LOCKDOWN

April 13, 2008

Does anyone else remember when a cage match was considered a specialty match? Now we’ve got a whole PPV just for them. But regular cage matches just aren’t enough, TNA actually came up with gimmick cage matches with special stipulations!

Christi Hemme . . . and a bunch of other TNA Knockouts earn their PPV bonuses with a whole two minutes of work.

Kip James . . . is feuding with his former and longtime tag team partner, which actually had a lot of heat (ten years ago).

Kurt Angle . . . makes Samoa Joe into the company ace two months after making Nakamura into the ace, with similar sub-par results.

JAY LETHAL © vs. SONJAY DUTT vs. CURRY MAN vs. SHARK BOY vs. CONSEQUENCES CREED vs. JOHNNY DEVINE (X-Division Title)

What a mess this was. It was a total spotfest from the get go, with everyone throwing out everything they could think of, and nobody really looked that good. TNA Curry Man seems pretty watered down compared to NJPW Curry Man or even ROH Curry Man. Sharky’s Stone Cold knock off is amusing at first, but its novelty fades pretty quickly. I’d like to see more of Creed after this because he showed some promise, but he didn’t get much of a chance to show off.

The standout here is Devine, not so much for his wrestling, but for being able to get the fans riled up, by raining on their parade. Dutt and Lethal pop the crowd with tons of innovative double teams, and Devine rolls up Dutt (with a handful of tights) and eliminates him. Devine appears to be on the wrong end of the Tower of Doom spot, but holds the cage and avoids taking the big bump that everyone wanted to see. Curry Man climbs the top of the cage to do a big dive, and Devine cuts him off and temporarily delays the dive. And finally, a bit later, Curry Man hits the Spicy Drop (or Spice Rack as TNA calls it) on Lethal and Devine breaks up the pin and eliminates Curry Man himself to attempt to steal the win and the X Title. Devine tries to cheat to win by taping Lethal to the cage and climbing out, but Dutt throws a knife so Jay can free himself and dive out the door. Not even cage matches can end cleanly anymore? Again, Devine’s antics to incite the crowd were welcome, but pretty much anyone could do the same things and get similar heat.

ROXXI vs. SALINAS vs. ANGELINA LOVE vs. VELVET SKY vs. RHAKA KAHN vs. TRACI BROOKS vs. JACQUELINE vs. CHRISTI HEMME (#1 Contender’s Match for the TNA Knockouts Title)

I’d go out on a limb and call this the most stupid idea for a match that TNA has ever had, but, (A. I want to avoid hyperbole, and (B. It’s only the second match on the card, they might try to top it. The rules are the opposite of the X-Division match. Instead of elimination occurring by pin falls and then the final two having a regular cage match where the winner is the first to escape, all eight women start on the floor and the first two to climb into the cage have a regular match. The on-the-floor portion lasts about two minutes and nobody really does anything especially notable, there’s nothing in the way of any real bumps, they all just sort of hit each other (very badly, I might add) and kill time by having one person try to climb the cage and someone else holding them back. Love sneaks in and gloats for a bit, and then Roxxi stops Velvet from climbing in and climbs in herself.

Roxxi and Love have some sort of pre-existing issue, which justifies the match going down to those two. But they don’t have much of a match. Considering that Roxxi has Love all to herself in a cage, there’s no reason why Roxxi couldn’t have spent five minutes bumping her around to get her revenge and then pinning her for the title shot. Instead, they do more weak looking strikes, and Love does a bunch of choking and crowd playing to rile the fans up. She’s just holding off the inevitable, and Roxxi finishes her off with the Voodoo Drop (Barbie Crusher). I can honestly say that I’ve never been embarrassed to be a wrestling fan, but tripe like this gets me close to that line.

BG JAMES vs. KIP JAMES

Hey, it’s a regular cage match! Hey, its still not any good! There isn’t much of a match here. It’s about nine-tenths made up of Kip and BG trading punches. BG lies on the mat like a sloth for the first half or so while Kip just unloads with kicks and punches. Mike and Don try to explain it by saying that Kip’s sucker punch knocked him out, but he just lies there and lets Kip do his stuff. There’s a cool moment when BG is doing his usual juking and jiving bit and Kip plants him with an RKO, and it gets paid off a little bit later when BG once again does the juking and jiving, and then throws Kip into the cage a few times before hitting the final punch. BG winds up outsmarting Kip with a roll up for the win. Yes, he won a cage match with a roll up! BG offers a truce and Kip accepts, and then turns on him two seconds later, to the surprise of nobody (aside from Don West, apparently).

ERIC YOUNG/KAZ vs. ALEX SHELLEY/CHRIS SABIN vs. HOMICIDE/HERNANDEZ vs. BLACK REIGN/RELLIK vs. LANCE HOYT/JIMMY RAVE vs. SCOTT STEINER/PETEY WILLIAMS (#1 Contenders Match for the TNA Tag Team Titles)

It’s a concept almost as stupid as the women’s match. All six teams are in the cage, but elimination occurs by handcuffing someone to the cage. Eric Young gets attacked in the back and comes back toward the end, which is trademark WWE booking for the supposed ‘alternative’ to the WWE. The match looks just like a battle royal, they all pair off and kill time by standing around and ‘fighting’ to avoid doing anything else. The only one who looks dominating at all is Steiner, so he’s the first one eliminated of course. There are a few cool spots to be found, like Rellik and Reign’s elevated DDT, and Hoyt’s chokeslam to Kaz from the top rope, which causes Kaz to fly about halfway across the ring. When Kaz cuffs Sabin to officially eliminate the Motor City Machine Guns, the boos are more than audible. It eventually gets down to Rave and Hoyt against Rellik and Reign, until Eric returns as Super Eric, dives off the top of the cage onto all four of them, and cuffs all four of them in short order to win. The booking with Super Eric is harmless fun, but the match and the concept are atrocious. There is no good reason for booking inane gimmick matches just to get everyone on the card, a simple tag match to determine the next contenders would have sufficed.

GAIL KIM/ODB vs. AWESOME KONG/RAISHA SAEED

Why are tags being enforced inside of a cage match? Actually, aside from that, this isn’t too bad. Gail and Saeed have a few nice wrestling exchanges to show that Saeed isn’t just Kong’s manager/valet/whatever she’s considered. Kong and ODB are both regulated to supporting roles, ODB pretty much stays out of things, and Kong makes a few appearances, mostly to beat on Gail to keep their team in control. The only real black mark on the match is that Saeed more or less blew off Gail’s rana from the top of the cage so that Kong could accidentally hit her with the Uraken (she was holding Gail and Gail ducked), you’d think that falling into the ring from a high distance would be more damaging than a single blow to the face, even if it is from Kong. This is too short to be more than just fun, but at least it’s an actual match, instead of the previous ‘effort’ form the Knockouts.

BOOKER T/SHARMELL vs. ROBERT ROODE/PAYTON BANKS

Aside from the couple of times that Roode throws Booker into the cage, you’d not even know this was grudge match. The match is, naturally, carried by Roode and Booker, but very little of anything done is of any great consequence. The are a couple of nice moments when Booker’s constant need to crowd play gets him into trouble, the first is when he goes for the Axe kick, and then stops to pop the crowd and Roode avoids it. Booker doesn’t learn his lesson and a bit later on he does the Spinaroonie, and then tries for the Bookend, this actually leads the only decent stretch of the match from a wrestling standpoint, Roode counters the Bookend and goes for the Payoff, and Booker counters that and Roode throws him into the cage, and forces Sharmell to tag in. All that happens when Sharmell is in the match is that Roode holds her for Payton to slap her, she ducks and Roode gets slapped, and then Sharmell rolls up Banks for the win. Sharmell pinning Banks was the only finish that TNA could have done, but it’d have been nice to see something, anything, from them beforehand.

LETHAL LOCKDOWN: CHRISTIAN CAGE/STING/KEVIN NASH/MATT MORGAN/RHINO vs. TOMKO/AJ STYLES/JAMES STORM/BROTHER RAY/BROTHER DEVON

Lethal Lockdown is TNA’s answer to War Games. Two teams of five going at it, a new person enters every two minutes to give the heel team a constant one man advantage. After all ten enter the ring, the roof lowers and bring a bunch of weapons with them. These matches can be fun, but they usually run the risk of falling into a predictable rotation, like this one does. Christian’s team starts behind the 8-ball when it seems like it will be Christian vs. Tomko to start, but Styles actually climbs into the cage and attacks Christian from behind. Christian starts to make a comeback, but then Brother Ray joins in and it’s two on one, Rhino evens the odds and the babyfaces have control until Storm enters the match, etc.

As more and more wrestlers enter the ring, it starts to look similar to the tag team mess where the wrestlers are paired off and weakly fighting so they don’t have to do anything else. The only one who stands out at all is Styles, his spots are easily the most exciting of the match, but that’s also because he seems to be the only one who wants to put on much of a show. He adds one of the smartest touches to the match early on, which attempt to delay the match inevitably falling into a rotation. Rhino had hit the ring and was clearing house of both AJ and Ray, Rhino charges for the Gore on Ray, and AJ intercepted him with a dropkick to give the heels a quick advantage. There’s also a great spot where Morgan tried to throw him into the cage, but he grabbed the cage and started climbing it. Christian climbed up after him and they brawled up top and AJ winds up throwing Christian off the top to the floor, and kept Team Tomko at an advantage (Nash had just entered the match not long before it).

Once Sting enters the match begins proper, everyone grabs a weapon and it becomes your average main event in ECW, with everyone just trading prop shots and doing little else. The dual chokeslams from Morgan and Nash to Team 3D was cute, and Sting (a War Games veteran) tries to win it with the Scorpion Deathlock, but that’s about it as far as any real wrestling going on. There’s virtually nothing special about the ending. It looks just like the end to any three-way match, and its just as deep. Storm breaks the beer bottle over Morgan’s head and turns into the Gore and gets pinned. Yes, Rhino and Storm were old rivals, but there weren’t any meaningful exchanges between them during the match to build to it, nothing to suggest Rhino as a strong link or Storm as a weak link. It was just Rhino hitting the right move at the right time. And just to top it off, only one person bled (Devon), if they want to rip off War Games, at least go all the way with it!

This is supposed to be some kind of quasi-UFC fight, but the UFC influence is purely cosmetic, Frank Trigg does color commentary (although he’s much better than Don West), and Angle forgoes his usual singlet for a standard MMA shorts. But the match itself looks about as much like a UFC fight as your run of the mill match in NOAH or Michinoku Pro (read: not at all). There are heaps of pro style submissions, overblown counters and reversals of those holds, all the rope running spots, Joe getting a near fall from blocking Kurt’s armbar and having him in a pinning position, Angle’s bullshit with the referee toward the end, and the fact that it ends via pin and not KO or tap out. In short, this is your standard pro wrestling match.

They’re both guilty of making the cooperation more than evident, although Kurt is more guilty of this than Joe. When Angle wants to take Joe down with suplex, he just grabs him and does so. It doesn’t matter if it’s on overhead belly to belly of anything else. Joe is to blame as well for just going along with it, but considering the size difference, it should at least look like Kurt has to work for it. Compare how Joe takes Kurt to the mat, he kicks and stomps at Joe’s feet (Kurt opted for taped up feet and ankles rather than boots) and when Kurt is distracted and off his base, Joe grabs him and takes him over with a Koshi Waza (hip throw). Kurt is apparently a ground and pound expert, and Joe does a good job of showing that by putting over Kurt’s strikes, and covering up fast when he goes down. Kurt, however, causes a fairly exposing moment when he decks Joe with a European Uppercut and Joe drops like a safe, Kurt is obviously taken aback by it and freezes for a second, then realizes what’s going on and tries to go to a ground and pound, but the damage was already done.

There is one area where Kurt, undeniably, deserves praise. He actually attempted to build to the Ankle Lock with something else. Kurt did attempt the hold early on, but Joe got the ropes quickly, Joe charges for his running kick, and Joe stopped him dead in his tracks with a kick to his foot, and then locked him in a figure four and held him there for a good three or four minutes. With Joe’s leg hurt, Kurt pounced right on him attempting the Ankle Lock, and the crowd reaction more than told that story. However, despite Kurt’s momentary remission in his bad ideas, they go off the deep end anyway, Kurt locks the Ankle Lock, Joe counters to a Crossface, and Kurt goes back to the Ankle Lock. Yes, the same contrived sequence that Angle and Benoit were doing in their 2003 matches. And, of course, the goofy and over booked (although compared to most TNA main events, it’s so clean you can eat off it) finish. Joe is in the Ankle Lock and unable this time around to counter and makes he’s going to tap, until he flips over and counters into the choke (and made it look easy). Kurt grabs the ref and gets help to the ropes to break the hold, and Kurt grabs Joe and hits the Muscle Buster for the win. It’s great that Joe won (not to mention long overdue), but that’s virtually the only accomplishment of this, that Joe beat the Olympic Gold Medalist in a match like this.

I can almost picture the meeting where the idea of this match was presented. “It’s great. We can show how different we are from the WWE by doing something like a UFC fight! There’s no way that WWE would do a match like that.” The reason that the WWE wouldn’t do a match like that is because they’re smart enough to know they don’t have anyone on their roster who is capable of pulling that off. Which is something that TNA didn’t know. It’s great that they had an idea to try something new, but they should have at least checked out some footage of UWFI, RINGS, and BattlArts to see how to do a match in that style properly.

Conclusion: Wow, what a bad PPV. A bunch of stupid gimmick matches that do nothing as far as really putting anyone over, and the very few regular matches that happened had problems of their own. No reason at all to see this outside of the novelty of the main event, or to see how truly carny and circus like TNA can be with all the gimmick matches.