Impactful Feedback: Spoke Too Soon?

Should he be talking right now? Photo Credit: ImpactWrestling.com

So, Impact Wrestling followed up my positively reviewed show last week with more of what I liked last week – wrestling. The Bound for Glory Series took off in full force this week, seeing all twelve competitors in action, and for the most part, that action was of great quality. Following night one of the BFG Series, the man atop the leaderboard is Magnus. This really comes as no surprise, as they obviously don’t want to show their cards too soon while also pushing an upper midcard talent as a frontrunner. Overall, I can’t complain with the inaugural night of the BFG Series, as it really brought to the show some good wrestling and kept the ridiculous angles from taking too much of a center stage.

But what was quite possibly the most astonishing moment of the night was AJ Styles picking up the microphone for the first time since his return from hiatus earlier this year. Honestly, I noticed how the fans were reacting to AJ as he entered the ring. They’re obviously trying to push him as a tweener, but the fans were taking to him. This is probably due to them seeing through this charade and realizing that he’s going to eventually side with TNA much like Sting did with WCW.

I believe that the reaction of the fans is what drove TNA to putting the mic in AJ’s hands tonight. It came off kind of heelish while at the same time he basically declared himself as a tweener. I’ve never been a fan of AJ on the mic in the first place, and this promo really lacked anything to try and sway me as a fan. I didn’t really feel conviction from AJ while he was talking, and that’s the kind of thing that you need to put together a good promo.

Regardless of the depth of the promo, I believe that the timing of it was shortsighted. I think that with the loner gimmick that AJ is portraying, speaking is not something that he needs to be doing. If I were a real-life loner, pissed off at the world, I am not going to speak to anyone. You’re going to want to know what I’m thinking, because I’m too mad at you to let you know. Add to that the fact that a wrestling company wants to build the drama for their final payoff, and there is no way that my loner is even going to look at the microphone.

TNA is apparently not afraid of rehashing past gimmicks and storylines. The idea of revisiting the Main Event Mafia speaks to that. However, if you’re going to revisit Sting and the nWo, then why not take the parts of it that made it successful rather than making those the points that you deviate from. In this instance, the thing that made the Sting storyline so compelling was that you had no idea what he was thinking. Even after he first attacked the nWo and pointed Hogan out as his target, you still really had no idea what he was thinking and if he was even worried about wrestling so much as revenge.

If you add to that the fact that AJ isn’t that great of a promo as well, I’m keeping him completely off the mic at least until the story is told. I’d let the crowd continue to react as they want and quietly build doubt in their minds as to AJ’s motives. That’s just as easy as writing him a promo, especially if you put him in the ring with guys like Samoa Joe and Jeff Hardy.

On a positive note, AJ and Joe did steal the show with their match tonight. Great work and great booking to have them go the distance. I booked that when I saw the match. I wouldn’t be mad if they faced each other every week for the rest of the BFG Series. So, let’s keep AJ in the ring and off the mic at least until November.