Before I even get started, I want to give a big, Southern Belle thanks to Jennifer who graciously stepped in for me last week and forced herself to write about Impact. I know that at times it can be depressing and rather unfortunate, but Jennifer was able to preserver and shed a beautiful, shining light on something I found repetitive and downright excruciating. She has inspired me to look at TNA this week with an open mind and a glass half-full approach, so Jennifer thank you for that. I will definitely be thinking of sunshine, rainbows, naughty time with my husband, Justin, and lots of ice cream.
Wow, did I really just use “Justin” and “rainbow” in the same sentence? Damn you all.
Ahem! Moving on to more important things tonight’s action. TNA Knockouts Champion, Madison Rayne, took on former champion and TNA Tag Team Champion, Taylor Wilde. Number one contender, Angelina Love, made her presence felt and in addition to the match, we got a fun backstage brawl involving Sarita, and a Chelsea appearance. Lots to talk about for a change.
Taylor Wilde is the first competitor in the ring. They make sure we know she’s a former Knockouts Champion and her outfit just leaves me scratching my head. Taylor, between you and I, that is not a flattering look for you! The champ, Miss Madison, is out next and she’s looking mighty lovely. Yeah, who am I kidding? Madison looks downright awful with her new hairdo. That’s a crying shame because she was so pretty before. Blah. Her outfit is great though. As Madison’s entrance takes place, the commentators run down Angelina’s dominance over Lacey and Velvet the previous two weeks, and finally it’s time for the match to get started. The girls lock up and Taylor takes Madison down early. She rolls over her, attempts a headlock, but Madison wiggles free and brings both back to their feet. She jerks Taylor’s head back by the hair and starts screaming in her face and waving her finger. Sheesh Madison. The referee slaps Madison on the arm to get her to stop and that understandably pisses off Madison because you’re not supposed to hit a woman. Madison whirls around to question his actions which allows Taylor to get back in the swing of things. She turns Madison around and slams her in the jaw with a convincing punch. Madison staggers but regains her balance and goes for a spear. Taylor ends up down on the mat and that gives Madison a chance to mount her and start punishing her.
The feisty little Knockout begins to slam Taylor’s head into the mat over and over, until the referee starts to bitch again. Madison unleashes her verbal fury on him but nonetheless, she gets up and drags Taylor over to the ropes. Taylor finds herself in a world of hurt as Madison starts choking her and pulling on her face. Madison backs off and sends Taylor to the opposite side of the ring. The blonde Canadian ends up using her momentum to reverse Madison’s offense and bring her down with a lazy looking hurricanrana. She attempts another fancy move, but Madison somersaults out of it. In the end, Taylor maintains her control and Madison ends up on the receiving end of another shot to the face. Taylor motions for Madison to get up and when she does, she pushes her against the ropes and chops her across the chest. Taylor goes to throw Madison across the ring, but the savvy BP member hangs tough and jerks Taylor down by the hair. Madison turns her back and Taylor takes the opportunity to run towards the top rope and spring onto it.
Hilariously she messes this up but ends up landing on the outside of the ring as if she meant to do that all along. You crafty little thing! Everyone stands there for a few seconds because their choreography has been thrown off. Thankfully Madison has the presence of mind to finally run at Taylor and swing at her. It’s pretty wild and Taylor ends up ducking, but Madison comes right back with a clothesline. It appears that Taylor had the same idea in mind so they both end up down and temporarily out. It doesn’t matter anyway because at this point, TNA rudely cuts away from the match because the ECW Originals have made their way into the Impact Zone via the crowd. We have Tommy Dreamer, Rhyno, Stevie Richards, and Raven. And of course the crowd starts to chant E-C-Dub, E-C-Dub while Madison and Taylor are forced to wither around on the mat so these ex-stars can have yet another moment. Awful.
Taylor is the first woman back up and she’s now full of fight. She rams Madison’s head against the turnbuckle and successfully scales to the top. She flies off, but Madison throws herself to the crowd so Taylor misses badly. Madison runs at Taylor and stomps the other woman’s head almost into the ground. She jumps on Taylor’s back and locks her in a modified version of the camel clutch which seems to be almost illegal. It is, because she breaks the hold pretty quickly but it has done what it needed to do and Taylor is on her last legs in this match. Madison picks her up, executes a cute little finisher, and Taylor is done. The champion picks up a much needed win. Madison celebrates her win but is quickly interrupted by her opponent for Victory Road, Angelina Love. Angelina takes a chair to the midsection of the champ and then she lays the chair out. Madison is pulled towards Angelina but thankfully she is able to escape a DDT to the chair! Angelina doesn’t seem to terribly bothered, but Madison looks terrified. She knows that she narrowly escaped with her TNA life!
And get this, guys. There’s more!
TNA goes to commercial but when it returns, all of us are treated to a little backstage drama. Taylor and Sarita are locked up and screaming at each other. Sarita gains the upper-hand and tosses Taylor roughly into a chair. She starts calling her former tag team partner a stupid piece of shit and slamming her into some various backstage equipment. She picks up a parking cone, mocks Taylor, and throws it at her. Then she grabs a heavy trunk on wheels and attempts to squash Taylor with it. Taylor moves out of the way and scrambles back to her feet and starts to fight back. And trust me when I say, there’s nothing lazy about these shots. They’re stiff and convincing, and Sarita ends up going ape shit. She starts yelling that Taylor doesn’t give a crap about her and she throws her object of her fury head first into some steel fencing. Security finally arrives on the scene and they pull Taylor away from Sarita. Taylor is fighting like a hellcat to get away and Sarita is telling the guy who grabbed her that she’s okay. Eventually Sarita sprints away and absolutely nails Taylor with a shot that’s pretty much echoed around the entire Impact Zone. Wow. I can’t believe I have to follow up something so awesome with the WCW!
It pains me to admit it, but the Weekly Chelsea Watch is getting a little dull. TNA had a golden opportunity to make this a really fabulous storyline, but like usual, they dropped the ball. It was another boring appearance for Chelsea. She was forced to walk to the ring with Desmond again, and she clearly didn’t want to be there. He made her hold his sunglasses and whatnot, blah blah. Chelsea stood there pissed off for most of the match until she finally grew a pair and stalked off. Same thing as last time I saw her, basically.
The Good: The backstage fight between Taylor and Sarita was pretty darn good, in my humble opinion. Some of the shots were weak, but Sarita was finally given a chance to show some aggression and personality. That’s all we could ever ask for, right? I’m definitely not a Taylor fan, but it was nice to see TNA doing something with her character other than just using her as a filler. She’s certainly had a huge fall from grace in recent months and no one can really dispute that. She went from champion to jobber to rarely seen and maybe this heel turn for Sarita is the beginning of something fresh and new for the Knockouts. A lot us want an alternative to the Beautiful People/Angelina Love saga and maybe, just maybe we are finally going to get it. I’m not holding my breath by any means because like I always say, this is TNA!
The end of the match between Madison and Taylor was pretty good. As bored as I am with this back and forth between Angelina and TBP, I like how Madison managed to escape the fate that Lacey and Velvet fell to. The build of the feud continued on nicely and Angelina played her part so well tonight. She didn’t seem at all disappointed that Madison got away. It just seemed to me that it made Angelina want Madison more. You can tell that Angelina is looking forward to dismantling Madison come the pay-per-view and if this ends up being a true one-on-one match, then I look forward to seeing it. There’s a lot of hate in this feud and I expect Madison to finally get her comeuppance. Hopefully, all this BP/Angelina hatred will come full circle and we can finally close the chapter on all of this.
The Bad: The booking of Madison/Taylor was extremely bad. I’m not going to say it was because of the actual wrestling, because that would be unfair. Madison’s weave and Taylor’s BP skank outfit had me way to distracted to actually care about what they were doing in the ring. The only time I stopped thinking about the bad outfit and weave is when the ECW originals started making their way through the crowd. It infuriated me because their appearance distracted everyone from the Knockouts and it became the latest example of how little women’s wrestling respected. In their glory days, the Knockouts would have never, ever had their television time interrupted by old, unattractive people (sans Raven who I just find deliciously sexy) who were trying to scrape together rent money.
Why did TNA have to use the Knockout match to further a WWE rip-off angle? We all know that this whole ECW Original stable is a blatant shot at the ‘E and the failure of the ECW brand. It’s stupid and hurtful to women’s wrestling as a whole and I’m sick of seeing crap like this on television. Just last week, we had to watch a mouth-watering match between Natalya and Tamina get scrapped because the WWE saw fit to have the Nexus interfere and cut it short. I love the Nexus angle more than anyone, I’m sure, but why hurt Nattie and Tamina for it? I don’t get the chauvinistic treatment of women wrestlers. I really don’t and I don’t feel like I’m being overly sensitive either. Every person who cares about Knockouts, Divas, SHIMMER girls, and those women who bust their asses on the indy scene should be pissed off by this. Women’s wrestling is better than this and it needs to be taken seriously. These girls work so hard for the exposure and they take the same risk as every man does when they step in the ring. Reward them. Don’t spit on them. Don’t give fans a reason to take a piss break when they come on.
I know, I know. Y’all are all thinking “what happened to the sunshine and rainbows and Justin Gabriel thoughts”? Blame TNA. Blame the WWE. Blame Percy Watson and all the women wrestling haters.
I’m not done with the bad, either. This whole Chelsea angle should just have a fork stuck in it. It’s done. Over. Finished. ZzZzZzZZzZzZzz. As much as I love the girl (and I totally voted for her in Diva Dirt’s Sexiest Woman poll), I’m just so damn bored with this. It’s absolutely not Chelsea’s fault. She’s doing the best she can. It’s TNA’s fault. They had a good thing with Chelsea and Desmond, the hot heel couple. They ruined it by giving her to Abyss and making her fall for him. They continued to eff it up when they had Abyss reject jealous. And now the entire storyline is downright cringe worthy by having Chelsea continue to stay with Desmond despite the fact she apparently hates him. I feel like TNA is doing this to try and get Desmond over as an even bigger heel, but they’re failing because they’ve done a shitty job of making Chelsea a victim. It’s really frustrating because male and female angles in wrestling can be so dynamic. This one has just fallen flat and it breaks my heart.
The Ugly: When I think of TNA and ugly, I think of make-up, hair, and wardrobe. The TNA Knockouts continue to make the worst dressed list and this week was no exception. Why Taylor Wilde borrowed her outfit from Velvet Sky is beyond me. It was so out of character for Taylor and when Madison Rayne strutted out to the ring in pants and a cute top, I was truly confused as to which woman belonged in the Beautiful People. Other than getting their respect back, my other hope for the Knockouts is that someone who has been through cosmetology school and has two working hands gets hired and gives the girls some help.
That wraps up this week’s dissection of Impact and all things superficial. Leave me comments. Follow me on Twitter (_trophyWAG). And continue being awesome, wonderful, sexy people.
Cryssi… out!
