPV from the average TNA show was that: a.) they didn't try to fit every single wrestler on the roster into the show and b.) only one of the matches had stipulations, that being the King of the Mountain championship match.

If you discount the Awesome Kong squash match(es), there were only 5 real wrestling matches. Of those, 3 of them were really well done, one was alright, and one was bad (alright = women's, tag, bad = KotM). Honestly, the only reason to watch TNA programming at all is for the X-Division and the women's Knockout division matches. Unlike the WWE, TNA actually hires women who are both beautiful and are capable of wrestling. The wrestling itself in their tag match tonight was fine, but it was the booking that was off. First of all, they introduce Mickey Knuckles (known as Moose now) as the 'muscles' for The Beautiful People. Then as soon as the match starts, Velvet and Angelina bail on her, leading to a 3 vs 1, faces on heel beatdown... not exactly making her look strong, especially on her wrestling debut. And not only that, but the faces won by pinning her! They should of at least pinned Velvet to keep her strong. I smell a turn soon.

With the Awesome Kong segment, it should have been saved for the TV tapings, not a PPV. It was too long, and she squashed them anyways, it was useless.

The King of the Mountain match was a crapfest (note: they gave away a free version of it on Impact, yet claim that it only occurs once a year, smooth). The thing that ruined this match (aside from the convoluted concept of it) yet again was a booking issue. They made Samoa Joe, the champion, look like a chump! The match was about 20 minutes, but for the first 15, Joe was basically out of action because everyone took their shots at him. Put up a fight, he did not. He wasn't able to participate in the hanging of the belt until the final 3 minutes or so, and only after Kevin Nash interfered and helped him. So your reigning world champ can't hold up a fight, and requires help to win. No buys.

All that out of the way, the other 3 matches were pretty great, with the match of the night being AJ Styles VS Kurt Angle. I was surprised that they gave AJ the win, yet booked him strong. Seeing Kurt wrestling though is cringe-worthy keeping in mind of his legit neck-injury one month ago (that on top of all his past neck injuries and problems). There was one spot where AJ did a sommersault dive outside right on to Kurt. Kurt immediately grabbed his neck, and I thought, shit, there goes the neck again. Thankfully, it was just a work, and they pulled off the rest of the match. The Karen Angle interference at the end seemed futile though.

The other two matches were pretty good as you can expect from the X-Division as well as LAX.

Not too much else to say, thumbs up.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The League of Denial (2013)

The topic of concussions in sports is a dialogue that’s been growing the past number of years.  Do a search on ‘concussions’ and ‘football’ and you’ll get several thousand hits on the controversy that’s surrounded the sport.  It’s a challenging topic as the research is all relatively new, and the topic itself challenges the mentality and philosophy adopted by football loving Americans.  Now, I’m not a fan of football or NFL but when I saw this book lying at the local bookstore, my interest was piqued.  Although I’m not a fan of football, those that know me know that I’m an unabashed fan of prowrestling.  Talks about concussions are also quite a hot topic even within the prowrestling sub-culture.  Earlier this year, one of the hottest wrestlers of the current era, Daniel Bryan, retired early at the age of 34 due to a history of concussion related issues.  Interestingly, he was not permitted to return to the ring due to the disapproval by WWE’s medic...
1 comment
Read more

Finally, the Xbox 360!!

So as I mentioned in a previous post, I received an Xbox 360 for Christmas from my dad. A great present it was! I've had 3 weeks to enjoy it so I guess I can give you my impressions of it now. First the controller. In truth, I haven't felt a controller this comfortable in my gaming life before. As a child who grew up on the 8-bit generation, with just a directional pad and 2 buttons, there was quite a learning curve getting used to using two analog sticks at the same time. You might say, "Hey Lam, how bout the PS2? You have that machine, and that has analog sticks". True, but of the twenty or so games I have for that, all of them used either only 1 analog stick, or allowed the option to switch on to the directional pad. Using 2 sticks at the same time was at first just uncomfortable. This made for all sorts of trouble as I was playing Gears of War . Luckily for me, I had computer controlled teammates that watched my back. I love the Media Center capabilities...
6 comments
Read more

MAX PAYNE was oh so PAYNEFUL!!!

What a failure this was. An EPIC FAILURE~! And I'll tell you why. This movie had everything going for it which was why it made the failure seem so huge. It had star power. It had a very competent director. The visual style was there. It had a simple storyline... a storyline that was basically fuck-proof because it's so basic. The effects (when there were any) were also pretty great. So where did they go wrong? Pacing. If the first two-thirds of the film was like the last third, I think it would have been a fine film. Not great by any means, but fine. I mean, there was hardly any action in the first hour. It was all talk and build up. Every 5 minutes I was saying to myself, "okay, something cool is gonna happen now". But it never came. I think had they added 2 or 3 big action sequences during that hour, that it would have helped the film breathe and flow better. I mean, didn't they realize that the source material was an action game? Max Payne is ba...
7 comments
Read more