TNA Year Five

 

TNA YEAR FIVE: June 19 2006-June 17 2007
Jarrett’s last stand

Jeff Jarrett won the NWA title back at Slammiversary with the help of Larry Zbyszko and (stop me if you’ve heard this one) crooked ref Earl Hebner. As a result of all that mess Jim Cornette (the next in a long long long line of people in charge of TNA) fired Hebner and made Zbyszko face Raven in a hair vs. hair match (which he lost). Jarrett’s punishment was to face the winner of a 4 way match between Sting, Samoa Joe, Christian and Scott Steiner. As you can probably tell year 5 wasn’t quite as good as year 4 (Hebner got his job back when Jarrett took a lie detector and we found out Hebner wasn’t in on it…which made zero sense). Sting won the match but was unable to beat Jarrett for the title because Christian turned on him.

Jarrett would lose a non title match to Samoa Joe at No Surrender. If you’re thinking…”hey…what great setups for big Bound For Glory matches Sting vs. Christian and Joe vs. Jarrett for the NWA title” you must be new to TNA. Joe was stuck in a meaningless Monsters Ball match, Christian had a street fight with Rhino and Sting put his career on the line to get the title shot and beat Jeff Jarrett for the title.

Admittedly the guitar shot no sell was pretty boss

If you look up “Gringo” in the dictionary…you see a picture of AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels

Jim Cornette also decreed that the Latin American Xchange had to cease their work stoppage or they would be fired. It didn’t take long after LAX stepped back in the ring for them to work their way up to the Tag title picture. The group lost to Styles and Daniels as Hard Justice in August, but would win the Tag belts on a subsequent Impact. This set up an Ultimate X rematch for the titles at No Surrender:

10-24-06 LAX vs. AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels Ultimate X

 

The feud was blown off at Bound For Glory inside of the steel cage:

10-22-06 LAX vs. AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels Cage match

 

No…I Surrender

Samoa Joe was being moved up to the main event scene so they had to get the X title off of him without killing his winning streak. He dropped the title to Senshi (Low Ki) in a 3 way match when Ki beat Sonjay Dutt. Steiner interfered so Joe was away from it all.

Now if you were to see it on paper you would think that a Samoa Joe to Senshi to Chris Sabin title lineage must have been some great times. What you wouldn’t be taking into account is that Jackass 2 was coming out and TNA was doing the worst cross promotion ever at their September No Surrender show. Suddenly the entire X division were big Jackass fans and their matches started involving props like an inflatable doll that was supposed to confuse Senshi into thinking it was Chris Sabin…or Jay Lethal pinning Petey Williams because he had slipped him a laxative. These things ACTUALLY HAPPENED. And they weren’t even the dumbest part since the actual cast of Jackass…appeared on Raw to promote the movie. This was the worst.

Seemingly out to prove a point, Senshi and Chris Sabin had a spectacular match at Bound For Glory that showed what they could do when they weren’t brought down by someone elses stupidity:

10-22-06 Senshi vs. Chris Sabin (the youtube video of the match is gone…so enjoy the highlights played over terrible music!)

 

The pyro steals the show.  Literally.

Hard Justice 2006. What a show this was. The pyro that starts the show made something in the rafters catch on fire so Eric Young and Johnny Devine wrestled the opening match with the building completely covered in fire extinguisher residue. The fans sang “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire” and cleverly chanted “You can’t see us” before being evacuated from the building.

So with the entire building evacuated on live pay per view TNA kept broadcasting from the parking lot. They kept the situation updated and had Monty Brown cut a long insane rambling promo on the fly. About 20 minutes later everyone was let back inside. To make up the time they cut a 4 team tag match. The cool thing was when they got the show back on everyone brought their working boots and the energy in the building combined for a really fun show. Here’s an awesome out of nowhere Monty Brown vs. Rhino vs. Samoa Joe Falls Count Anywhere match from the show:

8-13-06 Rhino vs. Monty Brown vs. Samoa Joe

 

TNA’s best surprise ever

Dixie Carter has been no stranger to promoting “shocking surprises that will change TNA forever”. Heading into No Surrender in September she was once again claiming just that. Following the main event Jim Cornette came to the ring to announce that Impact was moving to a much better 9 pm time slot on Thursday nights. Then he said that wasn’t the big surprise. A video then aired announcing that Kurt Angle was coming to TNA.

 

Angle had been let out of his WWE contract early because he was insane and they wanted to wash their hands of him. He claims he wanted out because they wouldn’t let him take time off when he was injured…but honestly does that sound like Kurt Angle? The guy works house shows in front of 350 people with torn ligaments. Either way no one expected him to go to TNA. He was throwing out red herrings about going into MMA or taking time off or anything but going to TNA. There was even word prior to the show that TNA had filmed something that was going to air that night but no one let slip that Angle was involved. That’s pretty amazing in this day and age as it is.

On October 19 2006 Kurt Angle made his way into the Impact Zone for a very memorable confrontation with Samoa Joe:

 

This led to the first Joe vs. Angle match at Genesis (TNA fun fact…that wasn’t Angle’s first TNA match.  He beat Abyss on a two hour prime-time special that aired 3 days earlier):

11-19-06 Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe

 

Angle ended Samoa Joe’s undefeated streak.  They would have a rematch (and a better match) the next month that Joe would win.  I’m calling it the Year Five Match of the Year:

12-10-06 Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe

 

Angle won the rubber match the next month but it wasn’t at the level of the first match let alone the second.

 

Remember that?  Remember that dumb rule?

Sting’s title run didn’t last long. He lost the title to Abyss (3 days after Abyss lost in Angle’s first TNA match) by DQ! Remember that rule? Still in effect here. I remember watching this match with a friend and pointing out that Abyss just won the title…but he couldn’t believe they’d still enforce that rule. They did and he was.

Most of this was obscured by the Angle/Joe feud that took center stage but Abyss actually held the belt for 2 months. He lost it to Christian in a 3 way that included Sting in January. Sting and Abyss would continue feuding for months, having bad matches every time out. The topper being the “Last Rights match” at Destination X in March.

Sometimes a picture is worth all the words

I think we know who the Jannetty was

America’s Most Wanted went back to being babyfaces after LAX attacked Gail Kim (Hernandez destroyed her with a border toss).  They would feud with LAX but found themselves unable to regain their tag titles.  On 12-14-06 AMW faced LAX for the tag titles in a match that, if they lost, would mean the end of AMW.  James Storm had had enough of Chris Harris by this point so he broke a beer bottle over his head and intentionally broke up the team.

And he’s pissed years later when Bobby Roode does the same thing to him.  Dick.

Harris claimed the glass got into his eye and his vision was such that his career might be over.  He wouldn’t return until February and wouldn’t get back into a ring until Lockdown.  So you’re probably thinking to yourself…wow these guys probably had a bloody, brutal awesome cage match at Lockdown then…what with the 4 month build and all.

You’re blind if you think that

They had the worst match ever. Then they followed that up with the bloody, brutal awesome Texas Death Match that everyone wanted to see at Sacrifice. I wouldn’t argue anyone who wanted to say this was the match of the year for TNA in year 5:

5-13-07 Chris Harris vs. James Storm Texas Death Match

 

They’d have a rematch street fight on Impact trying to qualify for that years’ King of the Mountain that was also quite good and ended in a draw.  Harris ended up getting into the match anyway, but we’ll get there.

 

Christian does the impossible.  Has good title matches

It had been a long time since the NWA Champion actually had a match of main event quality. In fact you’d have to go back to the first Christian title reign and his matches with Abyss. Now with the title back, Christian broke that streak by having back to back great main events on pay per view with Kurt Angle (after which he adopted the nickname The Instant Classic) and this match with Samoa Joe:

3-11-07 Christian vs Samoa Joe

 

It wasn’t just his matches that were entertaining at this point either.  Now a full blown heel he led his Christian coalition (Abyss with Father Mitchell and AJ Styles and Tomko…who themselves were proving to be a fun act…even if it was another step back for Styles) against anyone who wanted his title.  Abyss didn’t really want to be there but he was being blackmailed by Mitchell since Abyss’s mother had shot his father (who turned out to be…Mitchell…)  Oh Russo.  When Christian and company pushed Abyss too far…we got an awesome ending to Impact on 4-19-07:

 

Throughout all of this Christian somehow remained unbeaten since arriving in TNA back in 2005. Kurt Angle lost his third match in…it took Christian nearly 2 years.

 

The Paparazzi Championship Series

Kevin Nash decided that the X division needed some personality so being the great man that he is he took it under his wing in a series of great videos.

 

There were also matches in there but who cares about those? Alex Shelley ended up winning the series…and if you caught all of the Bob Backlund name dropping it’s because he was, in fact, coming in. After the PCS series Nash did some more work with the X division…most notably getting Jay Lethal to do his Randy Savage impression and transform himself into Black Machismo.

 

Meanwhile the X division title was being flipped around from Sabin to Styles to Daniels back to Sabin seemingly for no discernible reason. I guess just because those were the guys that Nash wasn’t hanging out with. Sucked to be them.

 

Team 3D beat the clock

Team 3D can lay a legitimate claim on being the most decorated tag team in wrestling history. They’d won the ECW, WWE, WWE World and WCW (as booked by WWE) tag team titles. If they wanted to win the NWA tag titles however, they’d need to get a move on. LAX defeated Team 3D to retain their titles at the first 3 PPVs of 2007. By the time Lockdown came around in April word started to make rounds that the agreement between TNA and the NWA that allowed TNA to book the NWA and NWA tag team titles was about to come to an end with the NWA taking their belts back. This didn’t really amount to all that much since the TNA brand was bigger than the NWA at that point so branding their champions with their own names on the belts wasn’t any kind of step back. Still…if Team 3D wanted their name on that lineage…they had to win at Lockdown.

They would finally defeat LAX and win the NWA titles in an electrified cage match. This was a disaster even though all 4 men worked really hard. Every so often the lights would flicker on and off and a bug zapper sound would come over the audio system and whoever was touching the cage would act like they were being fried. There were many a “Fire Russo” chant that night.

Do these look like men who give a fuck

The NWA would strip 3D of their NWA titles before the Sacrifice PPV in May…thus making them also the first ever TNA tag team champions. And they didn’t have to put over a shitty gimmick match to get them.

As for the NWA title…that got stripped from Christian before Sacrifice as well. He lost the title (not called anything yet) to Kurt Angle but the finish was a Russo classic (Angle made Sting tap while Sting was pinning Christian at the same time) so the title was vacated and the win eventually unrecognized by TNA. The first recognized TNA champion would be crowned in a King of the Mountain match at Slammiversary.

Kurt Angle would win that match against Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Christian and Chris Harris (who got the spot when Jeff Jarrett’s wife died and he pulled out).

6-17-07 King of the Mountain

 

Wrap Up time

Clearly not as good a year as Year 4 was…it also wasn’t their worst.  Jay Lethal would win his first X title at Slammiversary.  Bob Backlund beat Alex Shelley on that show too.  Team Canada split up.  Robert Roode turned down Sherri Martel, Col. Parker and Bobby frigging Heenan to select Traci Brooks as his manager.  Jake “the snake” Roberts stayed sober long enough to ref the Monsters Ball match at Bound For Glory.  Jeff Jarrett briefly returned as a babyface before taking more time off following his wife’s death.  Gail Kim and Jackie Moore had a match at Lockdown which would make TNA officials decide to build a women’s division around Kim.  Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin used some tag moves together for the first time in TNA during a throwaway Xscape match at Lockdown.  And someone was pretty clever around Bound For Glory 06 and used a Fozzy song and video for promotion: