Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Welcome to the first installment of Brutality Defined. I will mostly be doing reviews and results on this site, but when I feel the need to rant and ramble about the recent happenings in wrestling, this will be the place I do it.

TNA had their big all steel cage event, Lockdown, last night. It was a huge improvement over some of their recent PPVs and to me it was the closest thing to a really solid PPV that they’ve had since last fall. But, it was not without it’s faults, and many of them, which I will cover match by match.

VKM vs Serotonin
This match did nothing for me. It combined the angle with Serotonin, which I don’t care for, with the Christy Hemme/VKM angle, which has been awful. The highlight of this for me was when Raven was getting ready to cane Hemme and the fans booed when Kaz saved her. I’m sure TNA management will say that it was just because VKM is so over and Hemme is just getting heat, but this is the “I don’t want to see this crap” type heat. Rumor has it that Hemme will bring in the Bashams soon. I never really thought the Bashams were pushed enough in WWE for anybody to care if TNA brought them in. And even if I’m wrong, if the best thing the company has for you is being put in this angle, I think I’d have serious second thoughts about coming in. Does TNA really need to add more talent to the roster without having more TV time yet??

Chris Sabin vs. Shark Boy vs. Jay Lethal vs. Shark Boy vs. Alex Shelley vs. Sonjay Dutt (Xscape match)
I hate to say it, but Jay Lethal’s Black Machismo character is WAY over. So, that’s what? 1 out of 10 regular X-Division guys that they’ve managed to come up with something for and get over?? The teamwork between Sabin & Shelley here was just awesome. Worth going out of your way to see. I really hope they put those guys together full time. A really fun match.

Robert Roode vs. Petey Williams
I just don’t get this whole Eric Young/Robert Roode thing. Ok, so Young was tricked into signing a contract with Roode, Inc. and now must do whatever Roode wants or he will be fired from TNA. So, Young doesn’t actually have a contract with TNA then? Because last I checked, even if he signed his services over to them, the contract he has with the company could only be terminated by the company… I know, I know, it’s pro wrestling, so I have to suspend disbelief. Roode just bores me as a heel… he’s ok at times and this was one of the best matches I’ve ever seen from him, but overall he’s just bland to me. And Eric Young as the lovable goof has just lost it’s steam to me. You can only have the idiot get suckered into bad situations so many times before it just gets old. If Roode can keep elevating his game this will be a good way to get him over as a heel, but with the lack of a push they gave him when he came back from his big manager search, I just see no reason to think he’s anything special now. And that’s TNA’s fault for making him seem that way.

Gail Kim vs. Jackie Moore
They had a fun little brawl outside of the cage before going into the ring and putting on a decent little match. The finish was a little off, both because Jackie was standing there waiting for way too long, as Jackie got up to soon and it took Gail too long to get positioned near the top of the cage. And when Gail did perform the crossbody block from the cage it really only caught Jackie on the head. But we’re through 3 PPV matches and I was still enjoying the show and giving it a definite thumbs up.

Senshi vs. Austin Starr (Special referee Bob Backlund)
These guys are never given enough time, in my opinion. They’ve had a couple of really solid matches that could have been great matches if they were only given another 5-10 minutes. But I’m not looking forward to seeing Backlund face Starr. Give me Backlund vs. Angle or Backlund vs. Samoa Joe and you have my interest, but not Starr.

James Storm vs Chris Harris (Blindfold match)
Wow… this stunk. Everything was really solid up to this point and this totally killed the momentum they had going. You started out with the few minutes of the guys not being able to find each other. Finally Harris got help from the fans. Unfortunately, this was after the fans had already been chanting “we want wrestling” so they didn’t get the desired pop when the guys actually got a hold of each other. The blindfolds repeatedly came off. They actually worked spots with the guys climbing the cage in blindfolds! Who booked this crap? Sure, it’s different, but logical?? No. The fans followed with some “boring” chants and I could not agree more. This match totally killed any heat this feud had left to me. It’ll be interesting to see where they go from here with this now, since these guys have yet to have a real grudge match and Harris supposedly only has 35% of his vision, so unless they have it miraculously come back overnight, he shouldn’t be back in the ring for at least a couple of months.

Christopher Daniels vs. Jerry Lynn
I love both of these guys, but this match just didn’t do anything for me. It wasn’t a bad match though and I plan on going back and watching it again just to see if my opinion of the match was effected by the blindfold match.

Team 3-D vs. LAX (electric steel cage)
Team 3-D came out with the ECW, WWE, and WCW Tag Titles, which I thought was cool. The electric steel cage was lame! The electric cage wasn’t believable, so the cage spots didn’t get over at all. The lights flickered, but that was about the extent of it. It probably would have been a good match without the electric cage gimmick. I didn’t get why Hector Guerrero stopped Konnan from interfering and gave Team 3-D a table, but I haven’t been paying close attention to Impact recently, so I’m guessing there’s been some build there that I missed. Hernandez’s dive off of the cage through a table (Devon moved out of the way) was sick, but I think people were wondering why he wasn’t getting electrocuted on his way to the top of the cage, since even with his heavy boots and gloves, he was straddling the top of the cage with his legs bumping into it before getting up and delivering the splash. The crowd popped big for the dive though. And the finish would have been really cool, if it’d gone as planned. Homicide was sent into the cage and was supposed to fall off right into 3-D, but it didn’t go as planned and they had to whip him into the ropes and hit it normally for the win. They hugged and raised their arms and… well, then we cut to a Kurt Angle promo! Team 3-D’s 20th World Tag Title… they’ve been chasing the NWA Tag Titles for 18 months… Tenay mentioned numerous times that no NWA Tag Title has ever changed hands in St. Louis… and we don’t get any kind of celebration for the title win? Hell, we didn’t even get to see them with the belts they’ve been trying so hard to win. Hopefully they make a big deal out of it on Impact this week.

Team Angle vs. Team Cage (Lethal Lockdown)
This was a fun match. There was a little too much going on at times, but I enjoyed it. What didn’t make sense to me was that everybody in the match supposedly wanted a title match. But, AJ Styles went to the roof of the cage and Kurt Angle followed. Rhino gored Tomko through the cage and then followed him out. Steiner followed them out and Samoa Joe hit a tope through the doorway onto Tomko. So, 5 of the guys willingly left the cage and thus had no chance of scoring the deciding fall! I know it’s hard to have a finish in a ring full of 10 people, but I just fail to see the logic in having all of these guys in this match because they want titles shots and then just have them appear like they suddenly didn’t care about it. Seeing Scott Steiner hit a frankensteiner for what had to have been the first time in nearly a decade was really cool, as I was a huge Steiner fan in the early 90’s. AJ getting thrown off of the cage into everybody on the floor was insane! Jarrett laying out Abyss and giving the pinfall to Sting was interesting and should make for some good TV shows in the coming weeks.

Overall, I’d give the PPV a thumbs up, but the fans definitely made their opinions well known on the new gimmick matches, which are really the only things that weren’t overly enjoyable on what was a really solid show otherwise.

ROH returned to action over the weekend. I read the results and for the first time in a while (and maybe the first time ever), I actually feel like I could skip seeing an entire weekend of shows from them. I won’t, as I want to see the Morishima experiment continue, but there’s really only one or two other matches on each show that I even care about. I know that there have been a lot of injuries recently, which I’m sure had to have changed things around a little bit, but combined with recent losses of ROH icons Samoa Joe & Bryan Danielson, Colt Cabana being on his way out, and TNA running more and more house shows soon, which means guys like Aries, Daniels, Homicide, etc. may have their appearances become a lot more limited, and ROH really needs a major influx of new talent, IMO. And I’m not talking about people like Erick Stevens! There’s still a lot of talent on the roster, but I don’t feel that most of them have been established as top guys yet, so it’ll be interesting to see where things go in the coming months.