Igniting Upon Impact: Turning Point Go-Home Show Comes Up Short

As Total Nonstop Action prepares for its annual Turning Point pay-per-view Sunday, the company pushed one of the event’s top matches while neglecting the rest and settling for mediocrity and simple letdowns.

The sad fact of the matter, too, is that the best build for the pay-per-view and the go-home show does not even involved the TNA World Heavyweight Championship.

Prior to Thursday, the Unbreakable 2005 rematch between A.J. Styles, Christopher Daniels and Samoa Joe had been well built and executed, but the ball was completely dropped this week.

An advertised television main event between Styles and Joe didn’t begin until there were only five minutes left on the broadcast, and the only other attention the Turning Point main event got were a decent Daniels promo and a standard one from Styles.

The match ended with Daniels distracting Styles, allowing Joe to lock in a submission hold and cause Styles to black out.

The payoff to the build to this point played out decently because it appears Joe’s efforts to instigate disdain between the former friends and tag team partners have been successful, but this match should have had so much more and should have never ended so quickly.

Heading into Sunday’s pay-per-view, it’s the second main event that gets the award for the best and most consistent build to this point.

An hour into Thursday’s broadcast, an otherwise mediocre show took a step in the right direction, as Olympic Gold Medalist Kurt Angle made his way to the ring to address Desmond Wolfe, the newcomer who has taken the fight to Angle in recent weeks.

A video of Wolfe in a bar appeared on the screen, with the former Ring of Honor World Champion calling out Angle, saying he’s not in TNA to beat Angle but to hurt him and take his place in the company.

At several points, Angle tried speaking over the video, which at first came across as low-quality production values, but in a well-played segment, Wolfe appeared behind Angle in the ring, as the video played on a loop.

Angle seemed to be getting the best of his Turning Point opponent, but in the end, Wolfe hit a wicked DDT on Angle outside the ring and assaulted him  with a chair.

Regardless the outcome Sunday, expect these two to steal the show in a great story-telling match-up, as this match may be the best built on the pay-per-view card.

Quick Hits

-Beer Money, Inc., has found their way into a TNA World Tag Team Championship match at Turning Point alongside the Motor City Machineguns and the British Invasion by defeating the champions in a non-title match. This changes the outlook of Sunday’s match-up to make it look like the Guns will be shafted once again in favor of continuing an extended program between James Storm and Robert Roode and Brutus Magnus and Doug Williams. So long positive outlook for the Machineguns.

-Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart defeated “Black Machismo” Jay Lethal. No folks, you did not misread that. Neidhart defeated Lethal in a match lasting about four minutes. After seeing this garbage, rumors that Hulk Hogan wants to bring in his old cronies doesn’t seem like such a stretch any more.

-Team 3D has aligned with Rhino in an effort to push the issue of young stars trying to push out the older guys. It appears the Midcard Mafia storyline has begun. But doesn’t anyone realize the contradictory nature of having heels complain about babyface young guys pushing them out when the top storyline going on involves a young heel trying to push out an older veteran?

-”The Pope” D’Angelo Dinero will apparently be turning babyface, as he announced himself as a partner for Matt Morgan and Hernandez against Team 3D and Rhino in a Turning Point street fight. If Dinero can get the attention Morgan and Hernandez have lately, this could be a great move, as he’s a talented young star who could definitely make an impact in the future.

-Abyss and Dr. Stevie fought for about two minutes in the night’s opening match before Abyss hit a Black Hole Slam, seemingly leaving him to pin Stevie and ban him from TNA, as that was the stipulation for the match. The lights went out and Abyss was laid out in the ring. Stevie got the pin, saving his career. Foley tried to make the save for Abyss, but the lights went out again, and when they turned back on, Raven stood in the ring over the downed men with Daffney. This return will help advance the storyline, which should work out well, as Raven’s departure after Slammiversary seemed kind of odd to begin with because it left a part of the storyline unfinished.

-Amazing Red and the Motor City Machineguns continued to shine in a six-man tag team match against World Elite’s Homicide, Sheik Abdul Bashir and Kiyoshi. Homicide was taken to the back early on after attempting to bring a barbed wire bat into the ring, which allowed the babyfaces to pick up a 3-2 victory. Probably the best match on the broadcast at the 75-minute mark, but still nothing too special given what we’ve seen of the X Division in the past.

-Alissa Flash defeated Traci Brooks in an odd pairing between two heels. Through the match, Traci seemed to be playing the babyface role, as Flash continued to attack her right arm, which Mike Tenay magically just decided to announce has been “handicapped” since birth. Flash kept working on that arm, a heel tactic. But after the match, Brooks beat down Flash and continued swearing at the camera, making her seem the heel. Leave it to TNA to make a three-minute women’s match this convoluted. But back to Brooks’ handicap for a minute… There’s likely only one cause of that injury: over excessive use of the right arm to rewind VHS tapes of classic Hulk Hogan matches as a kid.

-In the night’s second knockouts match, The Beautiful People teamed with Awesome Kong to take on Taylor Wilde, Sarita, ODB and Tara in a match to promote the two women’s matches at Turning Point. Kong picked up the win after delivering an Implant Buster to Wilde. Hopefully the heel victory here bodes well for the champions on Sunday and a tragic fear won’t come true.

-Bobby Lashley fell victim to Scott Steiner in his hotel room. The worst part of this was that it began with an “Earlier Today” segment that say Lashley speed off in a car and ended with what was supposed to be a live shot at the hotel. Did Lashley get a hotel in Atlanta while filming in Orlando? What took him so long to get to the hotel? Did he stop by the local video store to pre-order a copy of World Wrestling Entertainment’s new Hulk Hogan DVD?

-How many weeks are the opening of Impact going to include footage of the “historic” signing of wrestling legend Hulk Hogan? We get the point, TNA, you signed Hogan and want us to believe deep in our hearts that it’s a big deal.

-During the opening match with Abyss and Dr. Stevie, Mick Foley did commentary, with Tazz and Mike Tenay referencing Foley’s absence from last week’s “team meeting” with Dixie Carter. Foley says he should have been better informed about the news. Maybe this will be leading to an angle where Foley gets removed from his executive shareholder role. Either that or it was just a cheap Hulk Hogan plug.

-Next week, “The Icon” Sting will make his return to TNA for a sit-down interview on Impact. The topics? Well, his career and Hulk Hogan, of course.

-The opening of the show with Jeremy Borash, “Super” Dave Osbourne and Mick Foley contained more plugs than a typical DX promo. From “Super Dave’s Spiketacular” to Foley’s book to Borash’s Twitter account, TNA wasted about three minutes of my life hawking everything it could fit into the promo. Did I mention they also hyped Hogan with a Jay Lethal appearance?

Match Rundown:

Dr. Stevie d. Abyss
Alissa Flash d. Traci Brooks
Jim Neidhart d. Jay Lethal
Velvet Sky, Madison Rayne, Lacey von Erich and Awesome Kong d. Taylor Wilde, Sarita, ODB and Tara
Amazing Red, Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley d. Homicide, Sheik Abdul Bashir and Kiyoshi
James Storm and Robert Roode d. Brutus Magnus and Doug Williams in a non-title match
Samoa Joe d. A.J. Styles in a non-title match

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