TNA Impact review - 1/28/10

It's Thursday night, and for me that's wrestling night. I rarely, if ever, watch the WWE shows, but I try to at least keep up with what's going on in TNA. Now that Hulk Hogan is with the company (along with pretty much all of his friends), I've been watching it every week to see if it's going to turn out good. I'm still undecided... On to this week's show!

So apparently Hogan and Bischoff have decided to set up an eight-man tournament to decide the number one contender to the World Title. I'm all for this, I always like a good tournament. So tonight they had two matches to qualify for the tournament. Desmond Wolfe beat Sean Morley, then Hernandez beat Chris Daniels. I'm pretty happy with Morley being in TNA. He was definitely the biggest shock for me when he showed up on the live show at the beginning of the year. I was always a fan of him back in his Val Venis days. Both of these matches were decent.

The next match up was the Beautiful People vs. Tara, Awesome Kong, and Hamada. Pretty cool to see the Knockout Champ, Tara, teaming up with the Knockout Tag Champs. But I can't stand what's become of the Beautiful People. I admit, I hadn't seen the show for a few months before Hogan came in. When I last watched, the Beautiful People were made up of Velvet Sky and Angelina Love, and their gimmick was the girls who know exactly how hot they are and act nasty accordingly. Now, the Beautiful People are Velvet Sky, Madison Rayne, and Lacey Von Erich, and their gimmick has basically become dumb blonds. It's really disappointing. They used to be entertaining, but not so much anymore. On top of that, they keep doing this thing where they tease that they're going to kiss, but then they don't. Now, don't get me wrong. These are three very attractive women, and I'm all for eye candy and skin, but what I've always loved about TNA's women's division is the fact that they didn't have to rely on that kind of stuff. The women in TNA are, mostly, all very talented wrestlers who can put on the same kind of show as the men. Unlike WWE, they don't need to have pillow fights, lingerie matches, or faux-lesbianism, so I hate seeing the Beautiful People resort to that.

As for the actual match, the Beautiful People cheated to win. The match really wasn't so great. Madison Rayne needs to work on her in-ring skills a bit. Lacey was only all right, too, a surprise considering she's a Von Erich. Velvet is carrying them both for now.

Next we had another six-man tag match. Brian Kendrick and the Motor City Machine Guns won out against Amazing Red and Generation Me. Now, this was my first time seeing Generation Me. I don't know who they are or where they came from, but they seem talented. Good teamwork, lots of high flying, very X Division. Problem is their look (that glittery purple trim is not cool) and that name! Generation Me? Whatever, guys. Good match, though.

After the match, the British Invasion came out to the ring. Apparently Rob Terry won the X Division Title shot at the last Feast or Fired match, and he was there to collect. So poor Amazing Red, who just got pretty beat down in the last match, had to defend. However, before the match could start, Brutus Magnus basically forced Terry to give the shot to Doug Williams. So Williams wrestled the match, beat Red, and became the new X Division Champion. All this is just furthering the angle they've been building on for weeks now where Magnus and Williams don't respect Terry, and I'm sure Terry will eventually split off from the British Invasion and go his own way.

Finally, the main event of the night, Ken Anderson vs. Jeff Jarrett. Earlier in the night, Jarrett had told Hogan and Bischoff he was willing to do whatever he needed to to get back into the swing of things. So Bischoff, being the devious little ass that he is, decides to throw Jarrett in with Anderson, who had an open challenge out. Jarrett hasn't wrestled in seven months, so he really wasn't ready for this, but he looked good in the ring. The match was good. In the end, Anderson got the win after hitting Jarrett with a low blow, but both wrestlers came out of the match looking good.

Aside from the actual matches, we got to see more of the Foley/Bischoff feud. Hogan basically gave Foley his job back on the condition he and Bischoff sort out their issues. Bischoff essentially told Foley that Foley would fall in line or Abyss would lose his job. Kind of a stupid angle, but worth it to hear Foley tell a story about how his three year old son took a poop in a tunnel at Chuck E. Cheese.

We also got a segment hyping up the feud between Team 3D and the Nasty Boys. I'm sure this will be a decent feud once the matches actually start, but for now I agree with what 3D said tonight. That is, where have the Nasties been for the past ten years while 3D was out winning titles? That's right, on their butts out of work because no one wanted them. They only have jobs now because they're tight with Hogan. But that's okay, as long as they can work in the ring. We'll have to wait and see.

Angle apologized to Hogan for spitting in his face last week after that recreation of the Montreal Screwjob (Hebner admitted to taking a payment from Ric Flair on that, by the way, and Hogan suspended him). He also announced that he would have a qualifying match to get into the tournament. I guess that's next week. After the segment, Scott Hall and Sean Waltman attacked Angle, seemingly for no reason.

Not a whole lot else happened. More of AJ and Flair, which is really not working well, in my opinion. It's just not AJ's style, pardon the pun. Bischoff called Bobby Lashley into his office to fire him. We'll see where that goes. And Ken Anderson had a funny interview with Christy Hemme. Let me make this clear. I don't like Ken Anderson. He's a good enough wrestler, but I can't stand the character he plays. I don't mean that like, "Ooh, he's a bad guy, I don't like him. I can't wait to see him get beat!" No. I mean it like, "Ugh, not this guy again! Change the channel!" His gimmick, the whole having to announce himself thing, it's just so stupid. I can't for the life of me figure out how he ever got over. But even I have to admit it was really funny seeing him pop back onto the screen after having walked away, right in Christy Hemme's face, to repeat his name again. Oh, and by the way, Christy Hemme? Still the most beautiful woman in wrestling.

Before I finish, I'd just like to add that I don't like what Hogan and Bischoff have done to the Impact Zone. I'm alright with the ring going back to the classic four sides, but it needs to be a bit bigger. The size was my favorite aspect of the six sided ring. Also, I think there needs to be more room around the outside of the ring. I swear, if you had a front row seat I think you might actually be able to reach out and touch the ring apron. And finally, that new ramp has to go! I can't even elaborate on this one, it's just bad! Put it back the way it was!

Alright, so all in all this was a decent Impact. Better than last week's, and way better than the terrible Genesis PPV. TNA has done enough to keep me interested one more week.