TURNING POINT

December 11, 2005

It’s the final TNA PPV of the year! Jeff Jarrett had been yammering about TNA bringing new faces, and he was right. Christian Cage, The Dudley Boys, and Kanyon are all on this show. Also, AJ and Joe tear down the house yet again, Sabu and Abyss bring out the barbed wire, and even baseball players are wrestling.

Matt Bentley . . . is somehow the most over wrestler in his match, despite being the least talented one in there.

Christian Cage . . . earns the opportunity in TNA in one night that he couldn’t get in the WWE in seven years.

Rhino . . . apparently has taken The Big Show’s seminar on taking big falls and not getting hurt.

ABYSS vs. SABU (Barbed Wire Massacre)

When one looks at the TNA roster, there aren’t very many guys who have stayed over as consistently as Abyss has, and I think that this match is a good example of why. The storyline going into the match is that Abyss fears barbed wire, and it’s not hard to understand why, but he doesn’t cower in fear or show any sort of hesitation, he puts his nose to the grindstone and bears it. It’s something that pretty much anyone can relate to, having to swallow your pride or put your problems on hold to deal with the task at hand.

Being a barbed wire match, you ought to know what to expect, there’s little in the way of smart work, and a big emphasis on violence, Abyss throws Sabu into the wire a couple of times, and Sabu and Abyss both blind charge themselves into the wire, there’s also an instance where Abyss drops Sabu stomach first onto the wire. There are a couple of nice spots that aren’t wire related though, the best one is in the beginning, when Sabu springs off the chair and Abyss catches him, seemingly in powerbomb position, but Sabu counters to a hurricanrana. Abyss also attempts an Earthquake splash with a chair, and Sabu counters the same way that everyone does (chair meets grapefruits). If you’ve not watched much deathmatch style wrestling before, then the finish might be a bit hard to watch, Abyss blind charges into a piece of plywood wrapped in wire, and then Sabu dropkicks him onto a second one, so he’s basically sandwiched between them, Sabu does his own version of an Earthquake splash (a nice little cheap shot at Abyss for his earlier failed attempt at one) and gets the win. I’m not the biggest fan of using violence as a substitute for wrestling, but it’s hard to not at least respect Sabu and Abyss for putting themselves through this.

ALEX SHELLEY/RODERICK STRONG vs. AUSTIN ARIES/MATT BENTLEY

For some reason, Matt Bentley was the most over one of the bunch here (probably Traci Brooks). This is fun enough for what it is and it’s not anything overly complicated, they’ve all got their roles and they play them well. Aries lives up to his nickname of ‘The Wrestling Machine’ by being just that, working all sorts of stuff, just to show that he can. Shelley adds the attitude to the match with a nice cheap shot to Aries while he was on the apron and kicking the imaginary dust on him. Shelley also prevents Aries from making the tag with a nice shot at Bentley on the apron. Bentley and Strong are more or less regulated to supporting roles. Strong hits Aries with a backbreaker variation and does a sort of Doomsday powerbomb backbreaker with Shelley. Bentley is apparently supposed to be Aries’ hot tag, and he looks like it when he’s all fired up and the crowd is hot, but as soon as Bentley has to actually do something, the magic is gone. He hits an elbow from the top rope, which was really nice on its own, but he follows up with some bad looking punches, and he pins Shelley after a superkick that would make Shawn Michaels embarrassed to admit to training him. Had Aries and Bentley’s roles been reversed this would probably have come off a lot better, it’s still pretty fun, but it’s dragged down quite a bit by having Bentley’s limitations on full display.

RAVEN vs. CHRIS K

Both Raven and Kanyon throw in a couple of nice touches, but they mostly stick to brawling, it sort of makes sense given the angle (Larry Zybyzsko bringing in a ghost from Raven’s past), but it’s not very exciting to watch. There’s a surprisingly smart moment when Kanyon gets a chair and Raven punches the chair, like Big Show like to do, but it doesn’t have the desired effect and Raven remembers to sell his hand. Kanyon also busts Raven’s mouth open, apparently with a variation of the Rocker Dropper. When Kanyon attempts a second one later in the match, Raven counters to a powerbomb. The best thing here is Kanyon’s over the top bumping, the knee lift hasn’t been very effective in the last twenty-five or so years, but Kanyon’s bump from it makes it look like he’d have been dead, had he not gone tumbling to the floor. With how lethal he made the knee lift look, there’s zero doubt as to the result of when Raven hits the Raven Effect DDT. The result wasn’t in much doubt, since the bigger angle is Raven/Zybyzsko, but they still put some effort into what they were doing.

BG JAMES/KIP JAMES/KONNAN/RON KILLINGS vs. A-1/ERIC YOUNG/BOBBY ROODE/PETEY WILLIAMS

The second match in a row where the match itself is secondary to the angle. In this case its Konnan’s heel turn and the end of the 3LK. The babyfaces do what they can to get the crowd into the match by giving them exactly what they want to see, which is the 4LK doing all their signature stuff, like Konnan’s shoe throwing, Killings’ headbutt to the grapefruits, and BG and Killings doing the wave while they take turns punching Bobby Roode. Unless one is a diehard fan of the ‘Kru (and Lord help you if that’s the case) it’s not very interesting, but the idea is to get the fans into the match before Konnan rains on their parade, which they accomplish. The Canadian’s don’t get much to do other than bump and sell for them. Petey gets to work in his bit where he stands on BG while he’s in the tree of woe and sings, and there’s a nice false tag between Roode and Petey, but that’s about it for Team Canada. 4LK looks to have things in the bag until Konnan waffles Kip with the chair and Roode gets the pin. It’s actually a cute bit of irony, since Konnan had leveled Kip with a chair at Sacrifice and BG, who was guest referee, had let it go. Again, the match itself isn’t very spectacular, but the lead-in to the subsequent angle was very well done.

CHRIS SABIN/SONJAY DUTT/DALE TORBORG vs. SIMON DIAMOND/ELIX SKIPPER/DAVID YOUNG

This falls into the category of harmless fun for the Orlando crowd, but nothing particularly interesting for the viewer. Sabin and Dutt bring all sorts of dives and flashy offense, but do very little else of note. Torborg was as bad as he’d been in WCW, doing little more than punching. Skipper was the only one of the Diamonds that seemed to be a bit ambitious in what he did, but he was also screwing up his spots, so he probably should have followed suit. He nearly fell on his head at one point, and then his attempt at either a hotshot or flapjack to Dutt went wrong. Young looked decent enough with a couple of nice spots, including an Anderson like spine buster, but most of his time in the match had the camera on Bobby Heenan doing commentary.

Simon was the only one who seemed to understand that the heels needed to get heat, and did so by mocking the baseball players when he punched Dutt, and when he gave the fans the momentary fear that the heels would win, when he knocked our Torborg with the chest protector. It wasn’t to be though, AJ Pierzynski hit Simon with a home plate (which he sold perfectly) and Dutt and Sabin finish him off. It’s a bit of a drag that the only one who seemed to have a clue had to do the job, but it made sense, since he was the one who started the whole thing.

CHRISTIAN CAGE vs. MONTY BROWN (#1 Contender’s match for the NWA World Heavyweight Title)

The way this is worked makes sense to a certain extent. While there’s no doubting that Christian was a huge coup for TNA, if they push him like a Von Erich in Dallas, it makes TNA look bush league when a former WWE superstar is spanking the TNA roster, no matter how talented he is. So in that respect, I can see why Monty spent so much of this match on offense, but that itself raised two problems. The first one is how uninteresting the match is with Monty controlling this. As expected, Monty uses his power to his advantage, and while he does pull off some good stuff, especially the press slam to the floor, and even busting out the Alpha bomb (his finisher before the pounce). It just gets tiresome after a bit, you can only see Monty slam him and whip him into the corner or the guardrail so many times.

To his credit, Christian is good enough to play along and puts over the damage to his midsection. He flubs a little bit when he hits Monty with the plancha to the floor, but makes up for it a big later, when he knocks Monty off the turnbuckle and hits a frog splash, but can’t follow up with a pin attempt because of his ribs. Christian also briefly shows a little bit of desperation by rolling up Monty and putting his feet on the ropes. The other problem with Monty controlling things so much is that the finish makes him look almost worthless. Monty had thrown the kitchen sink at Christian and he’d survived, but after Monty misses the pounce and hits the exposed turnbuckle (it had torn off when Christian was holding the turnbuckle while Monty was trying to drag him out of the corner), Christian hits the Unprettier and becomes the #1 contender. The problem wasn’t the match length or the booking, this was just the right amount of time, and Christian is certainly talented enough to warrant the spot, it just needed to be less lopsided, so that Christian could still go out there and seemingly earn the win, without making Monty look like a chumpstain.

BROTHER RAY/BROTHER D-VON vs. CHRIS HARRIS/JAMES STORM (Tables Match)

Although this isn’t bad, if you’ve seen even a couple of tables matches with the Dudleys, then you’ve probably seen this one. It’s got the usual spots where it will seem like someone is getting suplexed through a table, only for his partner to make the save, something both teams do several times. There’s also a nice moment when AMW was about to whip D-Von into a table in the corner, only for Ray to intercept him. The rest of this is just a lot of brawling, with Ray doing lots of chops (Harris and Storm both had hand prints on their chests), and Harris bringing a chair into the mix. Team 3-D wins in a shutout by giving Storm the Death Sentence and Harris the 3-D. Obviously they didn’t have the same concerns about the ex-WWE guys going over too dominantly, although to be fair, they’d been with TNA longer than Christian, and AMW still had the NWA Tag Titles, and they were strong enough that they could take the loss without losing anything.

For the first time of the night, there’s a match that has some intensity to it. Actually, simply saying that it’s got intensity is an understatement. This is a lot like their match from Sacrifice, only with a much better sense of urgency and hatred, due to the title being at stake and because AJ and Joe actually have a feud going on. One only needs to watch the way AJ charges at Joe and starts wailing away on him as soon as the bell rings, to get an idea of their feelings toward each other. AJ is almost Joe-like with the force he tries to put into his strikes, leaving Joe no choice but to amp up his own stuff even more, and the result is akin to the strike exchanges of Joe/Kobashi. In addition to that, Joe also pulls out several dickish things, such as when he catches AJ as he’s attempting a rana and swings him into the guardrail, and a few minutes later, when AJ is getting to his feet on the floor and Joe basically mows him down with a big kick. AJ isn’t always perfect, but he also adds a few nice things to the mix such as his block of Joe’s face wash. AJ also doesn’t do anything as bad as the Torture Rack powerbomb from Sacrifice. He does give Joe a powerbomb, but he did it out of the corner, so he had a little help. AJ followed up the powerbomb with the Styles Clash, and it didn’t look as clean as usual, which was actually a plus, since Joe’s size should effect how well AJ pulls off the move, and because he didn’t hit it as good as usual, it makes sense that Joe would kick out.

AJ’s selling is an issue at times, as he’s again able to pull off his trademark spots without too much trouble, the most glaring being his quebrada reverse DDT. I’d take issue with AJ doing the standing shooting star to the floor, if Tenay and West hadn’t been so good at getting over how much AJ is trying to pull out all the stops, doing something he hadn’t done in years. AJ also makes a few ill-advised choices, such as when Joe hits AJ with a big lariat and AJ does a complete back flip, and then kicks out at one, AJ tries to play it up like a big adrenaline rush, but it just doesn’t work. There’s also AJ’s hesitation when he attempts his springboard forearm, he appears to be gearing up for it, but changes his mind at the last second, and then decides to do it after all. Thankfully, Joe is able to take as good as good as he can give, so AJ’s selling issues and some of his odd ideas don’t bog things down too much. Plus, Joe gets his own special spot in, when he attempts to give AJ the muscle buster off the top, something he hadn’t pulled out in quite long time, his own version of AJ’s shooting star, and AJ actually one-ups Joe there, by doing his own dickish thing and attempting to give Joe the Muscle Buster. When that, rightly, doesn’t work for AJ, he attempts the roll up, and Joe does his usual counter into the choke, and AJ winds up passing out, this time it’s totally clean without anything to even remotely taint Joe’s win.

The big strength of their previous match was making Joe look like the juggernaut, without making AJ look too bad. On the surface, this doesn’t seem to be much different, although it is. Joe stays strong by getting yet another win over TNA’s golden boy cleanly and in a convincing fashion. The bigger message though is adding the heel dimension to Joe. They’re feuding because Joe didn’t follow ‘the code’ of the X Division, mutual respect between the competitors. Joe’s actions after the match, laying AJ out with the title belt and his brawl with Daniels seem to back that up, but take one look at the look on Joe’s face and you know the real story, there’s no way that Joe had anything but respect for AJ for the way he took the fight to him and tried to knock him off of his pedestal. ****1/4

Anything that had to follow the last match would be in trouble, and honestly, this isn’t bad for what it is, which is your average ECW style brawl. It’s not bad that they go this route, the closest that the fans had seen to match like this was the tables match, so it’s not like they were burned out from too much of it. And when you consider that Rhino doesn’t have much offense that isn’t the Gore or a high impact power move (spine buster, powerbomb, piledriver, etc.) and the feud between them, it’s probably for the best that they work a match like this.

That’s not say that this match is the best though, it’s got the usual gaping holes of logic. After they spend at least ten minutes brawling all over the Impact Zone, why would the referee suddenly decide to enforce the count out rule? Why does Bobby Roode wait until the ref goes down to interfere when he didn’t seem to care that much when Petey Williams and Eric Young were helping Jarrett to the ring and interfering on Jarrett’s behalf? Why does Jarrett throw the two chairs that he’d given Rhino The Stroke onto to the floor before pinning him, the ref didn’t seem to care when Jarrett hit Rhino with the guitar. Rhino’s lack of real offense, even in this setting, is fully on display. Aside from a few decent spots like the spine buster and belly to belly, all Rhino has to do is punch and set up various tables to try to Gore Jarrett through. One would also wonder why Bobby Roode’s lariat gives Jarrett a near fall, when Jarrett had already thrown him off of a scaffold and through a table, and Rhino got right up and grabbed a table to set up for the Gore. Rhino’s great ideas continue when Jarrett seems to have it won by count out (Team Canada had literally thrown him through the tunnel into the locker room), only for Rhino to charge the ring before ten and go back on offense. Rhino looks like he just started the match, not like someone who’s been brawling all over the arena and thrown through a table from about ten feet in the air.

The match closes out with the usual TNA formula of run ins and various near falls. But, again, given that the scaffold fall had hardly any effect on him, it’s hard to buy anything as simple as Jarrett’s guitar shot, or the various run ins from Team Canada as doing much damage. Jarrett catches a lot of flak from people, myself included, but he seemed to bring his work boots. Jarrett was good about selling Rhino’s stuff, and his reactions to Rhino’s constant kick outs were really good. He was also good enough to ramp up the Stroke a bit by doing it off the second rope into the chairs to finally get the win, and at the same time, not making Rhino look bad. It’s a good thing that TNA already had Sting and Christian waiting in the wings though, because, after all of this, another go-around for these two would have probably put a damper on any sort of buzz that Rhino had.

Conclusion: Once again, the big reason to pick this up is Styles and Joe. This doesn’t have as consistently fun a mid card as Sacrifice, but with only one exception (Raven vs. Kanyon) there’s nothing bad at all. I’m going more toward the middle here. It’s definitely not a bad pickup, but nothing to make a top priority.