Alucard

For me, I can't stand either guy. I think Ciampa is goofy as hell and always has been with his 'look at me be EVIL! on Twitter!" heel work, so I have zero interest in seeing him as champion. The first match fine, the 2nd match was overkill and I despised the finish, and after both of those went 35+ minutes.. yeah no thanks. I was sick of Gargano after that no sell spotfest with Ohno earlier in the year, then admittedly really dug the Almas match but have no desire to see him and Ciampa over and over again. I understand most everyone loves this stuff but I see it the way most people felt about the HHH/Shawn feud with 30-40 minute matches (which conversely I do love)

Amen to that. It's driven me away from NXT. Black losing the title was depressing to hear.

Carmella's been on the main roster for 2 years and hadn't ever really been pushed strongly until these past 4 months. I think she's been fun as cowardly heel champ but once she loses the title, she'll go back to the middle of the pack like she was. Always thought Alexa has had several strong matches in ring and has earned her spot on top, even if this current reign is just to be fed to Ronda. I dunno, only pushing the pretty seems weird when most of them are.. and most that have been around for any real length of the time have gotten a title run. I agree that Lana's probably the least worker of the women, but she's at least never been put over the rest of the roster in any real way.

Has it still not been confirmed yet when this actually airs?

That's an interesting one for sure, thanks as always for the recaps!

Glad you also enjoyed it! Agreed of course on that finish and the camera almost missing it at that, but a great battle leading up to it. Both guys best work in TNA I think and wish they had more stuff like it. I love late era Nash, thought he also delivered big in the ladder match with HHH in 2011.

Absolutely loved that build too. They had a contract signing segment for the match, where Foley runs off the ropes and puts himself through the table leaving Nash bewildered...was hilarious. One of my favorite memories watching that with my dad, his reaction being similar to Nash's.

Surprised Nicole Savoy didn't get another shot here as well. ^ Also surprising there, never heard a bad word about Ember.

I'm a huge mark for the Foley/Nash brawl at Hard Justice. Just two old dudes hitting each other and bleeding all over the place, total fun. Also dug those last few months of 09, Hamada was tearing it up in the knockouts division with some hidden gem little matchups.

Just happened to venture over here, thanks for these recaps.. some interesting tidbits in there. Chris Harris was a guy I always wanted to succeed and hated how his career ended up, huge fan of his TNA work. Shame to hear the Justin Credible one is how it is. Always liked Cherry. Also never knew about Matt Morgan potentially returning to WWE in 2014. Apparently Credible is starting his own podcast next week.

Agreed. Worst of all, that 7-0 streak included submitting Charlotte clean back in June. Charlotte just beats Carmella, which Becky just did last week too.

Only the Revival/Deleters match got a little crapped on by that crowd with random chants starting up. Seems random to all of a sudden destroy the Brock/Heyman relationship.

I'd go with any number of matches from Lashley's 2016 Impact run, but I feel like his last 3 or so matches here have been him getting back to form after a slow start back in WWE.

Co-signed, that was a lot of fun! 5150 and Pentagon/Sami lived up to the violence for sure. Aries/Moose felt like a big time main event match.

I always loved using Muta's mist on VPW2 for n64 as every time would be a different color at random.

Watching it live I was thinking it was one of the all time worst PPVs I could remember, until the later half of the show kicked in and delivered the goods. But the first half was mostly awful. Everything felt super rushed, nothing was getting time. There were 10 matches on the main card and only 3 made it to 10 minutes. B Team winning the titles was flat, Balor/Corbin was a throwaway TV match, Asuka got pinned in a 5 minute nothing match. Nakamura/Hardy was over in 6 seconds, which I think would've been better had it happened later in the show rather than following a series of disappointments. Owens' big bump happened and then we were quickly onto the next segment like no big deal. Advertising the Team Hell No reunion just to take Kane out for the majority sucked along with the Bludgeon Brothers being incredibly boring as champions plus Bryan taking the fall was all just deflating. The last 4 matches saved the show for me, enough to not say it outright sucked and was more in the middle. Lashley/Reigns was a lot of fun, Styles/Rusev fantastic, Alexa/Nia advanced that story well and the main event was enjoyable. So I could definitely see the reception of 4 matches were rated highly/the rest sucked, as mine is the same.

That's my hope as well I want a super long Su reign, but with Rosemary likely out until next year, I could see Su dropping it a multi-woman match to Tessa. Though the eventual Su/Rosemary showdown could/should be huge if it does happen, with the brief history already there and the recent style vignettes they would produce.

Co-signed on this being the show I'm looking forward to most of this year so far. Doubly so after the amount of times WWE's bigger shows (Extreme Rules, Greatest Rumble) were horrible disappointments. As for predictions, I'm thinking Aries retains as he hasn't defended since winning it this time around, and his last reign was abruptly short with the Pentagon switch but it could go either way. The feud has been very well done, keeping Aries and Moose apart all this time. Su retains but they've done a great job building up Madison. Cage wins no doubt but Sydal has had a great title run. If they bring back Option C as a thing with the X title, I think Cage is the guy to dethrone Aries later in the year. Pentagon of course beats Callihan. Edwards over Dreamer since Tommy is always there for the put over. Tessa beats Allie since she hasn't had a big win yet and is on back to back losses to Madison, but I love this as a rivalry. OGz beat LAX (since as far as I know it's non title). And the 4 way I'm guessing Johnny Impact gets a win in his big return, though I'm looking forward to Ishimori coming back as well. Absolutely awesome looking card, but there's still quite a bit of Impact regulars not on the card (Kongo Kong, Eli Drake, Trevor Lee, Killer Kross, oVe & the rest of the tag division, etc.)

Agreed. I thought he and Prince Puma were both stale by the end of last season.

Nicole was announced for the Mae Young Classic. Last year she was in the dark match of the MYC tapings. It is. I know it seemed like one of Kurt Angle's favorites in his career where he seemed to throw himself as hard as possible at the post. It also seems to be the only way they think people can take over control against Braun as well. Very strange and overdone.

I'm gonna be disappointed if it doesn't go that route after that segment. It would just be a hilarious twist conclusion to this angle thats been going on forever.

Paige announced it's opening the show. But I could see it going more angle than match with a beatdown or something to prolong the actual match happening.

The other girls are Deonna Purazzo, who has wrestled everywhere the past 2 years (ROH, NXT, Impact, Japan, etc), Lacey Lane who has been wrestling in The Crash and MJ Jenkins who had a very brief Impact run last year.

Just to clarify, Fire Pro Club was the old/original site back then. After it went down the last time, Arena was the spinoff version that this guy made to replace it around 2013-14 ish. Looks like the rest of the community will be making a new site based off the original at CriticalClub.com

All true. Everything of how they went about this was bizarre. The B Team completely dominated them at every turn. The last 3 weeks of RAW: Axel beat Matt (in under a minute), Axel beat Matt, Bo beat Matt. Then tonight.... they win again, 100% clean. Apparently Matt and Bray, or at least Matt, are the underdogs. Hated most of this show but the later half had a few bright spots.