While You Weren’t Watching for 10/12

Bound For Glory Retrospective Part 2

Bound For Glory V – October 18, 2009 – Irvine, California

The big storyline heading into BFG this year was that Sting might be retiring and this was potentially his last match. Of course it’s four years later and he’s still going…but at the time he was reportedly undecided about his future for the first time. As had been BFG tradition for the last three years…Sting was once again in the challenger’s role in the main event.

The pre show had a match between the Motor City Machine Guns and Lethal Consequences (Jay Lethal and Consequences Creed) with the winning team being entered in the opening match of the PPV proper. That opening match was this fun Ultimate X for the X division title. Loads of talent in this one with Sabin, Shelley, Red, Homicide, Daniels and Kaz (as Suicide)…I’d complain about the cramming guys on the show but everyone here is really good. No Jimmy Rave’s here.

Next up we had a couple low tier title matches (this show had 6 title matches on it…this year’s show looks to have 6 matches total) as Taylor Wilde and Sarita retained the KO’s tag titles (remember those?) against Velvet Sky and Madison Rayne, and Eric Young won the Legends title (remember that?) from Kevin Nash in a match that also had Hernandez in it for reasons I don’t recall. There would be another three way later in the show for the Knockouts title with ODB retaining against Awesome Kong and Tara.

The multi person title matches didn’t end there as we then had a 4 team full metal mayhem match for two different tag titles. The story here was that Team 3D won the IWGP titles in Japan and when they came back to TNA Vince Russo decided to have them drop them to The British Invasion. He wasn’t allowed to do this…but Russo gives absolutely zero fucks about things like that. Anyway in this match you tried to climb the ladder and take down one of the sets of titles, so they really only threw the IWGP belts in there to get them back on 3D before they returned to Japan. Oh…and New Japan actually recognizes these title changes for some reason.

The match itself is wild. Booker T was leaving and was written out in this match in absolutely hilarious fashion. Meanwhile his partner Scott Steiner was in limbo but really wanted to stay so he busts his ass and everyone in the match kills themselves for him as he tries to save his job. It’s an amazing contrast between what happens with Booker T and what happens with Steiner in this match. Check it out.

Next up we had Bobby Lashley and Samoa Joe in a submission match. If you think for a second about how they book Samoa Joe…you know what happened here.

That brings us to a great idea on paper. Abyss faced Mick Foley in a Monsters Ball match. Now…Foley in TNA was interesting…because this guy tried so hard but his body was just done. Any time Foley does something now that makes me think about a match with him I remember how hard he worked to have not great matches 4 years ago and I immediately get over it. Abyss is, for better or often worse, TNA’s Mankind. So this was a really cool idea. In theory. Still worth watching because it’s one of the rare booked matches that feels in place at your biggest show of the year.

Next we had one of those matches where you remember how great Kurt Angle is. Here he drags Matt Morgan kicking and screaming to the best match of Morgan’s career, and the best match on the show. The Lockdown match with Anderson is the best example of Angle taking someone far beyond what you thought they were capable of…but this is still one hell of a match.

In the main event AJ Styles finally put an end to both the title changing hands at every BFG and to that title always going to Sting. This was meant as a pass the torch kind of moment as it was a rare clean loss for Sting. Styles had won the title the month before in a 5 way when he and Sting were the last man standing over a fallen Kurt Angle and Sting stepped aside to let Styles take the title. That was meant to be the payoff to Sting’s year long storyline of not having respect for the younger wrestlers since I guess now he respected Styles. Or something. The match ended just as it was getting going. Five more minutes and they’d have probably turned in another shockingly great Sting BFG main event.

The post match is the best part as Sting addresses the retirement rumors. Of course he says he didn’t know what was next for him…and he did come back…but it was still cool.

Best Matches:
3. Full Metal Mayhem
2. Ultimate X
1. Matt Morgan vs. Kurt Angle

Best Moments:
3. Booker T’s hilarious exit from TNA
2. Gringo Cutter from the Ultimate X
1. Sting’s post match aloha

Bound For Glory VI – October 10, 2010 – Daytona Beach, Florida

This show took place in the same arena where Hogan turned heel in WCW. Which is funny because he turned heel here too. His turn wasn’t the interesting part though.

The show opened hot with a great Motor City Machine Guns vs. Generation ME opener for the TNA tag titles. The Guns were in the middle of their great Tag title reign. Once that reign ended it was all downhill for them as they’d face injury after injury and Shelley would eventually leave. So enjoy what we have.

We then had our BFG tradition of unmemorable undercard matches. This year had a 4 way for the knockouts title with new arrival Mickie James as the special ref, Ink Inc beating Eric Young and Orlando Jordan (the Mania equivalent of the 3MB’s facing Yoshi Tatsu and Curt Hawkins in the middle of a WrestleMania. Except that match would be a billion times better), and a short X title match between Jay Lethal and Doug Williams.

This year’s Monsters Ball (the last one at a BFG) featured RVD vs. Abyss. RVD was the TNA Champion until Abyss killed him in the Fortune beat down of EV2.0. The title was held up and the new champion would be determined in the main event of this show. So yes…the injured champion would actually return to the ring before the new champion was crowned. They had a fine hardcore match.

Next up we had a match that was all storyline. It was supposed to be Hulk Hogan, Samoa Joe and Jeff Jarrett against Sting, Kevin Nash and THE POPE. Hogan was having a ton of back surgeries so he couldn’t go and we got a handicap match. The story was that Sting didn’t trust Hogan and Bischoff and told everyone else not to either. Nash and Pope agreed with him and Jarrett and Joe didn’t. Joe started the match and when he went for the tag Jarrett walked out on him. Sting and company laughed and told Joe they told him so. Joe tried to fight them off but eventually was pinned. Oh yeah…this was the 10-10-10 show where Abyss kept telling everyone that “They” were coming. This played into that.

Then we had Team 3D come out and announce their retirement. They asked for one last match against the TNA tag champs the Motor City Machine Guns. They’d get it the next month and the Guns won after kicking out of the 3D. This caused Bubba to turn on Devon and launch his fantastic career rebirth. They actually were going to do this much earlier but put it on hold for the ECW reunion stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were planning on having the 3D retirement match on this show before they pushed it off for a bit.

In the co-main event we had a Lethal Lockdown with EV2.0 (Raven, Tommy Dreamer, Rhino, Stevie Richards and Sabu with Mick Foley at ringside) against Fortune (Styles, Beer Money, Kaz and Matt Morgan with Ric Flair at ringside). Despite the fact that it was the biggest show of the year, Foley and Flair didn’t wrestle here. They DID wrestle THREE DAYS EARLIER on Impact. And had a pretty entertaining garbage match too. One that would have fit in well on this show due to their star power. Anyway the match was fine. EV2.0 won which is annoying and weird since they’d all be fired not long after anyway.

The main event was a three way for the vacant TNA title. It was actually a really good match but all anyone remembers is the finish. Hogan and Bischoff came down and Hardy used Hogan’s crutch to knock out his opponents and win the title, turning heel and revealing himself to be the centerpiece of “They” in the process. They did a REaction episode after this that showed everything coming together over the course of months and they did a really good job with that. It was Hogan who had set up EV2.0 for the attack by Fortune (who would join Immortal right after this show) that lead to RVD being killed by Abyss and thus vacating the title. Bischoff had conned Dixie into signing over the company to him and Hogan. And a bunch of other things.

This was the first BFG that ended with a heel victory…and the only one that was actually booked that way before the day of the event.

Best Matches:
3. RVD vs. Abyss
2. Angle vs. Anderson vs. Hardy
1. Motor City Machineguns vs. Generation ME

Best Moments:
3. Flip through face buster on Chris Sabin
2. Barbed Wire Van Terminator
1. Hardy’s heel turn

Bound For Glory VII – October 16, 2011 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The new wrinkle this year was the creation of the Bound For Glory series where 12 guys would spend the time between Slammiversary and Bound For Glory competing to win a points based tournament to get a shot at the TNA title at BFG. This first year’s planning was a complete mess with guys wrestling all different number of matches and Samoa Joe injuring a bunch of guys to eliminate them. In the end Bobby Roode came out the winner and the build up to his big match let you know with 100% confidence that if you order this show you will see Bobby Roode win the TNA title.

The show started with X division champion Austin Aries taking on the man he had beaten for the title the month before, Brian Kendrick. This show was light on good matches…and this opener was as good as it got.

Next up RVD beat Jerry Lynn in a full metal mayhem match that was pretty good…and on this card that was enough to make it the second best match on the show. It was a match that made sense to book, RVD against one of his greatest rivals (and longtime TNA star) back in Philadelphia.

It’s actually kind of funny looking at it now. This show opened with a match that I saw main event an RoH show (Aries/Kendrick) then had a big time ECW match (RVD/Lynn) and of course had a big WCW match (Hogan/Sting) and one of the classic TNA matchups (AJ/Daniels). For a million dollars you’d never have guessed going in which one of these would be by far the worst.

Samoa Joe was tasked with facing undefeated Crimson and Matt Morgan in what I can only assume was an experiment to see how big of a turd he could polish. Crimson won a bad match…so experiment failed I guess.

Mr. Anderson beat Bully Ray in a falls count anywhere street fight. Ray had to do a promo saying that he hated Philly and loved NYC to get the crowd against him. It kind of worked. They worked real hard and had a decent match that saw both of them take some of the stupidest bumps into a guardrail in the ring that you’ll ever see. Ray in particular took some crazy bumps. Anderson misjudged his dive to put Ray through a table on the outside to pin him and had to audible into a mic check through the table to win…but other than that they did fine.

Velvet Sky finally won the knockouts title in a terrible 4 way match (It took until last year for the Knockouts title to be defended in a singles match. Think about THAT shit.)

Next we had a for no reason I quit match between AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels. These two have probably wrestled each other a thousand times and I am quite confident in saying this was the worst match they’ve ever had with each other. The gimmick killed everything and made it a complete joke…only they weren’t having a comedy match. This may in fact be the worst match I’ve ever seen AJ Styles have.

In the co-main event but clearly the match that the people in the building came to see, Sting defeated Hulk Hogan to win back control of TNA for Dixie Carter. Ric Flair was at ringside being Ric Flair…so that was cool. Hogan was told that he should never take a back bump again so he took 3 here just to give his doctors the middle finger I guess. Here’s the thing about this match…of course it’s not good…but as a nostalgia act…it was kind of awesome. The post match was the best part as Sting is getting destroyed by Immortal and he begs Hogan for help…who then Hulks up as the crowd loses their collective shit and they clean house. That couldn’t have been done much better…even if it didn’t really make all that much sense. This will forever be known as the night that Hogan and Sting had a flat out better match than AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels. In 2011.

At this point the show was obviously running late (they had wasted a lot of time on a useless Jarrett/Hardy pull apart segment earlier) and still had the main event to go. Angle was working injured and Roode was getting the Jesus push…so this was a pretty easy one to predict. Until they got to the building and Hogan decided Roode wasn’t winning. They had a decent match that was 10 minutes too short and had the wrong finish. Or so was thought at the time. Turns out it was the right finish just probably on the wrong night (being your big show and all).

Angle still needed to drop the title due to his injuries…which he would do the next Impact to James Storm. This would lead to the great Roode heel turn and title run that dominated most of the next year. Angle and Roode will get a chance to deliver what time constraints robbed them of at this years’ show.

Best Matches:
3. Sting vs. Hulk Hogan (FU the show wasn’t great)
2. RVD vs. Jerry Lynn
1. Austin Aries vs. Brian Kendrick

Best moments:
3. Bully Ray killing himself on the steel guardrail repeatedly.
2. Bobby Roode’s dejected look after failing. It set up everything.
1. Hulk Hogan’s face turn

Bound For Glory VIII – October 14, 2012 – Phoenix, Arizona

Despite seemingly building to a Bobby Roode vs. James Storm title match main event for a full year…TNA ended up going in a surprising direction with the TNA title at Bound For Glory 2012. Austin Aries upset Bobby Roode (who had become the longest reigning TNA champion) at Destination X and went on to face the winner of the second Bound For Glory series…Jeff Hardy. Storm and Roode will still end up having their bloody blow-off match on the undercard. Both would end up being among the best matches in BFG history.

The show began with Rob Van Dam defeating Zema Ion for the X division title. They had run out of things for RVD to do by this point so they threw him into the X division until his contract ran out. He’d hold the X title until Kenny King beat him for it on his way out the door. The match was alright but surprisingly short.

Next up Samoa Joe retained the TV title against Magnus. This was back when it started to look like they were going to be pushing Magnus. The match was good but, like the opener, not given enough time to become more.

Then, oddly placed as the third match of the night, we finally had the James Storm/Bobby Roode showdown. A wild, bloody street fight with King Mo serving as the special enforcer (2013 looks to be the first time BFG doesn’t have a special enforcer/ref match). James Storm would finally win a big match here and then win another big one the following month (a 3 way with Styles and Roode to become #1 contender to the TNA title. This was the match with the stipulation that Styles couldn’t challenge for the TNA title until BFG 2013) before resuming losing big matches and falling down the card.

The throwaway match of the night was Joey Ryan earning a TNA contract by beating Al Snow after Matt Morgan returned to help him. A year later both Ryan and Morgan are already gone.

Chavo Guerrero and Hernandez won the TNA tag titles in a three way match against Bad Influence and Kurt Angle & AJ Styles. TNA thought they were booking smart by having the Hispanic team win in Phoenix…but everyone recognized them as the worst team in the match so they weren’t over. The match was pretty good and picked up a lot at the end…but Daniels/Kaz/Angle/AJ had proven earlier in the year they were capable of far better without Chavo and Hernandez to drag them down. A word of warning…this years show in San Diego has a high chance of TNA doing the exact same thing again with Chavo and Hernandez. Expect the same crowd response.

Tara beat Brooke Tessmacher for the Knockouts title. Post match she revealed her new Hollywood boyfriend Jesse Godderz.

The Aces and 8’s (still masked at this point but the wrestlers were DOC and Knux) beat Sting and Bully Ray in a tag match. The win allowed Aces and 8’s access to TNA arenas going forward. Devon became the first member to be unmasked in the post match hoopla. This was all important stuff to the year long rise of Bully Ray storyline. The match is what it is but it is fun to watch Bully play an over the top babyface knowing that he’s really a heel the whole time.

The main event saw Jeff Hardy and Austin Aries deliver the best main event, if not match, in TNA history. Aries, despite turning heel at the last minute, was heavily cheered by the Phoenix crowd. Hardy was booed like he hadn’t been at any point in his TNA career before or since. The crowd helped elevate this match as they bought in big time that this was a huge main event. Part of the reason for that was obviously that they really wanted to cheer Aries…but on a deeper level TNA was delivering something kind of rare in this match. Aries had been basically undefeated (a TV loss to Crimson sticks out) for something like 15 months at this point…dominating the X Division and then becoming TNA champion. Jeff Hardy had just gone through 11 other top guys to earn the title shot (this was the one BFG series they laid out correctly). So you genuinely had the feeling that the top two most deserving guys were competing for the TNA title in the main event of Bound For Glory.

Hardy’s win was the culmination of the year long “Hardy returns from drug problems” storyline/reality. If you watch the match you’ll realize how insane TNA is for not having Aries in main events all the time.

Best Matches:
3. Tag title 3 way
2. Bobby Roode vs. James Storm
1. Austin Aries vs. Jeff Hardy

Best moments:
3. Bully Ray’s entrance.
2. Aries’ standing top rope hurricanrana on Hardy.
1. A bloody James Storm hitting Roode with a beer bottle and superkicking him into thumbtacks.

Bound For Glory IX – October 20, 2013 – San Diego, California

Bully Ray vs. AJ Styles for the TNA title

Kurt Angle vs. Bobby Roode

Sting vs. Magnus

Manik vs. Jeff Hardy vs. Austin Aries vs. Chris Sabin vs. Samoa Joe in an Ultimate X for the X title

James Storm and Gunner defend the TNA Tag Titles against the winner of a pre show 4 way

ODB vs. Gail Kim vs. Brooke Tessmacher for the Knockouts title

Pre show 4 way for the TNA Tag Title match spot: Bad Influence vs. Chavo and Hernandez vs. Eric Young and Joseph Park vs. Bro Mans

Full preview next week.

Impact Recap for 10/10

Some good matches and an outstanding segment highlight the beginning of the end of the road to Bound For Glory.

Austin Aries finally beat Jeff Hardy in a really good match with a sick finish. Aries hit Hardy with a brainbuster off the ropes for the pin. These two have clicked together in all of their encounters and this was no different. Worth finding. Post match Samoa Joe came out and added himself to the Ultimate X match at Bound For Glory because they literally had no one else on the roster for him to face.

Sting and Magnus beat Bad Influence in a good match with some surprisingly solid storytelling. The story here is that Magnus thought he knew better than Sting how to finish off their opponents, got himself into trouble and Sting had to bail him out. This left Magnus pretty pissed…not to the point where he turned on Sting…but to the point where you think he might be on that path.

AJ Styles beat Knux and Garrett Bischoff in a handicap match. Match was bad. Garrett shouldn’t be in the ring with AJ. Post match Bully Ray beat up Styles.

Brooke Tessmacher beat Velvet Sky to get herself into the Knockouts title match at BFG. Bad match but no worse than the usual Velvet stuff. Finish saw Velvet (who was playing injured from the Lei’D Tapa attack last week) distracted by her boyfriend Chris Sabin and rolled up for the loss. Sabin is on the right track as a heel.

ODB beat Jesse Godderz by DQ when Lei’D Tapa came down and destroyed her. Tapa looked good here after looking sloppy last week. Still…weird that Tapa is killing the champion when she isn’t the one in the title match at the PPV.

There were a couple more Dixie Carter segments that were completely awful but you couldn’t look away from.

And we had the best TNA segment in some time. Daniels and Kaz (dressed in the suits from Dumb and Dumber) inducted Bobby Roode into the EGO hall of fame. Great one liners, an amazing video presentation of Roode’s career, the return of Kurt Angle and the announcement of Angle vs. Roode at BFG…this segment had everything. Definitely track this down. TNA usually doesn’t do a good job on segments that aren’t matches…but this was gold.

One other note…Bully Ray was name dropping Ken Anderson HARD on this show. So the report that Anderson would be returning sure looks to be accurate.

Impact Preview for 10/17

This show was already taped so this will be a non spoiler look at what’s coming up.

Bully Ray vs. Magnus

Samoa Joe vs. Chris Sabin

Daniels vs. Hernandez vs. Robbie E vs. Eric Young

Gunner vs. Knux

They’ll also do the contract signing for Bully Ray/AJ Styles and a Kurt Angle/Bobby Roode segment.

Random Finality

The Bound For Glory pre show airs at 7 PM EST on Spike TV

The list of upcoming TV/PPV tapings is as follows:

10/20- San Diego, CA – Bound For Glory