The Impact Report: How Much Sophomoric Stuff Can Happen?

Pictured: MVP showing how much TOUGHER he is than Eric Young Photo Credit: Impact Wrestling.com

In the fictional reality of Impact Wrestling, TNA must be the worst place to work. Everyone is screaming about how tough they are and threatening to murder each other over their perceived toughness. In this episode alone we get the Unstoppable Alliance of MVP, Bobby Lashley and Kenny King about how Eric Young isn’t tough enough to be Champion, Ethan Carter III and Bully Ray arguing over how rough and tumble they are, Magnus and Bram claiming to be ferocious enough to beat a clearly deranged man and his imaginary friend. Samoa Joe is famous for threatening to kill people to prove his toughness. Walking in the dark dank Impact Zone must be an OSHA violation, what with the crazy killer clown faction, separate evil fairy clown Willow, and Literal Serial Killer Samuel Shaw on the payroll. Plus you’ve got that alcoholic cowboy superkicking everyone in sight. Everybody is selfish and nobody is on your side in the Impact Zone. It’s the screwy inconsistent motivations that frustrated me the most this week.

The angle with MVP started with him coming in to take over TNA from Dixie Carter because she didn’t know wrestling, was abusing power and was running things unfairly. Only a few months after this does he turn heel in order to abuse power and run things unfairly. The “boys in the back” defend him and fight back against Carter but when he shows his true colors they just… do the same thing they were doing before, really. I mean Eric Young is the champ now and gets the crap beaten out of him at every turn, but no one really defends him or complains the same as they did when Magnus was beating all challengers through massive interference. Just what is going on here?

The biggest gripe I have when it comes to screwy motivations is aimed at Bully Ray. He spent the better part of the past six months threatening to put Dixie Carter through a table for seemingly no real reason. Because she cost him a match? It’s really unclear other than the fact that he hates the Carters. Other than one overture towards going after the MVP Regime and sticking up for Eric Young, he’s mostly focused on this one thing. Now as we head into Slammiversary he’s busted open EC3’s perfect forehead and challenged him to a Texas Death Match for no obvious reason other than to threaten Dixie some more. Yet she already has enough on her plate with MVP taking over her show.

Why wouldn’t Bully use MVP to get to Carter? It’d have made for a more interesting show both this week and last week. Last week’s episode ended with an eight-man first blood tag match that had Bully Ray teaming with Eric Young, Samoa Joe and Austin Aries against MVP’s Alliance and EC3. Do you see what’s so confusing about that? Ethan is a Carter, why is he teaming with the people that put his aunt out of the company other than Bully wanted that to happen so he could bust him open? Bully Ray’s overtures as a face squaring off against the Carters make no sense because DIXIE LOST. Wouldn’t he want to team with the man who caused his mortal enemy to lose face? It’d have made the match alone more interesting as well because it’d FORCE THE FACES TO ACTUALLY ACT LIKE FACES and team up with someone they may not trust in order to help the greater good.

The ending of last week forced us into the worst segment possible this week, where EC3 and his assistant Rockstar Spud berated a returning Brooke Tessmacher (former girlfriend of Bully Ray) for no reason other than to piss Bully off. They attempted to force her to admit that there was some dirty secret Bully was hiding, that they had a kid together. However, it made no sense and only serves to summon Bully Ray, make him look like THE GOOD GUY sticking up for Brooke and calling EC3 out for the Texas Death Match at Slammiversary where it’s heavily implied that Bully will put Dixie Carter through a table if EC3 loses. I get that EC3 is supposed to be a heel but he doesn’t have to be a blatant dick to a woman for no reason; however Bully Ray is supposed to be THE GOOD GUY in this storyline, and he never comes off as such.

Last week we also got the forced match-up of Davey Richards vs Eddie Edwards, the current tag team champions formerly known as The American Wolves. Nothing interesting came out of this this week; however at Slammiversary these two will face each other again, in a ladder match for the X Division Title, against current champ Tigre Uno, a returning Manik, Sanada and dark horse for new champ Crazzy Steve (he’s crazy!). I don’t know if TNA would break up their Tag Champs already, but considering in their match they decided to stay friends and not kill each other, wrestling a more technical match than these two have probably ever done before, chances are slim. Then again this is TNA, next Thursday Eddie might have threatened to chop Davey up with a machete to prove he has bigger balls or something.

The only consistent character development we get this week is my favorite thing to happen in wrestling this week and the most positive thing I can end this review on: Robbie E still being afraid of clowns. Somehow Robbie E sells being terrified of The Menagerie better than Eric Young sells having his back injured in 3 matches. #RobbieEForTNAChamp