TNA Lockdown PPV Review - 4/13/08 - Lowell, MA
Results from gerweck.net
The show is from the Tsongas Arena, named after former Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas. You might remember him as a former 1992 Democratic presidential candidate who ran in third place to Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown.
TNA’s new slogan is “Cross the Line”. Were they unionized?
After about 10 minutes of promos, we go to yet ANOTHER promo where TOTAL NONSTOP SUCK-ASS Don West is asking the most obvious question: will Joe or Angle win? I don’t know, Don… why don’t you cut backstage to Vinny Ru and find out for us? HAR HAR HAR
Now that that’s out of my system…
“Black Machismo” Jay Lethal retained the TNA X Division Championship in the Xscape Match.
Order of Elimination: “The Guru” Sonjay Dutt by Johnny Devine, Shark Boy by Consequences Creed, Consequences Creed by Curry Man, Curry Man by Johnny Devine
Of course, it’s all pinfall or submission eliminations until we get to the last two competitors, who must XSCAPE THE CAGE TO WIN. Sorry, another Don West moment there… I like the gimmicks that Curry Man and Shark Boy are doing… I wish they’d do an Engrish thing with Curry Man, maybe where he has to promote goofy Japanese products or something. A couple of high spots, but nothing truly exciting until Curry Man dove off the cage, but no thanks for that move, because it was about time to go home. At the end it was basically another match in a series between Lethal and Devine. Devine tried to tape Lethal to the cage, but The Guru came back to ringside to help Lethal cut himself free. Lethal dove out the cage door to win the match. The crowd was hot… I can at least say that. A fair opener.
Roxxi Laveaux defeated Angelina Love in the “Queen of the Cage” Match. The eight Knockouts (Laveaux, Love, Velvet Sky, Rhaka Khan, Salinas, Christy Hemme, Traci Brooks, Miss Jackie) had to fight each other in order to get into the ring, but that didn’t last very long. In fact, I think the entrances were longer than the match. Angelina Love got in the cage first, followed by Laveaux. Decent action, but not really very interesting after that. Roxxi won with the Voodoo Drop.
Backstage, TNA debuted yet another horrible announcer with boobs. It works with Maria, because she plays the bimbette character REALLY well. When you have some random blonde reading badly to Samoa Joe off a teleprompter and he’s supposed to react seriously and intensely, then you really don’t need her there. Just have Joe do the promo and move on. He saved the segment.
BG James defeated Kip James. Why do all the matches seem oh-so-lame so far? Maybe it’s because you could have staged all of them (except maybe the first one) in a normal ring for free on Impact. When the cage hardly gets used, the cage gimmick is useless, but when the cage gimmick gets overused, it ruins the heat for your main events. That’s why Lockdown is and always will be a failure of a PPV. For a grudge match, this seemed to be rather emotionless. BG with a roll-up after Kip missed a Stinger splash. After the match, the two seem to reconcile, but then Kip clotheslined BG and did the crotch chop over him. DX is SO last year.
Backstage, Kurt Angle still can’t quit WWE, going on and on about how he watched Samoa Joe while he was there. Must have been in his hotel room, and not live and in person like Robbie McCallister.
Eric Young won the Cuffed in the Cage Match.
Order of Elimination: Scott Steiner, Alex Shelley, Chris Sabin, Petey Williams, Hernandez, Homicide, Kaz, Jimmy Rave, Lance Hoyt, Rellik, Black Reign
Before the match, the Rock and Rave Infarction beat up Young and left Kaz without a partner. Everyone ganged up on Scott Steiner to start with and handcuffed him to the cage. There’s a quick way to increase your workrate right there. Super Eric finally got to the ring, but Blackdust and Rellik scared him away. The match psychology simply seems to be geared to double-teaming a guy and then putting the handcuffs on him. After Williams got eliminated, there was actually some (*gasp*) tag team wrestling with LAX getting involved. There was a nice spot where Hernandez threw Jimmy Rave over his head and into the cage. Hoyt chokeslammed Kaz off the top rope en route to his cuffing. Eric Young FINALLY got into the ring, went Stone Cold on everybody, and cuffed the Infarction. Then, he got the other two for the win. After the match, he broke Kaz out of his cuffs. Yippee.
Gail Kim & ODB defeated TNA Women’s Champion Awesome Kong & Raisha Saeed. The one thing I’ve noticed tonight is that when you compare this card to Wrestlemania (or even Backlash), TNA has deeper Women’s and Cruiserweight Divisions. They have that going for them. Excellent wrestling here, and the chicks used the cage more than any of the men’s matches combined. This was almost as good as the XScape match. Kong took out Saeed accidentally, and ODB hit an abdominal splash on Saeed for the win. Very good work.
Jeremy Borash trotted out Stage Wife Karen Angle to remind us why no one still cares about their marital issues. Very funny to be teasing this left and right when Kurt claims still that his near-divorce was one of the reasons he quit WWE. Next thing you know, we’ll be seeing them make fun of his prescription drug abuse on the air. I just find this storyline to be quite tasteless and hypocritical.
Booker T & Sharmell defeated Robert Roode & Payton Banks in a mixed tag team match. Hopefully this ends the feud, but did it elevate Robert Roode at all? I’m not quite so sure. The two of them do work very well together in the ring, so it isn’t as if the matches aren’t good (although most of them have dealt with gimmicks that have hindered that aspect of their wrestling). I guess I just would like to finally see them move on to new opponents, that’s all. Anyway, it was mostly Booker and Roode until Sharmell tagged herself in. Roode grabbed her by the hair and held her for Banks. Banks tagged in, slapped Roode by mistake, and then got rolled up by Sharmell for the win. After the match, Roode teased that he would hit Banks, but he left instead. That was actually better than I expected.
Team Cage defeated Team Tomko in the Lethal Lockdown Match. Cage and AJ Styles started out the match, as Tomko teased that he would start first so that Styles could get the sneak attack off the top rope. That was pretty clever. Great stuff between these two guys for the first 5 minutes. I don’t know why they’ve never feuded more. It would be TEH AWESUM!!!!!1
Brother Ray was out next for Team Tomko, and he got some heat from the Boston crowd wearing a Yankees jersey. He and Cage took their shots double-teaming Cage until Rhino came out for Team Cage. Tried for the GORE GORE GORE on Brother Ray, but AJ dropkicked him in the head (!) to stop that noise.
James Storm was out for Team Tomko went after Cage before settling on Rhino. Styles tried to climb up the cage, but when Rhino followed him, Styles kicked him off the cage. Kevin Nash was then out for Team Cage, at which point Styles decided it was a good idea to take a flying leap on him. Instead, Nash caught him and dropped him with a Snake Eyes in the corner. Brother Ray did his homework and dropped Nash with a shot to his knees. Meanwhile, Cage climbed the cage and dove onto Brother Ray and James Storm from the top of the cage.
Brother Devon was out for Team Tomko, and Team 3D started double-teaming everybody. Then, Matt Morgan was out for Team Cage, and he went Stone Cold on all the heels. He finished up with AJ Styles, attempting a chokeslam, but instead AJ countered out and turned it into a nice face plant. This match is already starting to make every other match on the card look like crap in comparison.
Team Captain Tomko finally decided he should get in last, and even though everybody in the ring was blown up, he thought he needed to take a chair into the cage. The refs aren’t having any of that mess, though. Cage tried to take him down, but it didn’t work. Brother Devon was also shown bleeding at this point after getting thrown into the cage. Eventually, Team Tomko beat everyone down until Sting came out as the final participant. The ceiling of the cage lowered and here came the weapons–plunder fun for everyone. Cage, Styles, and Storm ended up getting up to the top of the cage to fight up there with a table and a ladder. Cage and Styles went through the table, so Storm got his beer bottle, got back in the cage, and hit Matt Morgan over the head with it. Then, GORE GORE GORE out of nowhere by Rhino for the win for his team.
How the hell do you follow that match? That might have been worth the $30 for the show… maybe not worth sitting through the preceding 1.5 hours, but worth the money for the show right there. That’s a match of the year candidate right there.
Samoa Joe defeated Kurt Angle to become the new TNA World Heavyweight Champion. Before the match, Angle demanded that Karen Angle be removed from ringside, so she dropped an f-bomb on that… you kiss your kids with that mouth? They did the MMA style, which to me was a big clash from everything else seen on the card up to that point. You just had a half-hour car wreck match, and then actual wrestling before that point, and then you think you can main event with a bunch of takedowns and punching? And then you even did that storyline bit where Karen Angle got ejected? Let me put it this way… you want to run an MMA show, then run an MMA show… don’t mix it up with a wrestling show. How often do you see boxing matches in a wrestling show? How often does a basketball game break out during a wrestling show? Do one or the other, not both or two or three. Keep it in the confines of wrestling. You never saw Ric Flair have to compete in an MMA match for HIM to get over, did you? They eventually came correct and got it back to one of those classic matches they had together when Kurt first came in to TNA. When they started getting to the submission wrestling, it was tremendous. Joe won with a Muscle Buster from the top.
One great match and two or three good matches, but the rest was simply useless… I would recommend you watch the replay only if you’ve got some disposable income laying around.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
The thing is now, how long will they let Joe have the belt for. Hopefully a good 5 or so month run would be nice to get away from Total Nonstop Angle for a while. Lethal Lockdown always seems to deliver due to the fact that everyone goes mental with insane spots such as the Christian/Styles ladder one or Angle chucking a guy off onto everyone else last year or Styles dropping off the rafters through a table the year before that.
But there was some odd booking choices I felt such as having Rhyno pick up the win when he was arguably the least important member of that team and Scott Steiner not winning whenever he is getting a title shot.
Seeing as how Lockdown is considered one of the ‘Big 3′ TNA PPVs, I’d have to call this one a huge disappointment. You are not going to win people over when you have the likes of BG James vs Kip James.