TNA IMPACT WORKRATE REPORT EPISODE #47

I missed 46.

Larry Zbysco " You know who should be fired? That idiot Slick Johnson" Are they trying to turn Larry face?

WHAT WORKED:

Naturals vs. Devine and Shelley was kind of disappointing. Naturals vs. Strong and Aries was one of better tag matches on Impact and this was a couple steps below it. Still a good match with faces looking crisp. Slick Johnson looked totally lost in this. Working a heels outsmart ref sections when ref is that out of place doesn't work. And I don't get the whole point of the Shane Douglas angle where he pimps the team then has them loose. Their are rumors of Ace getting fired so might want to save Shane for the Douglas/Ace/Tony Hawk vs. Wolfie D/Jamie Dundee/Duane Peters feud.

Main event street fight was pretty good too. Styles and Homicide are both really good at doing passionate brawling as their strikes look good, they bump big and they can get across anger well. Hernandez and Daniels aren't really that good at streetfights...neither can really project "angry brawl". You would expect that in a match like this you would pair off the good streetfight worker from each team with the weaker brawler on the opposite team (Homicide v. Daniels, Styles vs. Hernandez). They don't do that as for the most part they had Aj working Homicide and Hernandez working Daniels. This has its strengths and weaknesses. Strength is that the Homicide/AJ sections were fucking great and brutal. Weakness was when they showed the Daniels v Hernandez sections it just threw the match off. There were small parts where Aj worked Hernandez and Homicide worked Daniels and those were fun without being as balls out as the AJ v Homicide stuff. For whatever weaknesses Daniels has in this type of setting (coming to a street fight in dress slacks and a button down shirt doesn't help) he took some crazy bumps eating all the really brutal momentum turning spots right on the top of his head.

WHAT DIDN'T WORK:

You can tell Russo is no longer involved with this promotion: they ran two feuding brothers mic work segments with neither of them built around fighting for dibs over fucking their sister. Still even if it's supposed to be a motif if you run the same premise twice it weakens both segments. AMW were like brothers and now they are breaking apart: "You tell me what's going on brother?"...followed by later in the show where we discover that Christian and Rhino were like brothers who are now falling apart. Fuck that Christian Rhino segment made no sense. It may be the strongest Christian's come across on the mic in TNA, but I have no idea why that segment was supposed to make him a heel or what that segment was supposed to accomplish and it was all over the place. They seemingly introduce the whole Rhino and Christian as brothers' idea in this segment. I mean if you read the sheets you know they started out together but their has been no talk of it anytime before. Christian takes a couple minutes to book a Ring of Glory angle where "Sting you say your a man of God...I am God"...I have no problem with sacrilege angles but this came out of nowhere and went nowhere. They do the old face turning heel offers his back to other face. Way that segment usually happens is that the face doesn't hit the heel behind his back, then the heel blindsides the face. I guess that's so cliché that to do it would make the face look dumb and weak. Or who knows? But instead they have Rhino go "I don't need a chair to kick your ass!" Why does he want to kick Christian's ass? What's Rhino's motivation? The announcers say Christian took this too far? What are they talking about? Breaking from convention/cliché may make the face look strong...but it makes whole sequence nonsensical.

Another Abyss squash another waste of Cassidy Oreilly. I liked Abyss' punching of the thumbtacks as it's a nice crazy man visual. But the squash is waste of everyone's time. Hey it's Raven...they hint that he's telepathically controlling Brother Runt with his Jewish mind control powers. Shit.

Speaking of dumb shit: crazy Hebner, Slick Johnson as character and absolutely insane wannabe NIN video to promote Sting's retirement match were all just embarrassing. Earl Hebner is a crazy guy running in from out of nowhere to disrupt stuff because he has a secret that "he's going to tell the whole world". "What does he know? ". I can't believe that they're booking Earl Hebner as Jackie Gayda.