Hola Knockout fans and welcome to this week’s edition of Impact Write-Up. We have loads of Knockouts sighting on this week’s show as the feud between the Beautiful People and The Dollhouse reaches new heights when a team member gets taken out. Elsewhere on the show, Knockouts Champion Brooke returns to our television screens to defend her title against Gail Kim. We’ll assume she’s getting this title shot because of managing to win two handicap matches cleanly. Who needs number one contender matches in TNA anyway?
We begin our Knockouts tour by making a quick stop backstage, where the Dollhouse have some plotting to do against their new rivals the Beautiful People. Headmistress Taryn Terrell has called her dolls, Jade, Marti Bell and Rebel to a group meeting; a meeting where Taryn tries to remain calm as she thinks about the likes of Velvet Sky.
As the newest recruited member of the Dollhouse stable, Rebel has the most to prove but gets a chance to show what she’s got when Taryn puts out a task for her dolls to complete. She requests that her dolls take out a member of The Beautiful People; just the mention of the rival’s name leaves a bad taste in the Dollhouse’s mouth. With Taryn’s order now issued the Dollhouse scout away in search of a member of the Beautiful People to take out.
The Dollhouse are in luck as the first Beautiful People victim they find backstage is Madison Rayne. Despite being outnumbered by the Dollhouse, Madison gets in the face of both Jade and Marti, shouting at the two that she isn’t afraid of them. With all of her attention so focused on Jade and Marti, Madison isn’t able to sense Rebel’s sneak attack from behind.
After Rebel lands an elbow shot to the back of Madison Rayne, the Dollhouse begin a three on one assault to the Queen Bee until Angelina Love and Velvet Sky rush to scene for the rescue! Soon it becomes an all out brawl between the two stables, with fists flying everywhere and space becoming limited. Jade and Angelina slowly shift away from the cameras while the team of Marti and Rebel against Madison and Velvet continues on screen. While fists are flying everywhere, the brawl comes to an abrupt end when a loud bang sound is heard coming from the corner of where Angelina and Jade are battling.
As the cameras focus in on the commotion, we see that Angelina is clutching onto her left arm after being hit with a chair that Jade has on hand. Jade mockingly apologizes for hitting Angelina and flees away with her DFF’s as Madison and Velvet call for help for Angelina. Given the real life pregnancy condition of Angelina and the need to write her off television for a few months, I can sort of bypass how badly this brawl was taped.
As we approach to the big Lethal Lockdown tag match between Team TNA and Team GFW for control over TNA, Karen Jarrett has a few last minute pointers to point out. It all started when GFW founder Jeff Jarrett demanded that “It Factor” Bobby Roode turn in his King of the Mountain title to bring back to GFW. Bobby refuses and gets hostile, looking for a fight with Jeff Jarrett. With that, Karen steps in and sets them both straight.
She starts off by stating that she is a mother of five already and has no desire to play Mother Hen to two grown men. Instead, Karen advices Bobby to wise up and reconsider which team he wants to represent. After all, in one week, Dixie Carter may not even be in control of TNA. As for her husband, Karen tells Jeff to focus on the bigger prize at stake, which would be all of the shares within TNA up for grabs for next. It’s wild how quickly we have come to the end of this mini GFW/TNA storyline!
We move on to our Knockouts Title match of the evening. After both Knockouts have made their respective entrances, they start off this title match with a tie-up, the challenger managing to trap the champion with a headlock early on. Brooke counters her way out of Gail’s submission, locking a headlock of her own.
Just before Gail can make an escape, Brooke breaks her hold and throws Gail down to the mat. Brooke follows up with a combination of kicks and chops to Gail, cornering her to a turnbuckle. The champion continues to rely on the corner turnbuckles and whips Gail to a turnbuckle across the ring. Brooke dashes towards Gail but Gail manages dodge out of harm’s way. From the ring apron on the outside, Gail tries to strike a forearm to Brooke but Brooke dodges this and knocks Gail to the outside of the ring with a headbutt to Gail’s midsection.
As Gail tries rebuild her strength from the outside, Brooke trails after Gail and the two trade punches until Gail manages to get the upper hand, tossing Brooke face first on to the mat and throwing her back into the six sided ring. Back inside the ring, both women run the ropes, with Gail managing to get a grapple on Brooke only to be surprised when Brooke counters this into a roll over pin cover.
Gail kicks out at two but Brooke maintains control of the match and goes for another cover after she is able to hit Gail with an elevated facecrusher from the turnbuckle. Brooke comes short of the three count once again and finds herself trapped in an arm bar submission by Gail shortly afterwards.
Brooke escapes the hold by rolling Gail’s shoulder to the mat for another pin attempt but Gail reverses this into her first pin attempt of the match, only being able to get a two count over the champion.
After the back and forth pin attempts, both women get back on their feet to run the ropes with the same running crossbody maneuver in each of their minds. The two collide on contact and lay in the center of the ring, out comes GFW representatives Lei’D Tapa along with hubby/manager Royal Red. Instead of going after either Gail or Brooke, Tapa turns her attention to a ring side producer and snatches the Knockouts title that sits on her lap. While all this is happening, the match between Gail and Brooke continues with Brooke landing her Tess-Shocker finisher to Gail. Brooke goes for the pin and just as it would appear that she was going to get the win over Gail, she breaks her pin when she witnesses that Tapa has her Knockouts title!
Brooke then decides to take the fight to Tapa, launching herself from the ring apron to hit a flying forearm. The attacks from Brooke keep coming as she kicks Tapa down and has some harsh words for Tapa after putting her hands on her Knockouts championship.
While Brooke salutes the crowd, Tapa is back on her feet and attacks Brooke from behind with the Knockouts title causing the referee to ending this match via DQ. After taking out Brooke, Tapa then enters the ring for her next target Gail Kim; hitting her former ally with a big boot and a Samoan Drop. The self proclaimed Queen of the Ring has taken full charge of her island!
Suddenly, another TNA Knockout makes her way to the ring in the form of Awesome Kong! What starts off a simple stare down turns into a test of strength as Kong and Tapa go move for move to out do one another. After mirroring forearms, shoulder blocks and body slams with another, Kong clears the ring of Tapa by hitting an over the top clothesline. Suddenly it is Kong who is the last woman standing in the ring and she picks up the Knockouts title that has been left behind with a face that reads a desire to win it once again!
Thoughts: I’ll start off with the positives of this week.
For one, I’m really glad to see TNA practically feature all of their Knockouts on this week’s show! Whenever there are two Knockouts feud taking place at the same time, it tends to be difficult to give weekly television time to both feuds which is why we’ve been seeing progression happen at a biweekly pace so far.
Speaking of progression, I’m glad that both Dollhouse/Beautiful People and title picture had progressive steps to their storyline. I appreciate that Taryn, who is still said to be recovering from an injury, can continue to play her role as the leader of the Dollhouse through these backstage promos. As far as her ordering her minions to take out a member of the Beautiful People, you could have kind of figured out it was going to be Angelina because of her unexpected pregnancy.
I understand that the brawl was a used as a quick fix to write off Angelina but I am still disappointed that this has put a burden to the whole new blood versus old blood feud; despite my initial dislike for the randomness of how this feud even came about. Had both Taryn and Angelina been cleared to compete, I’m sure both teams could have carried a more concrete feud up until Bound For Glory.
As for the title match, I actually found this week’s match to be pretty solid up until Tapa’s interference. Both women were pretty evenly matched against each other but I just wish that Brooke would have made more TV appearances instead of only appearing when she was booked to defend her title. It makes her reign as champion feel like an afterthought, more so when she is defending these titles against random contenders; it rakes away the feeling of importance to these title matches.
It was refreshing to see Tapa finally insert herself in some of the Knockouts action as her time as the female GFW talent has really just consisted her standing along side the men of GFW where she wasn’t really doing much to begin with. Personally, I feel Tapa (or any of the other female names under GFW’s roster) should’ve gone after Brooke early on in the same way as the male GFW talent have been inserting themselves title matches. It would have given both Brooke someone to feud with, that could’ve written itself with the ongoing GFW/TNA invasion storyline, while at the same time giving Tapa something to do.
As already announced, Brooke is set to defend her title next week against Awesome Kong, Gail Kim and Lei’D Tapa in a fatal four way match. Eh, this is a match that could’ve been saved for Bound For Glory but with there still being some uncertainty with TNA at the moment, perhaps having this multi women match now isn’t such a bad idea after all.
