Impact opened tonight with Bully Ray in front of a camera giving an oral history of Aces and Eights, a string of vignettes that continued for the entire episode. And it was fantastic. TNA being committed to long term booking is one of the most positive developments of the last few years, and even though Bully's exposition might have been lazy or apologetic, I thought it was a much-needed reset and it brought the entire story together. Everything that happened along the way made sense, except for the excessive match losing by his underlings, of course. It was almost the same feeling I got when seeing the end of The Sixth Sense in the theater. Goddamn, that was 14 years ago. I feel old.
The vignettes led a strong episode of Impact that had a spiffy Tag Team Championship match, the start of a reimagining of the Crow Sting character through AJ Styles, Joseph Park doing his best to ham it up in a match against the dreadful Matt Morgan, and Bully stalking Brooke Hogan. That last strain made me think about the whole ethic of this anchor story. Why would Aces and Eights want to follow Bully Ray onto the title? Like, who cares if one dude gets to be the Champion?
But then, look what happened before Bully came out to terrorize his "wife." Hogan had come out to "punish" rogue Knockouts referee Taryn Terrell for being awful at her job at Gail Kim's expense by making her a wrestler and letting her beat the shit out of Kim for the terrible crime of calling her out on her shitty refereeing. It wasn't the younger Hogan's first misstep as Knockouts VP. She's been capricious, spiteful, overly emotional, and just plain bad as an authority figure. The same could be said of her father, whose favoritism reared its ugly head so many times, including in Bully's favor in his quest to get the title in the first place.
Obviously, emotional terrorism is not a heroic tactic, and no one should use love and marriage as a weapon like Bully has been doing, but maybe there is no good guy in this feud. There are sides, both terrible in their own way, but both with their own sort of underlying nobility. Hogan just wants to promote wrestling and catch up with WWE. Bully wants to get rid of the bloat. I wish the principles in this story were better, especially on the TNA side, but hey, if you have a clear direction, there are far worse places you could be.
The vignettes led a strong episode of Impact that had a spiffy Tag Team Championship match, the start of a reimagining of the Crow Sting character through AJ Styles, Joseph Park doing his best to ham it up in a match against the dreadful Matt Morgan, and Bully stalking Brooke Hogan. That last strain made me think about the whole ethic of this anchor story. Why would Aces and Eights want to follow Bully Ray onto the title? Like, who cares if one dude gets to be the Champion?
But then, look what happened before Bully came out to terrorize his "wife." Hogan had come out to "punish" rogue Knockouts referee Taryn Terrell for being awful at her job at Gail Kim's expense by making her a wrestler and letting her beat the shit out of Kim for the terrible crime of calling her out on her shitty refereeing. It wasn't the younger Hogan's first misstep as Knockouts VP. She's been capricious, spiteful, overly emotional, and just plain bad as an authority figure. The same could be said of her father, whose favoritism reared its ugly head so many times, including in Bully's favor in his quest to get the title in the first place.
Obviously, emotional terrorism is not a heroic tactic, and no one should use love and marriage as a weapon like Bully has been doing, but maybe there is no good guy in this feud. There are sides, both terrible in their own way, but both with their own sort of underlying nobility. Hogan just wants to promote wrestling and catch up with WWE. Bully wants to get rid of the bloat. I wish the principles in this story were better, especially on the TNA side, but hey, if you have a clear direction, there are far worse places you could be.