Mike Reviews TNA

Happy Friday Everyone!

We’ve got some more TNA for you today with Lockdown 2008, which was at the time TNA’s biggest pay per view achieving an estimated 50,000 to 55,000 buys. This was mostly down to the fact that they booked Kurt Angle against Samoa Joe in the Main Event and then promoted it as a match between two top stars that you could actually take seriously. This was a break from the usual TNA booking at the time, as Vince Russo was writing the show and didn’t normally go for that serious Pro Wrestling stuff.

Russo’s influence can be felt across the rest of the Lockdown card, and the matches where that’s the case will likely be obvious. Still, once Angle and Joe get in the ring then it’s unlikely that even a promotion as inept as TNA could even screw that up, so let’s settle down and enjoy TNA’s yearly cage match filled spectacular.

You can view the full card for Lockdown by clicking the link below;

TNA Lockdown 2008 Card

Thanks as always to F&C for making this show available.

Happy Friday Everyone!

We’ve got some classic TNA/IMPACT for you today with Total Nonstop Deletion, a special edition of Impact’s weekly show held from the Hardy Compound featuring a bizarre Main Event chockful of cameos. I wasn’t actually watching the show with any regularity at the time, but I remember listening to Bryan and Vinny’s review of this crazy event and it actually sounded fun, so I watched it at the time and remember kind of liking it. Let’s see if that’s still the case nearly 10 years later. Thanks to F&C for uploading this, and many other great content to boot!

You can view the full card for Total Nonstop Deletion by clicking below;

IMPACT Wrestling #648 – Total Nonstop Deletion Card

Happy Friday Everyone!

I saw that TNA had uploaded this X-Travaganza show onto their YouTube Channel and I decided to give it a look because the card seemed interesting. One Night Only were one-off pay per views that TNA would do from time to time, with X-Travaganza being there to highlight the X-Division. We’ve got Jerry Lynn taking to the ring with Rob Van Dam for one last time, and an Austin Aries Vs Samoa Joe bout to close things out. I’m hopeful that both of those matches will be good at least, which should make the show worth watching.

You can view the full card for X-Travaganza below;
TNA One Night Only – X-Travaganza 2013 Card

Happy Friday Everyone!

Today we’ve got TNA Lockdown 2011, an event I saw that had been uploaded to the F+C archives and thought I’d give a viewing to because I’d never seen it before. I’d long since given up watching TNA with any regularity by the time that 2011 rolled around, as the Hogan and Bischoff tandem had run me off pretty efficiently during 2010 after I’d initially be interested in the new Monday Night War.

Lockdown is a show where every match is inside a cage, because TNA, so this will likely start feeling a bit samey by the time we get to the end. There looks like there should be some fun matches though, as Jeff Jarrett and Kurt Angle will do battle and we’ve also got TNA’s version of War Games to close things out.

I actually attended a show at Stockport Plaza way back in the day where they had most of the matches in a cage, and even in a small setting like that the thrill of a special stipulation like a cage sure wears off after you’ve seen it multiple times. That being said; Lockdown was usually one of TNA’s more successful events on pay per view, so I guess the TNA fanatics enjoyed it and justified them going back to it every year.

You can view the full card for Lockdown 2011 by clicking the link below;

TNA Lockdown 2011 Card

This particular show hasn’t been reviewed on the Blog before, but Scott Keith as reviewed quite a bit of TNA over the years and you can dip into his archives below;
Scott Keith TNA Rants

Happy Saturday Everyone!

We’ve got another TNA review today, as Victory Road 2004 is another show that IMPACT Wrestling has helpfully uploaded onto their YouTube page.

Victory Road 2004 was TNA’s first 3 hour pay per view since they dropped the weekly 2 hour pay per views they were running and instead focused on using their Impact TV show in order to build up to a monthly pay per view event.

The Main Event here is Jeff Vs Jeff in Jefforal Kombat, as Jarrett defends the NWA Title against Hardy. We’ve also got Petey Williams taking on AJ Styles and a wacky 20 wrestler X-Division Gauntlet.

You can view the full card for Victory Road 2004 by clicking below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=1511&page=3

Happy Saturday Everyone!

We’ve got a TNA review for you this week, as we take a look at Bound For Glory 2009, an event that you can view for free on IMPACT Wrestling’s YouTube page, which is very nice of them. Search it out and give em some clicks if you like the sound of this. The main reason I’m reviewing this one is that Matt Morgan apparently has a 4 star match on it, and that’s something I just HAVE to see to believe.

The lads over at OSW Review are actually going to review this, although I’m writing this before their review has been posted. If it is up by now, then seek them out, as they do some cracking long-form reviews of wrestling shows and they’re always good fun. Plus, I’ve totally nicked some of their verbiage in my reviews, so I feel it’s only fair to direct you to them so you can enjoy things like “Aloha-enter-wrestler-name-here” from the pros.

Bound For Glory 2009 took place either during or just after the whole Main Event Mafia Era of TNA, where established stars such as Kurt Angle, Sting, Kevin Nash, Booker T and Scott Steiner all aligned with one another in order to take on the younger less established stars of TNA, with the idea being that the TNA guys would defy their more decadent superiors and eventually knock them down a peg. I honestly can’t remember if that happened or not as I tapped out on TNA somewhere around 2008 and never really got back into it after that.

Thus, most of this will be new to me!

If you’d like to view the card for the event, you can do so by clicking below!

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=35371&page=3

Happy Saturday Everyone!

We’re going to review Bound For Glory 2005 today, as IMPACT has been nice enough to put the full show on their YouTube channel and I don’t believe I’ve ever watched the show in full. Bound For Glory was kind of supposed to be TNA’s WrestleMania equivalent, with this being the first pay per view since they started airing on SPIKE TV.

There was some commotion in the build-up to Bound For Glory 2005, as Kevin Nash was supposed to take on Jeff Jarrett for the NWA Title, but then he was ill/injured and couldn’t take part, so they had to scramble with a way to fix it on the night. We’ll get to how they dealt with that as the show goes on.

You can view the card for Bound For Glory 2005 by clicking below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=4440&page=3

Happy Saturday Everyone!

We’ve got some TNA for you today, as we look at Sacrifice 2005. IMPACT actually does a good job of uploading quite a few of the classic pay per view events to their official YouTube channel, which is a good way of advertising the video library. WWE tends to focus more on just uploading matches rather than full shows (although they do put full shows up occasionally sometimes I believe), so IMPACT sticking these classic TNA events up for free as a taster is greatly appreciated when you’re looking at something to review. I should probably sign up again to their VOD service actually.

Sacrifice 2005 took place during a period where TNA wasn’t on Spike TV yet, so they shelved any really big storyline stuff and just focused on having good matches, which made them an enjoyable alternative to WWE. The big matches on this one are Samoa Joe Vs AJ Styles as well as Jeff Jarrett/Rhino Vs Raven/Sabu. Both of those sound like they could be fun.

I’ve never actually watched Sacrifice 2005 outside of the Joe/Styles match before, so this will be all new for me. You can view the card by clicking below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=3213&page=3

Hello You!

I decided to do a good TNA show this week, because believe it or not they did exist. I actually saw this show originally on The Wrestling Channel here in the UK, as they’d just started showing TNA (Even though they were a few months behind) and this show had FWA regular Jonny Storm on it, so they probably thought it was one of the better episodes to lead with when it came to showing the weekly TNA pay per views.

This show has a Super X Tournament, featuring 8 X Division guys from different parts of the world going at it for a trophy. There’s also a War Games match to close things out featuring the Main Event crew.

This was back when TNA was running a weekly pay per view on Wednesdays and was holding all their events in “The Asylum” in Nashville. It’s a pretty pokey building, but they managed to get a passionate bunch of regulars who were prepared to turn up and get into the action, which at least meant these shows normally had some decent atmosphere.

I was actually quite into TNA at the time due to them doing an ECW Invasion earlier in 2003, and because I was ECW starved at the time I thought it was really cool that guys like Saturn, New Jack, Sandman etc were still doing their thing. That got my foot in the door and allowed me to see that America’s Most Wanted were tearing up the tag scene and the X Division guys were having hot matches, which led to me being into the product pretty much until the whole Hogan and Bischoff thing drove me off never to return.

If memory serves, there’s some really good matches on this one, so let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Seeing as TNA/Impact Wrestling has somehow managed to survive a whopping 17 years, I decided I would set the way back machine to 2002 and watch the first ever event in the company’s history, seeing as it’s up on their official YouTube page and all.

For those who weren’t around or have expunged this period of wrestling from their memory, when TNA first started out it was as a weekly pay per view product, where they’d have a 2 hour pay per view event every week costed at a quarter of what WWE charged for its normal pay per view events.

The thinking was that, seeing as wrestling fans would pay the full amount for a 3 hour WWE event every month, they’d happily pay the same for 8 whole hours of TNA a month. It would also have the bonus of TNA not needing to have a pesky television show either, which is what wrestling had always traditionally needed to be successful.

The idea was a complete bomb and the company was pretty much dead on its feet mere months into its existence, with only investment by Bob Carter’s Panda Energy company saving it from the scrapheap. This in turn led to Bob’s daughter Dixie getting her mischievous fingers into the wrestling pie (Which led to a whole host of other issues) but TNA at least survived long enough to eventually be moved onto new owners.

Of course there were plenty of other issues too, such as Jeff Jarrett getting pushed as the top star in the company due to his dad’s involvement, even though he was a supporting player at best, and the hiring of Vince Russo to work on the creative end of things.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this episode in full (Unless The Wrestling Channel put it on during its short period of existence and I just forgot about it) but it is cool that TNA has it up there for posterity. Hopefully there’s some good stuff on here.

No real reason for this one, other than this pay per view was traditionally an April event and this is one of the few TNA shows I actually own on DVD. I can’t really remember why I purchased it either. Back in 2006 you could watch TNA events on The Wrestling Channel (A short-lived cable TV channel that showed wrestling and MMA) but I missed this event when it was on. TNA then started selling their DVD’s in England, with this I think being one of the first ones available, so seeing as I missed it the first time I decided to buy it.

I don’t think I’ve watched this show since I bought it and I have no idea what any of the story lines going in to it are either, so this should be an interesting journey for me. I’m not actually sure who was even booking TNA at the time of this show. I don’t think it was Russo because he came back later in the year. It may have been Dusty Rhodes if he hadn’t gone back to WWE yet, and if not him I think Scott D’Amore booked it at some stage possibly? If you know the answer then please share in the comments below.

Back in 2006 I was still sticking with the TNA product (I didn’t finally give up on it until a few years after this) and this was an interesting time for the company as they’d only recently secured a place on Spike TV and had also brought in Christian from WWE to be the top star of the company. As a big “Peep”, having Christian on their books gave TNA instant brownie points with me, and he’d won the title from Jeff Jarrett a couple of months prior to this show to thunderous cheers from the TNA audience.

Anyway, let’s set the way back machine 13 years and enjoy some Total Nonstop Action!

(I should point out that I poached all the pictures used here from the Across The Pond Wrestling review of the same show. Please consider giving their site a looksee)