Falls Count Anywhere

12-13-05

Let's join Ray Parker, Jr. at Pryor's Place...

TNA Thursday Night Impact
I didn’t much care for the Thursday Prime-time special. It wasn’t that it was bad; after all, there was a good six-man match with Jeff Jarrett and America’s Most Wanted taking on The Naturals and Jeff Hardy. It wasn’t a bad match, but the most memorable thing will be the fact that Jeff Jarrett ended up with a lot of Jeff Hardy’s body paint in his hair, coloring it green.

They had a Samoa Joe match which was basically a squash, but they set up a new feud for Joe against Alex Shelley, but they didn’t build at all towards the match with AJ Styles. Styles was used as a part of TNA’s legit sport cross-over with Aj Pierzinski and Dale Torborg that leads to the match on the PPV.

Strangely, having Styles involved with the angle meant that he could do anything with Joe, despite that actually adding heat to the program. They seem to have the idea that they can just throw the X-Division guys out there with nothing and the crowd will react just as strongly as if they gave them a long storyline, which may be true, but it makes for boring TV.

The only reason disappointment had to be Christian’s in-ring TNA debut. It wasn’t a bad match against Bobby Rood, but it was nothing interesting and the interference was OK. Even that big guy Monty Brown didn’t make it more interesting for me. Christian will be big, even though his whole coming in will be downplayed with the arrival of Sting to gobble up the main event attention. Christian Cage is the real deal, but Sting has older name value, which always means they’ll get the bigger push.

SmackDown!
They opened with the man, Rey Mysterio, taking on JBL in a match where Jillian Hall was at ringside. She very hot, and if they did an angle where they said that she got it removed she could be seriously impressive as a ring-side hot diva. Sadly, the match was pretty awful, with JBL not wanting to work much, but the end was Orlando Jordan interfering allowing Batista to run in and do some non-impact stuff. The one thing I liked was a springboard diving headbutt. That was kinda cool, though it missed.

Randy Orton came out and did another Undertaker promo. It’s a dumb bit that I’m not a fan of and they’ll keep doing it as long as they don’t think Randy can handle the belt on top of the card. It was basically a thing about wanting the Undertaker to come out and settle it like a man. Wow. Dull stuff.

Joey Mercury lost to SuperCrazy. Basic match, not much to it, though these two can go if you give them a chance. The match did have a great Tornado DDT off the ropes by Crazy, who won with a pretty typical Moonsault. That led to Kid Kash coming in as the newest member of MNM, it would seem. He did the Northern Lights Bomb, which is a sweet move that we haven’t seen much of since Al Snow stopped regularly wrestling.

What? And leave show business?

Ken Kennedy’s music hit, but Palmer Cannon (isn’t that angle dead yet?) came out and said that Ray Gordy would be coming out to face The Boogeyman. What’s incredible to me was how stiff Boogeyman worked. He seriously beat Gordy and then spit worms all over him. That was pretty gross, but it was the way it had to be to try and get it over, though it’s a weird gimmick. I do like the way he plays the character and I think he’ll end up being a sorta cool mid-card character, especially once they give him to The Undertaker.

The Benoit vs. Booker T series has been pretty good as far as wrestling goes. I’m a big fan of the series of matches, and this was good, if too short and it didn’t feel important enough. Benoit did all sorts of his good stuff, including a nice knee to The Book’s forehead. Excellent Superplex! The fact that it ended with Booker winning the match and the series going to 3-0 in favor of Booker. Benoit will win three in a row too and it’ll end up being a good and probably heated match for the win of the series.

Bobby Lashley destroyed William Regal. I love Lashley’s look, but he hasn’t shown as much of the impressive stuff to get him over enough to where he might be able to move up a bit. This was what you expected, though Regal got a touch of stiff offense. There’s a lot about Lashley that can work.

Batista and Rey Mysterio took on JBL and Orlando Jordan. Batista actually worked a little but he didn’t do much, which is good with the torn Lat he’s dealing with. Rey has been adding a lot of stuff that honors Eddie, like the Hilo. Rey and JBL work a lot, especially with Rey taking the Fallaway Slam off the middle rope. The finish was actually pretty good. They had JBL sell a fake knee injury and walk to the back, leaving Orlando to take the Spinebuster and the DemonBomb for the finish. Go figure.

I didn’t think it was a bad match at all. In fact, it told a good story and allowed Batista to do a good bit of work without hurting himself. I still think they should have taken the belt off of him, given it to Benoit since they couldn’t give it to Eddie.

Not a good show, with the Orton stuff being terrible, but not a bad show either. Just sorta middle of the road.

TNA and NEWS

RAW

Talk about today's column in the forums!

Chris Garcia