TNA Impact Wrestling Thursday 24th November 2011

Kurt Angle comes to the ring….
Kurt says that he didn’t jump Storm from behind, but that Storm just didn’t see him coming.
Storm comes to the ring and challenges Angle to fight. Kurt calls out Chris Daniels, Bully Ray and Jeff Jarrett and tells Storm that he acts tough when it’s one on one, but he can’t do shit against four guys…
Storm punches Angle and leaves the ring. Rob Van Dam, AJ Styles and Mr Anderson come to the ring to even the odds and they brawl with Daniels, Jarrett and Bully Ray.

Eric Young and Rudy Charles are backstage and they have a turkey suit….

Mexican America losing the Title to Matt Morgan and Crimson last week is recapped…

Tag Titles: Matt Morgan & Crimson Vs Mexican America
Morgan and Crimson dominate the match and beat Mexican America pretty quickly.
I prefer Morgan and Crimson as a team rather than as singles actually.
TNA had such a strong tag team division for a long time, it’s kinda sad what it has become - but Chris Sabin is injured, Beer Money have been elevated and split, Generation Me left the company and British Invasion aren’t being used much as a team anymore for some reason.

Karen comes to the ring with Gail Kim, Madison and Traci and calls out Velvet, Angelina and Tera.
Karen cuts a promo and tells them that they are going to have to take part in a lingerie match tonight…

“Close Your Eyes” Jeff Hardy Music Video

Velvet, Angelina and Tera are backstage and they complain about being made to take part in a degrading lingerie match….

Mickie James goes into Gail Kim’s dressing room and demands to speak with her. She tells her that she is disappointed in her actions since returning to the company and how she has changed. They start to brawl. Madison Rayne helps Gail Kim and Mickie James is left beaten down and laying in the locker room.

Lingerie Tag Match: Madison Rayne, Angelina Love and Winter Vs Tera, Tessmacher and Velvet
Velvet pins Madison after Mickie James comes to the ring and attacks Madison as payback for helping Gail Kim attack her backstage before the match.

Rob Van Dam profile package….. Awesome :)

Karen is upset with the knockouts backstage for wearing lingerie that wasn’t as skimpy as she wanted so she demands that the knockouts wear the outfits that she tells them to wear next week…

Jeff Jarrett comes to the ring wearing a Jeff Hardy hoodie.
He mimics Jeff Hardy before Hardy’s music hits and he comes flying to the ring. Jarrett tries to escape but Hardy catches him and beats on him before Chris Daniels and Bully Ray cut him off and stat beating him down. RVD, Styles and Anderson come down to the ring again to thwart Immortal and they have a pull-apart brawl.
Jarrett throws Hardy into the steel steps a couple of times before the segment ends.

TNA’s history of the turkey suit video package is shown …. “Who’s turkey will be cooked?”

Loser Wears The Turkey Suit Match: Eric Young Vs Robbie E
Rudy Charles referees the match…. Rob Terry passes something to Robbie E, who uses it to knock Eric Young out. He gets a 3 count on Eric, but the referee finds the “pipe” and restarts the match.
Eric gets a jumping piledriver on Robbie and gets the pinfall.
After the match, Eric tells the fans that Robbie wouldn’t be able to wear the turkey suit (he was selling the piledriver) but selects Rob Terry to wear the turkey suit instead. Rudy tells him that if he doesn’t wear it, Robbie E would be stripped of the TV Title. Rob Terry wears the suit to end the segment….

Elimination Tag Match
Team Angle: Bobby Roode, Jeff Jarrett, Chris Daniels and Bully RayVs
Team Storm: AJ Styles, Mr Anderson and Rob Van Dam (Jeff Hardy can’t compete due to attack earlier)

TNA reminds WWE what a Survivor Series style Elimination Tag match should look like.
Elimination tags are one of my favourite matches to watch when they are done well.

Mr Anderson is eliminated first by Bobby Roode who makes a quick tag, after Bully Ray takes Anderson down with a big sidewalk slam.
Mr Anderson was pinned cleanly only after a couple of moves by Bully Ray…. He wasn’t protected in this match at all.
Bobby Roode gets himself intentionally disqualified after hitting a low-blow on AJ Styles and heads to the back…
Later in the match, RVD goes for the 5 Star Frog Splash on Daniels, but Angle pushes him off the top turnbuckle, into the ropes.
Daniels rolls him up and gets the quick pinfall.
Now it’s 3-on-1, with Jarrett, Bully Ray and Daniels against AJ Styles.
Styles fights back and everyone is down in the ring…. Jeff Hardy’s music hits and he heads to the ring….
He hits a Twist Of Fate on Daniels and gets a 3 count. Jarrett comes in to attack, but Hardy pins him with a small package….
Bully Ray beats down Hardy and AJ Styles springboards into the ring with a flying forearm on Bully Ray before he gets the pin and wins the match for his team.
AJ Styles and Jeff Hardy are the sole survivors.
Robert Roode comes to the ring and knocks out Styles and Hardy with the TNA World Title.
Roode puts his foot on the fallen Styles and raises the Title belt in the air. He tells Styles that he is “nothing“, as Impact goes off the air….

Great opening segment to the show featuring Kurt Angle, James Storm and the Elimination match participants.
I liked the main event a lot and the backstage argument and brawl between Gail Kim and Mickie James was done well.

The Robbie E & Rob Terry / Eric Young stuff wasn’t good.

The Knockouts Division needs less Karen drama storylines and more solid in-ring action. Karen Jarrett’s promos are always great, but that shouldn’t be what the whole division is based around. Many of the knockouts are great wrestlers, I wish they had more of a chance to show it.

The tag team division is not very good right now. TNA have made the best of a bad situation by putting Morgan and Crimson together, but who are the challengers to their Tag Team Titles? Ink Inc and that’s it?
TNA need to bring in some teams to work with Morgan and Crimson or ideally they need to pair up some members of their roster to start their new tag division.
It will take time to establish them as legitimate teams, but it can happen if they dedicate the needed time to them and have the patience not to split them up and make them feud after a short time.
They should have started doing this already.
On the plus side, it looks like Hernandez and Anarchia are out of the title scene and hopefully out of TNA soon too.

I felt that the quality of the show varied from segment to segment, but overall this was a good edition of TNA Impact Wrestling.

- David Damage