Greetings loyal Knockout fans and welcome to this week’s Impact Write-Up. The final battle lines have been drawn as we come to the thrilling conclusion to the TNA vs. GFW storyline that has been taking place throughout the summer. In our main chapter of the story, we have TNA President Dixie Carter forming her representative TNA Team to take on traitor Jeff Jarrett and his GFW team for complete control of the TNA company.
On the Knockouts side of things, GFW intruder Lei’D Tapa has one more chance to try and bring the TNA Knockouts title to GFW territory as she is set to compete against Knockouts Champion Brooke, as well as Awesome Kong and Gail Kim in a Fatal Four-Way contest.
We open up the show with Madam Dixie Carter and power couple Jeff and Karen Jarrett to finalize their contracts for TNA’s entire shares. However, as with ANY contract signing, there is an exchange of words and Dixie starts things off by saying how disappointed she is to see her partnership with Jeff fizzle away, much to Karen’s disgust. Dixie continues by letting Jeff know that it was his actions that removed him from power, not her own will.
Jeff counters this by shutting down Dixie’s accusations and thanking his wife for setting up this entire corporate takeover. This Lethal Lockdown match is all about Jeff, his family and the GFW promotion. He assures that his team will win and that he will be in charge of two wrestling promotions by then end of the night. He finishes off by telling Dixie that in the end, she is going to end up exactly where she should’ve been: on the outside of the wrestling business looking in on the inside. Ouch! After the signatures are done, the contracts are put away for the main event of the evening.
As we get set for our big Knockouts Title match of the night, our three challengers have all made their entrances and are in the ring waiting for the champion to join them. Brooke’s music hits and as she greets the fans of the Impact Zone, we are taken to a brief recap from last week where Tapa interfered in Brooke’s match against Gail, only to be chased away from Kong in the end. I’ll take this little explanation over any random title shots that are handed out.
The bell rings and things start off with a stare down between the two powerhouses in this contest. Despite the size difference, Brooke and Gail each go after one of their larger opponents but both are shortly taken out when both Tapa and Kong scoop them up and toss their backs flat on the mat.
With Brooke and Gail out of the way, Kong and Tapa pick right back up where they left. Their stare down turns into an exchange of forearms with Tapa getting the better of Kong after bringing her to a corner turnbuckle. Before Tapa can bring anymore fight to Kong, Gail and Brooke find their way back to the match and both Knockouts work together to try and bring down Tapa.
Kong joins her fellow Knockouts in the fight to clear the ring of Tapa by providing a running corner splash while Brooke and Gail collectively kick Tapa and send her to the outside of the six sided ring. Soon it becomes every Knockout for herself as we go to a commercial break.
When we return from our break, we see that Gail has joined Tapa on the outside ring floors, attempting to deliver a kick to her face. Things don’t go as planned as Tapa manages to catch Gail, toss her onto her left shoulder and drop Gail face first onto the barricade. Tapa then directs her attention back at Kong, who is inside the ring keeping the champion down on the ground.
After tossing Tapa off the ring apron, Kong places herself in the same ring apron area to take aim at Tapa. When the time is right, Kong flies off the ring apron to hit a massive cross body to Tapa! Go Kong go! Gail Kim joins in on the diving fun by landing a flying clothesline to Kong from the apron. Before she can do any sort of celebrating, Gail is taken down by the champion who uses the top rope to take flight to hit a hard cross body! All four women are down at this point.
As Kong and Tapa find their way back up to their feet, they continue their brawl on the outside of the ring. Meanwhile, Brooke tosses Gail back to the ring and rolls her up from behind but only is able to get a two count. A fired up Brooke then begins to take the fight to Gail, hitting her challenger with a head scissors and following up with a Russian Leg Sweep. The champion goes for a second pin on Gail but only gets a two count again.
Brooke goes back to work on Gail, sending her to the turnbuckle and goes for an incoming attack. Gail manages to get a boot up before Brooke’s move can connect. The control of the match turns over to Gail as she begins to bring the offense to the champion with a flying clothesline and a corner crossbody.
With Brooke down, Gail steps to the outside of the ring and attempts a ring post figure four leg lock but Brooke is able kick Gail off before any damage could be done. Brooke isn’t completely out of harm’s way as she plays a human body shield to Kong’s charging attack when Tapa pulls her to the outside of the ring.
In the ring, Gail and Tapa mix it up next with Tapa getting an early advantage thanks to her strength. She slams Gail to the mat after catching her during a corner cross body attempt. Tapa sets Gail for a Samoan Drop but Gail is able to escape and begins to target Tapa’s left leg with several low kicks.
Gail decides to go high risk by climbing the top rope of a turnbuckle only to crash and burn when Tapa is able to get on her feet and meet with Gail to deliver a suplex from the second rope! The impact leaves Tapa vulnerable to Kong, who stands at the second rope of a corner to hit a splash to Tapa.
The high flying chain reaction continues as Brooke hits a flying elbow from the top rope. It’s total chaos as bodies are all flying and crashing down!
As every woman find their way back to their feet, Kong tries to pick up the win on the champion via Implant Buster but Gail rolls up Kong from behind causing Brooke and Gail to both get a two count on Kong.
When the pin fall is broken, Tapa begins a mission on taking out the Knockouts; she begins with a double clothesline to Brooke and Gail. After that, she scoops up Kong and takes tosses her out the ring with a little help from Gail. Brooke clears the ring of Tapa with a dropkick, leaving her alone in the ring with Gail Kim.
As Gail goes for an Eat Defeat but Brooke counters and goes for a sunset flip pin but to Brooke’s surprise, Gail reverses this into a pin of her own and gets the three count on the champion thus becoming the new Knockouts champion! Post match, Gail extends her hand to the former previous title holder and Brooke and Gail hug out in the name of good sportsmanship. Congrats Gail!
In our main event Lethal Lockdown match, Team TNA and Team GFW fought a long and hard battle. Karen looking on the outside of the steel cage in full support of her husband and at one point, tried to help him escape the cage when he was being outnumbered by the new generation of TNA stars. In the end, it was TNA’s Drew Galloway who managed to get the pin for his team after hitting Brian Myers with DDT onto a trash can.
With the lost, the GFW clan sadly makes their exit from the Impact Zone defeated while Dixie Carter makes her way to the ring and joins her TNA team with a big smile on her face as she can celebrate knowing she is in full control of TNA once again. After group hugs and all, Drew hands Dixie the briefcase of shares and close the night with team TNA’s arms in the air as they begin their next direction without anymore direction from Jeff Jarrett again.
Thoughts: So we’ve come to an end of two plots in one night, that being the TNA/GFW invasion story line as well as the short lived title reign of Brooke.
I’ll start by briefly saying that the TNA/GFW invasion was certainly a way to see new names and fresh competition for the TNA roster to compete against. Unfortunately, most of those talents exchange went to the male side while the Knockouts had only one sole name in Lei’D Tapa representing them; that’s not even mentioning that she is a former Knockout herself. Granted, her time in TNA was short lived and she didn’t exactly do much but I just feel with the loads of female names that are said to be with GFW, a brand new fresh female name could’ve really help change the dynamics of how some of the Knockouts matches could’ve been. That or at least bring in more female asides from the sole Tapa, who had to spend most of her time in this invasion standing next to her fellow male superstars who really did most of the heavy lifting. I would’ve liked to see more of a female feud between the women of both GFW and TNA.
On a positive, I will say it was such a treat to see Karen back on her TV again, starting off as the loving and concerning wife to then becoming the key player that ignited the war between TNA and GFW. I also feel Karen’s presence and involvement in this storyline also helped Dixie Carter’s babyface character from being fragile and naïve to a more firm leader towards the end of it all.
Onto the Knockouts title match, I thought this was really a fantastic match! Everyone brought something different and each woman really had a chance to hit all their spots inside and outside of the ring. It was also pleasant to see that, even with a quick commercial break in between, the match was given a pleasant amount of time given the upsetting short amount of time we’ve seen lately given to the Knockouts.
For all the good that the match was, I do sadly have to say how disappointed I am to see Brooke drop the title. Her entire reign as champion just screams transitional as she has been placed in the back burner in favor of the Dollhouse feuding with both Gail Kim and the newly reformed Beautiful People. Since winning the title, the only times I can only recall Brooke being on television was when she was booked to defend her title, with each of those times including some kind of interference and never really being able to have a one on one feud. Everything just feels rush and this gloomy feeling of disappointed probably wouldn’t be as bad had TNA just waited until perhaps Bound for Glory for Brooke to drop the title because I really do think this fatal four way was worthy to have been on the card.
Speaking of Bound for Glory, as already announced, we will see Awesome Kong challenge Gail Kim for the gold during the big event. This has always been my “one more match” that I have wanted to see and the fan in me is excited to see that it happening! Sure we have seen Gail and Kong go at it already since Kong’s return but given that this is happening on one of TNA’s actual PPV, it just has this important feel to it.
I feel like both Gail and Kong have grown since their golden matches from the early years and I think with the history already being there, it’s a safe route to go to. So long as the match is given a decent amount of time, I think it can set for another classic. However, all of this does make me wonder if/when Brooke will ever get a rematch for the title.
