TNA Sacrifice 2006

A year ago, TNA was the most exciting product in wrestling. They were about to debut on Spike TV, Christian Cage and the Dudley Boys had jumped ship from WWE, Sting was coming in and Samoa Joe, AJ Styles and Chris Daniels were having 5 star matches. It's a shame then that 12 months on, TNA has a lost of lot of it's lustre. That's not to say they are producing shows that are as poor as WWE's current output. However many of things that made TNA so exciting last year have faded away and so TNA is left with an increasingly stale product that has not capitalized on the potential that it had this time last year.

A prime example of this is the World X Cup, which opened up the show with a match between Jushin Liger and Petey Williams. When TNA were still doing their weekly pay per views, the World X Cup was a great way of filling their schedules and making shows seem important. However this years event seemed to be a complete after thought and the structure of the tournament very confusing for anyone who hadn't been following closely. As such, this match seemed thrown on and lacked any real build and the X Cup Gauntlet that came later in the show had very little meaning as well. Many of the wrestlers involved were completely new to anyone who hadn't bee following Impact, and although the match itself was a lot of fun it lacked any real meaning (not to mention a conclusive finish) and so lost any importance it could have built up.

After that the show was a real mix of matches until they reached the 2 main events, but more of that later. AJ Styles and Chris Daniels had a really great match with America's Most Wanted, which was almost ruined by a goofy finish involving Gail Kim and then there was a succession of average matches that had little or no real interest or purpose on the show apart from being filler. The tag match at least set up the possibility of a rematch down the line, but matches such as Bobby Roode vs. Rhino and Raven vs. A1 were the kind of matches that belonged on Impact, not a pay per view. As such, it made the middle part of this show very difficult watching.

Much like the AMW vs. AJ/Daniel match, the tag team match pitting the former Dudley Boys against the former New Age Outlaws was a frustrating mix of what might have been. Both teams can have good matches when they need too, however a lack of drama to the match really hurt it and it just felt like yet another match on this show. It also lacks a real face/heel dynamic which hurts it more than helps it. Although TNA have recieved a lot of flack from the wrestling media for re-treading old WWE storylines for this feud, that doesn't bother me as much. However they desperately need to give this feud a spark and create some real animosity between these two pairings if it is going to be anything more memorable than Team 3D's tedious feud with Team Canada.

Prior to the main event came the only truly awful moment of the show. Following the World X Cup gauntlet which I discussed earlier, Kevin Nash came out to attack the runner-up in the gauntlet match, Puma. Nash had been bad mouthing the X Division on Impact in the build up to the show and this has the potential to be one of the most damaging storylines TNA ever run. It seems obvious that the thinking is to have a big name like Nash run down the X Division only for someone like Chris Sabin to come to the rescue and beat Nash up and prove him wrong. The problem, is that this is Kevin Nash. The man who was supposed to put over Rey Mysterio but made him look a joke. Rey as an individual could survive this, but can a whole division? Having Nash vocalise the idea that big men are better than small is merely re-enforcing the WWE stereotype that TNA have fought so long to overcome. By having Nash attack Puma who had been wrestling for 20+ minutes they are trying to make him look like a coward, however will the average fan get that and just see the same thing they see on WWE TV every week. This feud is very dangerous in my view and has the potential to do more damage than good. However I'm prepared to wait and see. Hopefully Samoa Joe will come out and destroy him next week - we can but hope!

Finally, we got to the first of 2 main events with Sting and his hand-picked tag partner, Samoa Joe, facing off with Jeff Jarrett and Scott Steiner. The story of this match was whether Joe could hang with the big guys and he definitely did that. He was never going to be the monster that he was in the X Division in this match, but Jarrett did a great job of putting him over by bumping like crazy, while Joe and Steiner went toe to toe and set up the possibility of an intriguing one on one match in the near future. If TNA is to succeed they need guys like Jarrett, Sting and Steiner to put guys like Joe over and this went a long way to helping elevate Joe into a true star for TNA. The ending where Joe wouldn't help Sting set up the potential for a Joe vs. Sting match down the line which should be a huge deal for TNA and could well be the make or break match for this company.

Last, but by no means least, came the Full Metal Mayhem match between Christian Cage and Abyss. After having a fantastic match at Lockdown, this was always going to struggle to live up to expectations, however that didn't stop both men from going all out to try and do just that. Both men are in their element in this plunder-filled, gimmick environment and they had a really good brawl with plenty of crazy spots. Even Abyss' manager Jim Mitchell got involved, taking a crazy bump into a load of thumbtacks. Mitchell deserves to be rewarded for going so far for this company as he is the MVP of TNA so far this year, helping to get Abyss over as a genuine main event monster. The only problem with this match, as well as Cage's previous title defences, is that he is yet to cement himself as a true top guy. He lacks some of the spark he had in WWE and a lot of what made him so succesful was as a star-maker to the likes of Edge and Chris Jericho. As the top man, he has yet to establish himself in this main event role, however at least TNA are giving him the time and oppurtunity to do this. At the end of the day he has main evented this pay per view and is one of their top stars. Perhaps only time and the inevitable matches with Joe and Sting will ever tell us if he is a true top guy, however getting him away from these gimmicky matches and letting him have some strong singles matches with guys like Sting or even AJ Styles or Rhino may get him that final distance to the top.

Overall verdict: C+
"A show of missed oppurtunities. Nothing outstanding, but also nothing atrocious (apart from the Kevin Nash angle). Even the bad matches weren't that bad, they still had good wrestling, they just had nothing to sperate them from the rest. The best match of the night was the tag match but that was too short and lacked a decent finish. With a bit more thoughful booking, this could have been so much better. The biggest disappointment was the World X Cup which should have stolen the show, but was so poorly booked it became an after thought."