TNA Slammiversary 2008

Petey Williams (c) vs Kaz

It’s Canada Day and I am fucking bored and would rather do anything than read about Brian Burke’s butchering of my beloved Leafs and Bob Gainey’s hilarious skull rape of the rival Habs and so for some reason I’ve decided to watch some TNA DVDs. Naturally this means that Petey Williams, a boring Canadian wrestler, is going to be in the opening match, defending his TNA X Division Championship, so named because TNA thinks that every wrestling fan in the world is still rocking the 90s slang. While watching this match I couldn’t help but think how much better it would be if Mark Henry was in it, which reminded me that ‘oh yeah I have a wrestling blog’, and so I decided to write about this show. Unfortunately the match is so boring that I actually ended up Wiki’ing Kaz to see if he was also a boring Canadian wrestler (he is not). He ends up bleeding a ton from a lead pipe that actually looks like the world’s tallest beer can, which is unfortunate if it’s hardway because it looked ridiculous and stupid as fuck if it was a blade job. Petey wins, Petey’s cool little stable of him, Scott Steiner, and Rhaka Khan beat up Kaz, Abyss makes the save. I was forced to Wiki Abyss to see if he was a boring Canadian wrestler. He isn’t.

Eric Young, a boring Canadian wrestler, starts some wacky show-long running gag where they get a fake Elvis. It’s stupid. A video package on Kevin Nash, who is awesome, but the package kinda sucks. Interview with Nash which is alright. Video package for the three-on-three women’s match and there is nothing more pathetic than TNA’s tits division doing videos about how they’re serious athletes whereas WWE’s tits division is not. Especially if you’re going to put fucking ODB in the package, given that she’s awful and her gimmick is literally ‘look at my tits’. When your most credible ‘we are real athletes not just cheesecake’ advocate is fucking Angelina Love, who’s entrance consists of getting in the ring and showing her ass for a full minute so we all get the idea that her ass is more important than her athletic ability, then you can fuck right off with your moral crap. Then a weird 14 second shot of what I think is supposed to be Elvis’ house but I wasn’t paying attention. “Finally” a match.

Angelina Love, Velvet Sky, and Moose vs Gail Kim, ODB, and Roxxi

The Beautiful People are kind of awesome. I mean they named their friend “Moose” because she is all big boned and shit. So Angelina and Velvet are tons of character-based awesome but unfortunately everyone else here pretty much sucks. Moose comes from the Beth Phoenix school of ‘trick people into thinking you are a female Vader by being bigger than the average woman’s wrestler and yet don’t actually have any sort of good-looking power offense’. I’ve actually liked Beth for a while now but I’m not sure how much of that is opponents because I’ve trained myself to kinda just ignore Beth Phoenix matches. I’m also not sure what the hell that has to do with anything but whatever, too late now. Moose actually has the worst looking offense of anyone here, and that’s saying something. Roxxi has this pretty awesome big wind up on her forearms but instead of fastballs they’re change ups and come in super slow. Everyone on the internet goes nuts for Gail Kim, but everyone on the internet is also a hentai-watching pervert who has masturbated at least once to Misty from the Pokemon cartoon. Gail Kim would literally not have a career in professional wrestling, or at least she would not have a FOLLOWING in professional wrestling, if she wasn’t a little Asian girl who wears sexy shorts that ride up her ass. I’m sure ODB has a blast with her character and it’s pretty cool when people are into it but it’s basically the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I mean at least her shit looks more hurty than Moose’s, but watching her wrestle is not good times. Even the ref for this match is positively retarded. The guy is in shorts and fucking knee high socks. What the fuck is that? Still I was somehow starting to think that this was a decent little six-man (woman?) and then ODB wins with the worst powerslam ever. Eh, it was better than the opener.

Immediately we cut to another kinda shitty video package, this time on Rhino, and thank God we do because from the way ODB is groping herself I’m almost positive we’re about to see some squirt action going on. Rhino gets the requisite post-video interview. Video package for 3-D vs LAX. It’s… well it’s like all the video packages.

LAX (c) vs Team 3-D

Homicide and Hernandez are totally awesome and Shelly Martinez and Hector Guerrero as running buddies does nothing to detract from that. Team 3-D are two dudes that I’d like to be into because they seem cool and all but I can’t shake the feeling that they’re just not very good and pretty much are only still around because people were super into tables that broke in 2000. My suspicions are confirmed when the crowd immediately says ‘fuck this match WE WANT TABLES *clap clap clapclapclap* WE WANT TABLES *clap clap clapclapclap*’. Whenever I see Homicide in TNA I’m immediately reminded that I have much, much better Homicide that I could be watching, and then I get sad that there’s not really anywhere viable that he can go and be super awesome Homicide consistently. Everything about this match is pretty boring, and totally gives the crowd away as people who don’t follow the show at all. The only thing they do all match is chant for tables. Waste of my mothafuckin’ time!

Awesome Kong vs Serena Deeb, Awesome Kong vs The Artist Eventually Known As Sojourner Bolt

I had to look up who the hell Serena was until she said her name and coincidentally she just signed with WWE so good for her! Kong wins both of these and this is a total time waster. Serena’s purple g-string is probably the most positive contribution she makes. The two matches work together though because Serena and her g-string getting murdered gets the crowd totally amped for Sojourner to beat the big bad black lady. You have to remember we’re in Memphis and they probably don’t take too kindly to the darkies. Sojourner has blonde in her hair so I guess she doesn’t count. It’s all actually kind of awesome and honestly this whole bit is the best thing on the show to this point. And yes, I’m aware I just called it a time waster beforehand. It’s that kind of show.

The Eric Young/Elvis thing gets its payoff and it’s horrible. I think Eric Young mocked Mr. Kennedy. YOU’RE ERIC YOUNG.

Jay Lethal marries So Cal Val OR DOES HE

I think wrestling weddings are pretty uniformly awesome. Amazingly they actually put So Cal Val in a wedding dress that not only covered more of her up than normal, but covered her up more than most wedding dresses cover up. Sonjay Dutt interrupts the ceremony because he’s covered in bacne and wants himself some ginger ass. All hell breaks loose and this is awesome. Really awesome.

What’s not awesome is the Booker T stupid fucking insider interview. NO ONE WATCHING WRESTLING WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT WRESTLING RATINGS JUST FUCK OFF.

Kurt Angle vs AJ STyles

A surprisingly awesome video package for a heated blood feud grudge match! Hey this match should start with some sweet punches right oh wait what the fuck is this collar and elbow tie up shit here for? This match is really long but it’s boring without much to it. You can again tell that the crowd doesn’t give two fucking shits about TNA because this is the heated grudge match and no one cares at all. Near falls that don’t get any crowd reactions? Awful. The match is slow, but not ‘slow and methodical’, just ‘slow’. Really disappointing and not worth many words or even bad jokes.

Samoa Joe (c) vs Christian Cage vs Booker T vs Robert Roode vs Rhino

King of the Mountain is a stupid gimmick because it’s needlessly complicated. Not complicated in the sense that it’s actively hard to follow or understand (like most stupid gimmicks in TNA) but complicated in the sense that there is absolutely no reason for someone to have come up with this fucking shit. Once again this crowd just DOESN’T fucking care. Even the announced countdowns, which ALWAYS get a pop, don’t get anything. They kind of get into Joe and Christian doing dives but not even as much as they got into fucking Sojourner Bolt. This really should be the ultimate in crazy clusterfucks, because it’s a five-man match with a ladder in a promotion that encourages clusterfucks. Instead this is barely faster than the Angle/Styles match, with long periods of two dudes in the ring and everyone else laying around, way too long before the ladder and other weapons are introduced, and not much in the way of cluster spots. The finish is pretty cool where Joe lays out Roode to become eligible to win (what) and then just kinda goes ‘fuck it no one cares let’s just end this and go home’. Well he didn’t actually say that but I like to think he did. He actually did win the match pretty much right away though. Nothing special and it’s kind of funny how this multi-man ladder match filled with heavyweights is so much inferior to WWE’s multi-man ladder match filled with heavyweights from WrestleMania XXV and yet everyone bitched about how WWE was putting heavyweights in a ladder match. That actually is neither here nor there. TNA is kind of too boring to pay attention to for a full three hours without going on a tangent.

Show pretty much sucked. Nothing was really shitty or anything but the best match was a two minute woman’s squash and the best segment was a wedding. Well of course the best segment was the wedding because wrestling weddings rule. But yeah like I said nothing was super shitty but it was all really boring nothing matches. Watch something you like instead of this. I wish I did.