Impact Wrestling Final Thoughts
February 2, 2016
By: Josh Boutwell of Wrestleview.com
Kurt Angle’s Farewell Tour continues and he continues to amaze me after all these years and all of his injuries over the years. He and Matt put on a hell of a match and though I hate seeing so much interference in World Title matches it is just going to continue to add to Matt’s heat during this heel run. He really needed to win and win with some underhanded manner to keep Kurt strong for the stretch run of this Farewell Tour while putting more heat on Matt.
The Hardcore War was a fun hardcore style match and Storm even added some nice humor bringing out the keg to use as his weapon because he’s James Storm. I love The Decay team, everything about them works. The look, the valet, the music, the style all works for me. They keep teasing the Beer Money vs. Wolves match which should be great as well.
Maria’s promo was excellent but I am unsure of where they are going with her and the Knockouts. She has only done a handful of matches since leaving WWE and I don’t expect her to do much in TNA so the thing I would think would be that she is going to bring in a woman to join the Kingdom and be that Knockout’s representative.
Drew-Tyrus was okay while it lasted but needed more time to build towards anything good, but Bennett getting involved was great. Drew-Bennett could be an awesome feud.
Lashley-Aiden was just filler and nothing interesting other than the Raquel involvement. She is either going to be a valet/mouthpiece for Lashley (which he needs) or will be introducing another wrestler that she will manage against him. It will be interesting to see where they go with that.
Tigre-Lee was good but again needed more time for them to really heat it up. I love Trevor Lee’s style, if you have ever seen Barbaro Cavernario from CMLL, Lee has a lot of his style in the ring where he works much bigger than he is with the power and intensity while also being athletic as hell. The “switch-a-roo” with Helms faking us out was a bit surprising though I was a little surprised that they announced he was wrestling at all as he wrestled less than ten matches total last year. It will be interested to see if he wrestles at all or just works as Trevor’s manager.
TNA is building new teams in the Tag Team Division, some new guys in the X-Division, and now even managers/valets. This time last year TNA had no managers or valets and that aspect of wrestling has largely been a lost art. Now we have Maria, Reby Sky, Raquel, Shane Helms, and Rosemary all managing or potentially managing wrestlers. The annual UK tour is always an enjoy to watch and I am looking forward to seeing what TNA has up their sleeves in the coming weeks.
– Promo/Segment of the Night: Maria
– Match of the Night: Angle vs. Hardy (***1/2)
– Overall Grade: B-