Sunday, November 4, 2012

Impact Wrestling 10/11/12

I’m playing catch-up with Impact on my DVR and what better way to watch them intently than to review some of these suckers!

1) James Storm vs. Austin Aries – 4
2) Hernandez vs. A.J. Styles – 3
3) Christopher Daniels & Kazarian vs. Bully Ray & Sting – 5
4) Gail Kim vs. Miss Tessmacher – 3
5) Bobby Roode vs. Jeff Hardy - 4

This is the go-home show for Bound for Glory and it felt more like instead of going home, they went to the in-laws house to spend a few nights. Kicking off the show with a match was a pleasant change from the usual talking bits. I really wanted to like it as normally it would seem like Storm and Aries would have a rather good match. For this though, I’d say it was probably decent at best, even though the pace was kept pretty quick. Storm seemed on auto-pilot but Aries was playing a great cocky heel (a foreshadowing of things to come perhaps?) and had some Zbyszko-esque stalling to start off. Couple sloppy looking spots with the roll-up off the ropes and a forearm spot that looked like they completely forgot what they were doing. Roode’s interference didn’t help matters any. I noticed that Hernandez had “HTM” tattooed on his abdomen. Funny, he doesn’t strike me as the type that would be a fan of the Honky Tonk Man. If anybody can make Hernandez’s rigid offense look good, it’s A.J. and he did a really good effort, pinballing himself around for the big man. Hernandez sold a dropkick like he was stumbling out of a Mexican bar after having one too many tequilas. Finish was sudden with a shoulderblock. Yes, someone won a match in 2012 with a shoulderblock.

Really liked the mid-show tag match. Kaz and Daniels are probably the best heel team in wrestling right now because you can believe in their characters and you geniunely want to see them get destroyed. Their act comes across as natural and not forced, which to me speaks volumes. Sting looked horrible in his t-shirt and black pants with neon purple squigglies on them. Ray was just taking it to the opposition and just laying the hard stuff in throughout the match. Awkward bump by Daniels right on his shoulder after taking a slam off the top rope from Sting. The crowd seemed really into this as well and weren’t sitting on their hands like their where for most of the previous matches. In the context of things the DQ finish didn’t matter as the match was mainly to set up whether or not Sting and Bully could get along, although I give Daniels props on the awesome sell on the table spot. Women’s match was really bland but wait, did I just hear Mike Tenay say “ass-tastic? Well, that was awkward. Sit-out powerbomb was pretty nice but couldn’t save it from being anything more than background noise while loading the dishwasher. Felt like I’ve seen the main event a lot during the first part of the year and I was bored of it after about three weeks. The basics were there but felt like these guys were just cruising, second half picked up a bit of steam with some good nearfalls.

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