Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Carlos Lopez gives his take on the TNA live PPV experience:

From Houston, TX at the TNA Victory Road PPV.

Here’s how it went down:

Got to the arena at 5:00 CT (I thought traffic was going to be worse than it actually was.) Outside the arena, they were papering the place for an event that Booker’s promotion (PWA) was holding the next week.

At about 5:15, this guy up near the front of the line fainted twice from the heat. He was wheeled inside by paramedics. This should be a warning to anyone who comes to Wrestlemania, its hot as balls at Reliant, with all the asphalt and sun beating down on you. Dress for heat and drink lots of water.

At 5:30 Vinnie Ru comes out with a camera crew. He gets a couple of “you suck,” but most of the people are pretty nice to him. He gathers a bunch of us around and tells us to whoop and holler as JB does the PPV opener. I saw it on the big screen later and you can see 3/4 of my face for half a second.

Doors open up right after and we get in. Nash and ODB are doing Polaroid’s. I hit up the merch booth and get a LAX shirt, the first wrestling shirt I’ve bought in nearly a decade. Most of the TNA shirts look 1000xs better than WWE ones, especially since they try to hide the TNA logo.

I then walked around for a bit. Ran into a girl I went to high school with. Apparently, she’s a ring rat now. Wished I was single and then moved on. Took my seat, Arena was 3/4 full the whole night. Ringside was your usual collection of fatties, kids, mouth breathers, and rats.

At 6:30 Dixie Carter gets in the ring (definite MILF) thanks us for coming. The national anthem is sung by none other than Willie Nelson…’s daughter Paula. She does a decent job, but gets heckled (stay classy TNA fans.) JB gets us hyped and the show begins at 7:00 sharp.

Matches:
World X Cup elimination match -

Really fun match. TNA did nothing to get these guys over, so the crowd wasn’t sure of what to make of it. The wrestlers used high spots to get themselves over. Crowd was pumped by the end.

*Alex Koslov and Masato Yoshino stood out. They have natural charisma and were great heels.

*The MCMG’s tag work was horrible. It was so contrived and robotic, with no room for improvisation.

Gail Kim vs. Angelina Love -

Crowd was behind Kim. Good match, but not great. Hard to impress after the spot fest that preceded it.

Sonjay Dutt beat Jay Lethal –

Crowd was 50/50 on this. Good match, with both guys looking impressive.

LAX vs. Beer Money –

LAX is super over. Hector is a broke-ass Eddie.

*Storm = money.
*Roode = the opposite of money.

Ultimate X match -

Another good spot fest. Kaz’s spot at the end looked amazing from my seat. Mexico winning was good, since there were a lot of Latinos in attendance.

*The translator was terrible. What they said was basically, “Thanks to the Mexican fans that came out to see us win. We’ll be taking this back to Mexico. This is for all the guys back home. Viva La Raza.”

Kurt Angle and Team 3D vs. A.J. Styles and Christian Cage and Rhino –

This was another fun match. The spots were great, everyone worked hard and the crowd ate it up.

Booker T vs. Samoa Joe – Amazing atmosphere for the match. Crowd was at least 95% behind Booker T. It was a good match until all the screwiness. It started killing the crowd when Joe was beating everyone up. Sting brought the crowd back, but the ending sucked the life out of the arena. Everyone was standing around with a WTF (mate) look on their face. Bad way to end the show.

Way to go, TNA.