Impact
Date: February 17, 2011
Location: Impact Zone, Orlando, Florida
Commentators: Mike Tenay, Tazz
Episode Title: The Boy Is Back In Town
It’s the first show after Against All Odds and we have a new TNA World Heavyweight Champion in the form of Jeff Hardy who still isn’t clear of jail time after his drug charges. Other than him though it was a very bad night for Immortal as only Jeff Hardy and Jeff Jarrett won on Sunday. It should be interesting to see where we go from here. Let’s get to it.
We open with clips from after Against All Odds with Jarrett saying Kurt will deliver his princess to him on March 3rd. Jeff Hardy says he made ladder matches famous and still is at 33 years old. RVD vs. Jeff Hardy for the world title tonight. I’m not saying a word.
Here’s Immortal to open the show. Eric brings out Jeff Hardy for the celebration. He talks about how Immortal is still dominant despite Fourtune leaving. As he’s talking we see Flair arriving. Matt Hardy vs. Styles tonight. Eric talks about how Jeff Hardy was supposed to get some time off but he got a call from the network who wants ratings. Therefore tonight Jeff Hardy has to defend the title against RVD tonight. Bischoff is going to try to avoid it but right now that’s the plan.
Eric now shifts over to Flair who he’s not sure about. It gives Eric a weird feeling that he doesn’t like so Flair has until next week. Cue Flair’s music and here he is. He says that only one person gave him an ultimatum. That person was his 3rd ex wife. Everyone in this ring grew up on Ric Flair and he even got together with Hogan after 25 years.
Did you forget he’s a wrestling god? When he was in Europe people didn’t call him Ric. They just called him God. Cue a God chant of course. Flair says that he’ll see them later and we really get no resolution here. Flair definitely came off like a face here.
The Jarretts are getting massages and talk about the wedding vows on March 3rd. They talk about tuxedos and imply sex later. That’s the only way to put it really.
We’re back and Matt Hardy and AJ Styles are in a fight in the back. Immortal runs in as does Fourtune and it’s a big brawl.
We get some clips of Kurt from Sunday looking very sad after losing. Now we talk about the ladder match. Hey, did you know both Jeffs won on Sunday? I didn’t know if the three clip packages and talking about it in 20 minutes made that clear enough.
Sarita/Rosita run into Hernandez in the back and he walks to the ring with them after some Spanish chatting.
Douglas Williams vs. Hernandez
Hernandez jumps him in the aisle and beats the living heck out of him while the girls cheer him on. Hernandez throws him in the ring and chokes him with what looks like a shirt. Velvet runs down and beats up Sarita a bit but Rosita takes care of her. Angelina comes out to even things up and they brawl. Wasn’t there a match going on? Back in the ring an absolutely SICK Border Toss ends this. Williams landed right on the back of his head and if he didn’t seriously hurt his neck I’ll be surprised. Match ran 2:00 even and a large amount of that was the fight between the girls.
Eric is on the phone with someone from the network and is trying to get Jeff Hardy out of the title defense tonight. This goes over about as well as Eugene in a feature match at Summerslam did and we take a break.
Back with Pope in the ring with a stuffed pig on a table. It looks like a party of some kind. He says that he’s a hot Pope and the pig is a sloppy Joe. Pope wants to talk about Jesus and just like he fed thousands with fish and bread, he’s going to feed everyone here with that pig. Ronald Regan and Michael Jackson believe in him apparently, as does Jesus who texted him and believes in Pope too. That last bit was funny.
Pope wants to know who is first but it’ll cost $10 a pop. Cue Joe’s music and he’s mad. Okato is behind Pope and when pope tries to run Okato kicks him in the chest. Joe drills Pope in the corner and it’s a Muscle Buster through the pig. Pope gets the apple shoved in his mouth.
Back and Robbie E and Cookie say they’re going to win the title again. In the back Kazarian is kissing Traci Brooks (real life wife) and it’s time for a match.
X-Division Title: Kazarian vs. Robbie E
Not sure if this is a title match or not. Before the match Kaz runs down Cookie and says she’s ugly with the makeup. She gets ticked off and leaves. Yes this is a title match apparently. Robbie is all aggressive to start and Kaz is in trouble. Beautiful People vs. Sarita/Rosita tonight. Kaz gets a springboard elbow and a leg lariat to take over. And then Cookie comes out with a big purse to hit Kaz in the head with for the DQ at 1:57. No rating of course but Robbie showed some nice aggression here. Traci bounces down and it’s a mini cat fight.
Flair goes in to talk to Fourtune and seems to be accepted by them. He has presents for them and of course they get Iced. AJ can wait until after his big match though. They chant chug and down the drinks. Storm drinks AJ’s just because he can.
AJ vs. Matt Hardy next.
Matt Hardy vs. AJ Styles
See? I told you it was next. AJ sprints to the ring in the athletic pants of doom and goes off on Matt. He busts out a huge tope con hilo to half kill Matt. Ah good he got rid of the warm-up pants and has regular tights under them. Back in the ring and Matt gets a Side Effect for two. Matt grabs a Cravate and here’s Flair to play cheerleader.
AJ gets up and seems to rub Matt’s face to take him to the mat. Styles Clash is blocked and they speed it up a bit with Matt tripping over AJ. Nice dropkick puts Matt down and AJ goes up. And then Flair shoves him off the top, naturally joining Immortal again as it was about as obvious as you could get. Twist of Hate ends it at 3:25.
Rating: C. Match was just long enough to grade but was nothing special at all. As soon as Flair was there the swerve was completely obvious. Somehow this is by far the best match of the night and it barely ran 200 seconds. That might be good though as Matt isn’t someone that can go long distance for the most part.
Flair and Matt beat down AJ until Fourtune runs them off.
Anderson is ticked and wants Bischoff.
The Jarretts are in a hot tub. Can’t complain much with Karen in there.
Anderson wants Bischoff and here comes the silver fox. He’s ticked that RVD is getting the title shot tonight. Despite losing clean on Sunday, Anderson thinks he’s been robbed. The network decided that RVD got the shot tonight. Anderson wants to know since when did the network have anything to do with anything around here. Put him in the ring and that’s ratings. Bischoff says that Anderson needs to PG himself down a bit.
Anderson says he’ll take the word out of his vocabulary and Bischoff talks more. Eric will put him in the main event as the guest referee. Jeff won clean on Sunday and Eric says that Anderson can get a shot if he plays it fair tonight. Mic Check leaves Bischoff laying. Anderson is supposed to be TNA’s Austin and it’s just not there. Points for trying though I guess.
Velvet is talking to Winter and Velvet wants Winter to stay out of ringside tonight. Velvet turns her back and Winter picks up some scissors until Angelina comes in. Winter says Velvet could never feel for Angelina like Winter does. Velvet leaves and Winter says all will be revealed.
AJ is ticked about Flair and says this is about AJ vs. Flair.
Angelina Love/Velvet Sky vs. Rosita/Sarita
The brawl starts in the aisle as you would expect. Velvet vs. Sarita starts us off officially. Off to Rosita as the fans are rather quiet. Tandem elbow drop from the Beautiful People gets no cover as Sarita breaks it up. World’s Strongest Slam from Angelina to Rosita and it’s off to Sarita again. Backbreaker gets two for Angelina and Velvet comes in again.
The cousins are tagging in a lot. Rosita doesn’t seem to want to stay in and keeps bringing Sarita in, which ticks her off. Everything breaks down with Angelina and Rosita on the floor. Velvet tries a DDT but Rosita trips her up and holds the feet down for the pin at 3:52. Can we please break 4 minutes? Please?
Rating: D. Weak match here with a predictable ending. There was no way the Beautiful People were going to be able to win here and everyone knew it. This went nowhere for the most part and was just to continue the losing streak by Velvet. Somehow this is the longest match of the night. That’s a little absurd.
Velvet says she wants to end this with Sarita. Sarita says Velvet is a loser then remembers she’s supposed to have an accent. Sarita wants Velvet’s career on the line and Velvet says bring it on.
The Jarretts are going to dinner. More sex is implied.
Kurt is mad and is going to their dinner party.
Madison is talking to Tara and says she’s knocked out the entire locker room so she’s bored. There’s an open challenge next week.
Next week there’s a pose down between Terry and Steiner.
We recap RVD’s world title win and him having to vacate the title due to the attack by Abyss. Also we see about Hardy betraying him and being responsible for the attack on RVD. Hardy says he’s going to hurt Van Dam.
The Jarretts are complaining about the food and toast Kurt having to be humiliated on March 3rd. Karen complains about the wine and Jarrett goes off on the chef. And here’s Kurt who just somehow got in the restaurant. He wants to know where the tip is. This was uh….odd.
RVD says tonight he gets his shot and preparation meets opportunity. The title is just a bonus.
Since we need to make sure no match gets anything resembling a decent amount of time tonight we talk about the Dudley street fight at the PPV but Spike won’t let them show the footage. D-Von won’t give comments but Ray comes out to the table. Ray goes all bully on them and Tazz has something to say about it. Ray says that if he wants to smack Tenay (this old man) then he will. Tazz says no you won’t because you crossed the line Sunday. Isn’t that the point of the company. Ray slaps Tenay’s headset off and leaves.
TNA World Title: Rob Van Dam vs. Jeff Hardy
Anderson is the guest referee. He does his usual intro but calls Green Bay Title Tow USA to mess the fans up a bit. Taz says that Jeff’s entrance is inspired by Lady Gaga. Oh dear he’s coming out of an egg. I give up. RVD, the guy that is so angry, starts with a collar and elbow tie up. He gets the one footed dropkick to Hardy who is crotched on the top. Flair vs. AJ is announced for next week.
All RVD to start. To the floor and RVD drapes him over the barricade so he can hit the spinning leg kick to the back as we take a break. Back with Van Dam hitting something on Hardy that we couldn’t see since when we came back the camera was on the monitor above the ring and then cut away. Either way it gets two for the challenger. Split Legged Moonsault out of the corner eats knees though.
Hardy gets a low dropkick to send RVD’s ribs into the post. Sitout Gordbuster gets two for Jeff. Whisper in the Wind misses and Van Dam gets a standing moonsault for no cover. Van Dam gets shoved to the floor and Jeff takes over again. Swanton gets two. Five Star gets two as Jeff gets his foot on the ropes. Van Dam tries to get a rollup but accidentally runs Jeff into the corner where Anderson is standing. A low blow by Hardy when Anderson can’t see it sets up the Twist of Hate to end it at 12:20.
Rating: C+. The match was fine and thankfully it got some time unlike the rest of the matches tonight, but this should have been at Victory Road instead of on Impact. Anderson added very little here but I guess it’s supposed to set up the continuance of their feud and make him look more like Austin. Either way, not bad here but nothing I’ll remember in a few days.
Anderson hits the Mic Check on Hardy post match and Van Dam complains about the low blow. Here’s a Mic Check for Van Dam as well to end the show.
Overall Rating: D. Yeah this was pretty bad. The main problem here is simple: until the main event which started at 10:47, we had (rounded up to) 11:30 of wrestling. I’m sorry but that’s unacceptable for me in nearly two hours of wrestling. They gave us a decent main event which should have been a PPV main event but instead we got it with about two hours of buildup. If nothing else make THIS the main event March 3rd but that’s Hogan and the Jarretts’ night I guess.
Overall the show was too light on wrestling and all of the talking they did amounted to nothing. Flair returned and was with Fourtune for about an hour before joining Immortal again. That and the Jarretts were the main focus of the show tonight. All in all it’s a big preview for March 3rd which seems to be the new norm for TNA: have supershows instead of the PPVs as the main thing. That’s fine, but it makes the TV shows pretty boring on the way there. Bad show this week after TNA had been on a hot streak lately.
Results
Hernandez b. Douglas Williams – Border Toss
Kazarian b. Robbie E via DQ when Cookie hit Kazarian with a purse
Matt Hardy b. AJ Styles – Twist of Hate
Rosita/Sarita b. Angelina Love/Velvet Sky – Rosita pinned Velvet when Sarita held Rosita’s legs
Jeff Hardy b. Rob Van Dam – Twist of Hate
Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews\