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All the Flair-Sting sequences you’ve come to know and love in what I think was the first televised match these two ever had. Within the first three minutes, Flair goes up for two press slams. Still, this is fun because at this point, this is a fresh matchup. The feud hadn’t really gotten started yet, and Sting was just a UWF reject midcarder, so Flair did a lot to get him over as a worthy challenger, completely bitching out (yeah, I said it) for the test of strength and letting Sting shrug off his chops. The no-sell of the vertical suplex was a rare spot at this point since the Nikita feud was over a year old and the Luger feud hadn’t kicked in yet, so that got quite the reaction. After the first commercial break, Flair is working over Sting’s arm but we missed the transition, but even that offense is about putting Sting over by angling him in ways to show off Sting’s physique to the camera and letting him constantly tease comebacks. When Sting tries to strong arm his way out of it, Flair catches him with one of the best low blows I’ve ever seen. This is fun just because it’s such a lively match, and it even gets really good when Flair starts building heat with the figure four. But the stories of Arn and Tully watching Flair matches around this time and not getting why Flair was working like this and trying to talk to Ric about it sure make sense. Flair had no strong babyface opponents and felt like he had to work overtime to get all these Johnny-come-latelies over as credible challengers. It’s also a great display of the contradictions present in Flair’s work that cause a lot of the debate around here – there’s no real setup for the figure four and he’s generous to a fault in the opening segment. But no one can time nearfalls, make someone look like a million bucks and manipulate a crowd into reacting in the desired way quite like Ric Flair. (We don’t get a finish, as the show goes off the air, but we get a good 15 minutes of action.) ***
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OK we're on to Part #2 of the Best of TNA 2009 as determined by the DVD put out by TNA in 2009 Sarita vs Alissa Flash (Best Women's match, Impact TV 07/16) : You know I remembered this match and it was alright. TNA's Knockout division was getting pretty good around this time. You could expect quality beyond Awesome Kong, ODB and I think Gail Kim left already to try WWE again. Fun moves Sabin vs Shelley vs Homicide vs Daniels vs Amazing Red vs Suicide (Bound for Glory, October, Ultimate X match, #4 Best Bout) : Red was the champ and this was a free for all, the MCMG fought as a team and came out as a team. Yeah in hindsight they were in here just to spice shit up.And really that's all this was - top notch high risk spot match. It is neat that you have all of this talent but also bummer that they're not fighting for the World Title. They were just so afraid of pushing them beyond the X division. This should have been the main event as it was thrilling and the fans were crazy about it. AJ Styles vs Sting (Bound for Glory, October, #3 Best Bout): A simple but effective World title fight. It reminded me of Sting facing a young version of himself in AJ Styles. You could say it was a little disappointing if you bought the PPV and thought they would top Ultimate X but on tape and a decade removed, its a great match. Samoa Joe vs Daniels vs AJ Styles (Turning Point, November, 3 way, #1 Best Bout): Best Bout? You better believe it! This was a classic work rate match showing their 2005 classic was no fluke. This is in the Top 10 Best TNA matches that I've seen. I remember the build up to this and it was great to see Christopher Daniels as "himself" instead of Curry Man. I missed his early years in TNA and had only heard of these three's 5 star match. I was really jazzed up about this but I never bought TNA shows since I was worried about cheap finishes. So its fantastic to finally see this and know that it lived up to the hype. That said, I don't know how it would stack up against a ROH three way match in 2009 but would still put it at the ****1/2 level. ...and that's it folks! A fun albeit brief look at the Best of TNA in 2009. Thanks for reading and stay safe!
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This is part of the aborted Jarrett vs. Hulk Hogan feud that TNA began with the aim of it headlining their first attempt at a 3 hour Sunday PPV (what was meant to be the first Bound for Glory). That match never happens, although the company do get full value form endlessly replaying the clip of Jarrett hitting Hogan with a guitar at the Tokyo Dome. This is essentially the payoff with Sting parachuted in. At this stage Sting had done one tag match for TNA and little in wrestling other than handful of matches for touring company the WWA since the end of WCW, so that at least brings some interest. Early on there is lots of stooging and stalling from Jarrett as was his way at this point. Sting has good fire and still looks good physically, but the match just has no substance to it whatsoever. It feels very late era WCW, with weak crowd brawling and run ins to compensate for a lack of action. Jarrett gets a sleeper as his only real offence – it’s like why his Chosen One character could never get over as main eventer in WCW, he just gets beat up for most of his matches and has such weak offence. There are tons of run ins here, including from Don Callis as a TNA Management Consultant, Jimmy Hart – who had basically been Hogan’s proxy in the storyline when they thought the match would happen – red shirt security, AJ Styles, Raven, Abyss and the match completely falls apart under all that strain to end in a rubbish DQ, given they clearly didn’t want Sting to lose, nor did they want to change the title. There is a big pop for the brawl after the bell and Sting stopping a guitar shot with his baseball bat, but other than that this is pretty useless. (* ½)
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A couple of years ago I found a TNA DVD that I'd never seen before and haven't seen since. It is TNA Best of 2009. I actually got my copy factory sealed too but without a price tag. So its odd that someone never opened this OR maybe this copy just sat around a warehouse for 10 years until I bought it. What makes this such a great find for me is that its right about when I really was paying attention to TNA but also becoming less interested in the program. So it features some of the last good TNA stuff on Spike. In the bonus features it has the announcement of Hulk Hogan joining the promotion which was the beginning of the end. So this DVD features the Top matches of the year and I can't really complain since I can only recall a better Knockout match than the one featured here and that was Cheerleader Melissa vs Ayako Hamada in a no DQ match. That could have been 2010 though. Anyhow, this post is going to focus on the Kurt Angle matches since he's in half of those featured. Personally, his stuff here isn't as top shelf as some of the bouts from 2006-2008 as shown on his TNA solo DVD (Joe matches, vs Nagata). That said those featured here are still very worthy of being some of his best work in TNA wrestling. vs Jeff Jarrett (Genesis 2009 January, #5 Best bout) : This was a No DQ match that was very much an Attitude Era throw back. Boxes were getting checked off: Big bumps, blood, chair shots, etc. But it felt good given the age of the two. I mean Jeff almost lawn darted on a suicide dive and damn near missed the table on a big spot. It worked because they sold the hate. This was a very, very good match. vs AJ Styles (Table match, January, Best Impact TV bout) : The intro video does a great job recapping the AJ & Kurt saga...One I'm very fond of. In a nutshell, Tomko (remember him?) and AJ are tag partners and part of Team Angle. Kurt's babe of an (ex)wife is introduced here as well. Kurt is a egocentric tool and AJ is protecting her. Kurt thinks there's romance brewing but AJ & Karen say they're just friends. Haaft They say this is after all of that but I sorta remember that running into this period of the Main Event Mafia (goan) vs the non former WWF /WCW wrestlers. Anyways, this was a good TV match but it should be clear that TNA was becoming WCW part deux. vs Sting (Empty Arena Match Best Grudge match, Impact TV February): They call it the best grudge match but you'll see the match below is the #2 match of 2009 and that's a grudge match as well. Maybe its the best TV grudge match??? Regardless, this is a battle I remember loving. It felt like something very special to see on TV. I still feel that way (even after all we've seen in the past year). Other than the fantastic and hilarious finish where Kevin Nash yells at them like an angry father (see below), this was a great battle. You could argue that this was more WCW flash backs but, if its done right, there's no problem to me. This was an instance where they did it right. I would give that credit to Sting and Kurt wanting to still put on a good show. It'd be wrong for me to call this a classic match BUT with the match combined with the ending, this was a Classic bit of TNA Impact TV! vs Desmond Wolfe (Turning Point, November, #2 Best Bout) : Its not great when you don't have anything worthwhile for 9 months from your top star to put on the DVD. But here we are! Desmond Wolfe has been gunning for Kurt and has decimated him on TV. Now they have a match to settle things. OK...I'm going to get my rant from 11 years ago out of the way. Why the hell did they change the name and character of Nigel McGuinness? He had so much hype coming from ROH and they just KILLED it by doing this. Doing this seemed like such WCW/WWF level bullshit. Its not worth going into but even Nigel (I know its not his real name but he's used it everywhere else in wrestling) says in a promo/vignette something like, ' I'm going by the name of Desmond Wolfe at the moment ' when introducing himself. He or whoever wrote the segment knew there was still cross over between ROH and TNA and they should acknowledge that this guy was someone else somewhere else. That is convoluted to write but its because it is a convoluted idea! All I can hope is Nigel didn't want to tarnish the character and his legacy by jobbing in TNA. And I can support that with hindsight on my side because he was a mid card jobber to the stars in the promotion. They tried to do the British team thing again but I had fucking tuned out of TNA a little after seeing what they did to my boy! Spoiler alert!!! The writing above should give you an idea on the outcome of this match. It is a great match. Its Kurt big-match-by-numbers but Nigel...I mean Desmond is masterful. To use a line from The Dark Night Returns, this isn't a wrestling ring. Its an operating table and Desmond Wolfe is the surgeon. I wrote more than that but I'm going to leave it there. The match is posted on YouTube so I recommend checking it out. More of the Best of TNA 2009 coming soon! Thanks for reading If you have pets give them a hug today!
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