Segment 4: World Title Tournament Play-In Gauntlet
Positives: Kazarian actually made Sting look really good in the opening moments of this match, something that gets harder and harder to do every day. They seemed to have great chemistry. Could we see Sting and a mystery partner vs. Bad Influence at some point? That would be a Sting match that would actually get me interested.
I feel like I’ve said this a lot lately, but TNA booked the right man to win this match, even if the match wasn’t great. The finish was far from thrilling, and considering the four finalists (both member of Bad Influence, Sting, and Magnus), it felt rather underwhelming. That aside, it’s good to see TNA give someone a consistent, strong push.
Negatives: I usually don’t comment on this sort of thing because I’m the furthest thing from a television executive, but it seemed really strange how the show cut to a long commercial break so soon into this match. If the goal is to make this seem like a game-changer match that could alter a wrestler’s career, it would probably help the prestige not to throw to commercial the minute it starts.
At the moment when Sting, Knux, Kaz, Daniels, and Eric Young were all in the ring, I realized that this match was an unadvertised, unhyped, main eventer-free Royal Rumble. So, basically the Royal Rumble without the things that make it work.
Knux positively towered over every other wrestler in this match, but he didn’t get a single elimination. One of the great things about the Royal Rumble is that WWE has consistently used it to give credibility to big guys (heck, the Rumble is half of both Kane and Bulldog’s legacies), but TNA positively missed the boat on throwing a bone to a big man who might actually have a future once this Aces & Eights deal fizzles out.
Segment Score: +0
***
Segment 5: ODB vs. Knockouts Champion Gail Kim (w/Lei’D Tapa)
Positives: In terms of storytelling and work, this was the match of the night so far. Both Kim and ODB are over, and they know how to have a match that gets both of their characters across.
Lei’D Tapa seemed far more… uhh… chilled out in this match than she has been in the past, but it actually helped things. She effectively played Diesel to Kim’s Michaels (This is my new analogy. Get used to hearing it a lot.), but didn’t steal the spotlight away from the champion and the number one contender, which she had been doing over the last month.
Negatives: This finish involved an outside distraction from a heel manager and the champion holding the ropes to get a pin. Bells? Check. Whistles? Check. With that said, the finish is somewhat understandable, considering that ODB is the only babyface Knockout in the company — They have to book in a way where they can keep coming back with this same match.
Segment Score: +1
***
Segment 6: Bad Influence “Find” Abyss
Positives: This wasn’t a second longer than it was.
Negatives: I’m usually a big fan of the comedy stylings of Bad Influence, but the opening minutes of this segment were hard to listen to. Kaz and Daniels succeeded in drawing boos, but it didn’t feel like the right kind of heat.
This whole segment reeked of the overly gimmicked, unfunny comedic hijinks that make fans embarrassed to watch wrestling with other people. Furthermore, just because a show falls on Halloween, is it really necessary to have a sub-Scooby Doo level mystery about two men chasing a monster? This felt like a waste of time and a severe insult to intelligence.
Segment Score: -1
[…] Says: This angle (ha, get it?) makes me queasy. As I touched on in my +/- review of last week’s Halloween show, TNA is setting themselves up to look really, really bad if something does happen to Kurt Angle in […]