By Garrett Kidney
June 21, 2012
Orlando, FL
Note from Talon: Garrett Kidney originally wrote this on Friday but for some reason I didn't get it in my normal email. I apologize to Garrett and the readers for the error.
- Last night was the best talking opening segment in a long while. Strong performances all round, and with a direct purpose. Aries and Roode should be a hell of a match and I'm interested to see what they do with the X-Title from here. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the X-Division title now being a more direct stepping stone to the heavyweight division, but I suppose I'll wait and see how it's handled in the next few years. I would've ended this segment before Anderson came out just to keep the focus on Roode vs. Aries.
- Six BFG Series matches was at the very least three too many last night. The show (which also had two big storyline developments with Aries, and AJ and Dixie) was way, way too crowded. The ten minute time limit gives the matches a sense of urgency but if they're all going to end within four minutes in upcoming weeks I'll be rather disappointed. I'd question Daniels, who's involved in the top story on the show , losing so quickly and decisively to Anderson but I assume they wanted to give Anderson a relatively strong win after losing last week. The on-screen graphics of how many points the person just scored was a nice touch.
- Styles and Magnus was another disappointingly short match, as was Joe and Storm, and Bully Ray and Pope. None of the matches really had any time to properly develop and were pretty unremarkable. Joe and Storm had a nice story with Joe forgoing the Muscle Buster to try and get the submission win only to lose in the end. I hope they limit the number of matches on the show in future weeks to allow some of these potentially strong matches to actually deliver something memorable. I hope Robbie E. ends the entire tournament with negative points, him being in there as the whipping boy is fine with me.
- Taeler Hendrix gets a thumbs down from me. She looked pretty sloppy and her promo wasn't great (even if she has a great story). She was given a great person to work with but she didn't deliver. She'd be the least talented person and an already pretty bloated and underused Knockouts roster.
- The Knockouts backstage segments were mostly harmless. Brooke sounded pretty much exactly like Hulk, in that if Hulk were doing the segments I'd imagine he would've said pretty much the exact same thing (it was kind of weird actually). I would've had Brooke choose Velvet to further the Mickie heel turn but the frustration at losing angle is fine aswell. Decent match and it's good to see Tessmacher get some wins as champion.
- It's sad to see Hardy and RVD get so little time. Every time TNA has done a Hardy/RVD match they haven't given it nearly enough time and it just ends up as a teaser of what they could do with more time. The showed some good stuff last night but it was over before they could really hit any stride. TNA should treat these kinds of matches as a bigger deal.
- The big reveal was pretty flat. The actress they got was pretty bad and it just came off with a whimper. It does make sense in that it's something they wouldn't want to get out and they did need to get the reveal out of the way without dragging it out much longer but it just didn't come off all that well. AJ wailing on Kaz and Daniels was pretty fun though.
Closing Thoughts
As it looked on paper with too many matches this show was just cluttered. Too much going on, with nothing being too bad or, outside of the opening segment, too great. It wasn't a terrible show, it was decent and went by pretty fast, but the weakest in a while and certainly the worst of the live shows. Here's hoping they don't try and cram so much onto next weeks show with a big tag title match (which I really, really hope they give enough time to) to build the show around.
