Sports news and wrestling

First, a bit of wrestling talk. It seems Impact was on at 8 pm tonight instead of its usual 9 pm slot. I'm pretty sure this was done because of the NCAA Championship game on tonight at 9 (more on that later). I remember now they talked about this numerous times during last week's episode, but of course I forgot. So I only wound up catching the last half of Impact this week. Too bad. I caught the tail end of what looked to have been a doozy of a ladder match between Kurt Angle and Mr. Anderson.

I'm having a serious issue with the direction the Knockout Division is taking lately. Apparently tonight Tara, Daffney, Velvet Skye, and Angelina Love competed in a feast or fired type of match where each had to grab a case suspended above the ring (I missed this part of the show). At the end of the show, they each opened their cases to see what was inside. Now, in a standard feast or fired match, three of the cases will contain various title shots and one will have a pink slip. This match was slightly different. Tara's Knockout Title went into one case, an open contract to set up any match went into another, Tara's pet spider Poison (which had been stolen by Daffney) went into the third, and the final case contained an order for that woman to go to the ring and perform a strip tease.

Angelina got the case with the belt, making her the new Knockout Champ. Tara got Poison back. Velvet got the open contract, which she immediately used to set up a match between her and Angelina (more on that in a minute), and Daffney was ordered to strip. Okay, so here's my dilemma. I think Daffney's smoking hot. Hell, all the Knockouts are really hot, but Daffney's my second favorite (after Christy Hemme), so the idea of her stripping is appealing to me. However, I've always had huge respect for the Knockout Division because they're mostly all very talented wrestlers. Unlike WWE's Divas, these women can really put on a good show and don't have to rely on/resort to the kind of stuff WWE used to always do, like bra and panty matches or lesbian situations. Skin for the sake of skin, basically. In my opinion, TNA and the Knockout Division are better than that, they're above that, and as much as I wouldn't mind seeing skin on those lovely ladies, I really feel like it would take something away from them to have them go that route.

So Daffney reluctantly goes to the ring, and old cliched stripper music starts playing. She takes off her tiny hat and makes some angry faces at the camera, very obviously not wanting to strip, and starts to slowly pull her shoulder straps down when she's attacked by Lacey Von Erich, who's in a robe and lingerie. Lacey beats down Daffney and proceeds to do a strip tease herself. I guess she just wanted the attention. The situation proceeds to breakdown, of course, and all the Knockouts start fighting for various reasons. This is when Velvet calls out Angelina. Thing is, though, she never actually says anything about their match being for the title, like I assumed she would. She challenges Angelina to something she called a leather and lace match. Now, I don't know exactly what that entails, so I might be way off base here, but it sounds dangerously close to a bra and panties match to me. I just don't want to see the Knockout Division become a t&a side show (no pun intended). They're better than that.

Moving on briefly to the world of actual sports. Like I mentioned earlier, the final game of the NCAA Basketball Tournament was tonight. Duke vs. Butler. I missed some of the beginning (what overlapped with Impact) but watched the rest. It was actually a really good, competitive game. Duke won in the end. I've never been a big fan of Duke, and I was pretty disappointed to see that after all the upsets and buzzer beaters in this tournament, a number one seed still won it all. Oh well.

Also, today was Opening Day for my Cincinnati Reds (I capitalized it because it's basically a city-wide holiday in Cincinnati)! I'm very excited to see baseball back, but the Reds got spanked pretty hard by the hated Cardinals. I guess it could've been worse, though. It could've been the Cubs. Here's to hoping the Reds can have a decent season!