TNA Year Six

TNA YEAR SIX: June 18 2007-June 8 2008

A decent idea gone awry

Jay Lethal’s first X title reign lasted all of two days as he got run over by the concept of the Victory Road PPV in July. The idea was that the TNA and X division champions would team up and face the TNA tag champions with all of the belts on the line. Lethal wasn’t a part of that plan so he dropped the title to Samoa Joe in a 3 way. In fact all the champions had to earn their way into the match by competing against 2 top contenders on Impact. Joe beat Lethal and Chris Sabin. The next week Kurt Angle retained the TNA title over Christian and Rhino in a match that filled the entire hour of the show. That left Team 3D to face LAX and AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels. Nothing against Team 3D…but how much better is an Angle/Joe vs. Styles/Daniels or Angle/Joe vs. LAX match than Team 3D getting in there? Team 3D won. They had a pretty good match at Victory Road with Samoa Joe scoring the pin to become the new tag team champions. He was supposed to select a partner…but that would have made too much sense.

By this time Kurt Angle had beaten Brock Lesnar in Japan to take his version of the IWGP championship so that got thrown into this mess as well (TNA Fun Fact…the Lesnar/Angle match was title vs. title so even though Lesnar was just dropping the belt to his buddy on his way out of wrestling…Brock Lesnar once, in the context of “on paper” and “meaningless” challenged for the TNA title). Anyway at Hard Justice in August Kurt Angle beat Samoa Joe in a winner take all match to hold the TNA title, the fakish version IWGP title, the TNA tag titles and the X title.

Enjoy it while it lasts, Kurt. That goes for everything pictured.

At the next month’s PPV No Surrender…Angle would have to defend all the TNA titles in 3 different matches. Sting had won a 4 way match on Impact to become Angle’s partner and officially one half of the tag team title holders. They would lose to Team Pac-Man…who we’ll get to in a moment. Angle would then drop the X title in a very good match to Jay Lethal:

9-9-07 Kurt Angle vs. Jay Lethal

The deal here was that Angle was told they’d book the finish however he wanted since he was the TNA champion and all that…but Angle said he’d lose clean since Lethal was going to be getting a long run as X champion and Angle doesn’t have the ego one would think a dude with 4 Championships would have. The very next Impact Lethal would ride this momentum into losing a non title match to Christopher Daniels and Angle would probably regret doing it.

Angle managed to keep his TNA title against Abyss that night but would drop it in the main event of Bound For Glory to Sting. Sting gives a hell of a performance in this match (and Angle is always great) before the overbooking takes hold:

10-14-07 Kurt Angle vs. Sting

Angle would win the belt back immediately on Impact since that finish was just done to send the crowd home happy.

Team Pac-awwgottabeshittingme

Adam “Pac-Man” Jones was suspended from the NFL for a year due to his part in a strip club shooting that left a man (ironically a former wrestler) paralyzed. So TNA, always desperate for a mention in the press, signed him. This was bad enough…but it got worse when the NFL wouldn’t allow him to have any physical role in the company. So now they’d signed a guy to wrestle as an attraction that couldn’t wrestle. This got worse when they PUT THE TNA TAG TITLES ON HIM (and Truth…in for one last run) ANYWAY. This STILL got worse since Jones would help his team win matches by “making it rain” money on the apron to distract the opponents…which is how the strip club problem started in the first place. It all came to a head at Bound For Glory when he was replaced by a debuting Consequences Creed (Truth and Consequences…get it?) with Pac-Man serving as manager. To his credit, Creed, who I’m not sure had ever been on a live broadcast of anything before actually did a great job and got himself a contract. They thankfully dropped the belts to AJ Styles and Tomko, and Pac-Man was never seen again.

But every time it rains…I think of you

At least it got Elix Skipper some paydays

TNA kicked off Victory Road in July with an Ultimate X gauntlet match (Russo was never content with just one gimmick at a time) which was an over the top rope Royal Rumble style match until the last man entered and then became an Ultimate X match. Elix Skipper made his return to the company that night and he and Low Ki ended up taking out everyone else and allowing Christopher Daniels to pull down the X and win the match. Triple X had reunited.

And then they lost. Often. Daniels focused on the X title while Low Ki and Skipper went after the Tag titles. Daniels would come the closest…losing to Lethal at Bound For Glory. Ki and Skipper never really beat anyone. They did have a bad ass Ultimate X match with LAX to open that Bound For Glory show though:

10-14-07 Triple X vs. LAX Ultimate X

The underwhelming Triple X reunion would end in ridiculous fashion due to the Feast or Fired concept match. In the match lots of guys fought to get briefcases (like Money in the Bank) that contained one of 4 prizes: A shot at the TNA title, a shot at the X title, a shot at the tag titles or you got fired). Low Ki won a case but had decided he was going to be leaving TNA again. Simple right? He has the fired case. Well…he did have the fired case but without knowing what it contained Daniels wanted it. Daniels beat him for the case and despite the fact that Low Ki was LEAVING ANYWAY…Daniels was “fired”. He’d return as Curry Man.

Hot…spicy…lower midcard

Yeah…Bound For Glory was a really good show

On top of the already mentioned Angle/Sting, Daniels/Lethal and Triple X/LAX matches and the AJ/Tomko win, Bound For Glory 2007 had still more to offer:

As mentioned before Christian went on one hell of a streak since joining TNA in November 2005. Here we were in October 2007 and the guy still hadn’t been pinned or submitted (he was kind of pinned in the 3 way with Angle and Sting last year…but the fall they counted was Sting’s submission and then everything was thrown out anyway). He’d even managed to drop not one but two NWA titles in that stretch. That all finally changed when Samoa Joe made him tap at Bound For Glory.

The Steiner Brothers defeated Team 3D in a tables match when the Motor City Machine Guns interfered. This set up the next big program for Team 3D.

And Bound For Glory marked the start of the Knockouts division. Gail Kim won a gauntlet match to become the first champion. Velvet Sky, Angelina Love (though neither was named that yet), Roxxi Laveaux, Christy Hemme, Shelly Martinez, Traci Brooks, ODB, Jackie Moore and AWESOME KONG (whose outfit came up on her elimination exposing her Kong boobs to the world) were also in there. Kong was being booked as the monster that everyone was afraid of…and it would lead to the best TNA feud of the year (and it’s in the conversation for ever) with Gail Kim. Which we’ll get to in a bit.

They ain’t got time to bleed

Following the Motor City Machineguns costing Team 3D their match at BFG, Team 3D set out to destroy the Guns and their X division counterparts. They kidnapped Johnny Devine but he ended up being in on it and joined with Team 3D. 3D and Devine would go on to beat the Guns and Jay Lethal in a tables match and an Ultimate X (they cheated and used a ladder). Devine took the X title from Lethal on a January Impact. All of these stories would come to a head at Against All Odds in February. During this feud the Guns had refused to blade for a Team 3D beatdown which got them some heat. Lethal bled for it…which will explain the booking of this match.

2-10-03 Team 3D and Johnny Devine vs. Jay Lethal and the Motor City Machine Guns

The Angle Alliance

Angle embarked on another good long title run (if you discount the 2 days Sting had it Angle held the belt for 299 days between his first 2 reigns). In November he teamed with Kevin Nash to defend the TNA title in a tag match against Sting and his mystery partner…Booker T. Booker wouldn’t have a good start in TNA (a bad long feud with Robert Roode and two bad matches with worse finishes against Samoa Joe did him in).

At January’s Final Resolution PPV Angle defended against Christian in a real good match that saw Christian’s Coalition join up with Angle to form the Angle Alliance:

1-6-08 Christian vs. Kurt Angle

Also around this time he flew over to Japan to defend the fakish IWGP title against Yuji Nagata in a match that would later air on TNA’s excellent Global Impact special. The special showed some footage of TNA guys in Japan and press conference footage and then this Angle/Nagata match:

1-17-08 Kurt Angle vs. Yuji Nagata

The special did a better job making TNA look like a big deal than really anything the company had done to that point. They would later release a DVD including all of this and 5 other matches featuring TNA talent.

At some point it has to be a bigger surprise when he does show up

The main event of Turning Point was supposed to be Kurt Angle, AJ Styles and Tomko against Samoa Joe, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. Hall no showed of course and this led to Samoa Joe cutting a worked shoot promo on him and on the problems with TNA constantly pushing old stars over new:

It was a pretty good promo until he picked Eric Young as his partner. This was later used as the storyline reason for Nash turning on Joe (which made that one of the few turns in TNA’s history that actually made sense). As for whether TNA was listening to their own worked shoot…Scott Hall would be back at the start of the Hogan/Bischoff era. Briefly.

This man had 4 runs in TNA. So far.

Stealing the show

TNA had previously stated that if they were going to have a women’s division they wanted to wait until they could get it right. The expansion of Impact to 2 hours before Bound For Glory helped give them the time…and the roster they assembled out of the gate gave them the talent. Velvet Sky and Angelina Love would find their niche as mean girls and became a great act as The Beautiful People. But as much as people enjoyed their act (compared to the men the knockouts have always done great ratings for TNA) it was the feud between Gail Kim and Awesome Kong that had people talking.

12-2-07 Gail Kim vs. Awesome Kong

1-6-08 Gail Kim vs. Awesome Kong

Kong would finally win the Knockouts title in the main event of the January 10, 2008 Impact. That’s how much the company thought of their program.

Karen Styles

Kurt and Karen Angle were supposed to renew their wedding vows on Impact in February…but because this is wrestling something funny happened.

This seems on the up and up

Somehow the priest had married her to AJ Styles which of course isn’t binding but AJ was playing a goof at this point so he went along with it. Kurt became increasingly pissed that Karen wouldn’t set this straight with AJ…but unlike Kurt, AJ treated her so well she didn’t know what to do

I better go have sex with Jeff Jarrett to clear my head

Eventually Kurt and Karen split because she was tired of him and he had bigger things to worry about (we’ll get there in a second…depending on how fast you read). She’d leave TNA altogether early in year 7 because she had been doing exactly what she was thinking about in the last caption.

The best build they’ve ever done

In the weeks heading into Lockdown 2008 TNA broke with their usual tradition of having the guys in the main event beat each other up a hundred times and kept Champion Kurt Angle and Challenger Samoa Joe away from each other. Impact featured videos of the two men training for the match instead of pull apart brawls. Samoa Joe had declared he would quit wrestling if he failed to win the title. Kurt had moved away from the Karen drama to put his focus fully on the match. This is what’s remembered as the “MMA match” since Angle hyped going in that that’s what it was going to be. He even dressed the part.

For his part Samoa Joe was seen in his training videos working with UFC fighter Marcus Davis to prepare. The truth about this match was a little misunderstood even at the time. TNA didn’t want to go all out promoting it as an MMA match because then people would think it was going to be a shoot fight…but that was never the intention. The plan was for them to have a more serious, more realistic match than the normal pro wrestling show provided.

The build continued that night as in between every match on the card there was an interview hyping up the importance of the main event. Frank Trigg was brought in to do commentary (and did one hell of a job at it) for the match. This is a match that people either love or hate. I’ve always looked at it as two things:

1. I think it’s a glimpse of what pro wrestling could look like if it let what’s going on in the world influence it. MMA is a huge sport that makes watching wrestling sometimes look like it’s stuck in the past. Again…I’m not talking about doing MMA style matches…I’m talking about tightening things up and making strikes matter and submissions mean more than a rest spot. If only for the serious build to the event…TNA should have taken things seriously more often (they’d do a great build again last year with Storm and Roode).

2. A missed opportunity because as soon as it was over they went right back to the wacky.

So if you’re one of the people who sides on “I hate this match” I’m sorry…but this is my column and I’m calling it the Year Six Match of the Year If for no other reason than they got a MASSIVE pop for a clothesline twenty minutes after a two men went off a ladder on top of a cage through a table (also on top of the cage). If that’s not talent I don’t know what is. It also wasn’t the best in ring year for TNA…and this was easily their most memorable match.

4-13-08 Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe Cage match

Joe would hold the title through the rest of year 6, becoming the first (and only) champion to retain the TNA title in a king of the mountain match.

What else was going on?

TNA had their first Turkey Bowl on their Thanksgiving episode of Impact. People had to qualify to get into the main event 3 way where the winner of that got a cash prize. The loser had to wear a turkey suit.

It wasn’t AJ’s best year

Bobby Roode accidentally punched Booker T’s wife in the face…just before WWE did the exact same angle with Jericho and HBK. Test and Rikishi had brief runs including Rikishi not bothering to learn his opponents name (Bobby Roode). TNA started doing brief videos on Impact called “Rough Cuts” that told the real life stories of their wrestling personalities. These were actually pretty damned good. Petey Williams joined forces with Scott Steiner and became “Little Petey Pump”…eventually turning that into another X division title run. LAX reclaimed the tag titles by the end of the year (after some wackiness with Kaz and Eric Young). Eric Young was also “Super Eric”. Spoiler alert on that I guess. Shark Boy (who BTW is the person who came up with the name Slammiversary) awoke from a coma with the ability to speak:

And one last thing: