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TNA RESULTS FROM OKLAHOMA CITY, OK - CONTAINS BOUND FOR GLORY RESULTS

By @FriscoKTank on 2012-08-05 18:47:15

I just got back home from Oklahoma City. I went to the TNA House Show there last night at the Bricktown Events Center. Here's my recap.

I went to the TNA House Show last night strictly on the basis that I attended Slammiversary in Dallas & was blown away by the product they put out. I, like many others, feel they are the best wrestling product on TV right now & was really looking forward to seeing what they produced at a house show. I was highly disappointed unfortunately. The first thing is the $50 tickets they offer that they say give you a special meet and greet before the show. I bought these tickets to be able to sit ringside, first row, and also for the meet & greet. Well when 530 rolled around, instead of pulling the people who had paid for the meet & greet, they allowed EVERYONE to come in the building at that time. (373 people by TNA's count, more on that later) and they all went straight to the line for the meet & greet. Add to the fact that the new Don West (who's awful & likes to hear himself talk too much) told us that some of the wrestlers were late because of wildfires in the Oklahoma area, the meet & greet didn't start until 630 when the doors were supposed to open for everyone else. They did not, they didn't open til a little after 7. So basically if you were someone that followed the rules & didn't show up til 630, you were punished by standing outside in the 108 degree heat, while everyone who didn't pay for the meet & greet, still got to go through. Finally at 630, we got Daniels/Kazarian/Zema Ion/Gail Kim/The Pope/Douglas Williams. Kudos to those guys for signings, but after this train wreck and paying $50, not exactly the people I hoped to meet.

They finally finished up at 715 and the bell rang at 735 to start the show. Opening match was a "Battle Royal" to determine the opponent for Austin Aries in the main event. I put it in quotations, because it was only the 9 men who were on the card besides Aries, and it lasted less than 5 minutes. The heels and faces were openly laughing with each other about how they were going to get tossed out. There was nothing believable about it and ended with Mr. Anderson throwing Jeff Hardy over the top, to which Jeff promptly just ran back through the curtain high fiving people instead of selling the fact he just lost a chance to face the Heavyweight Champion. Little things like that really irk me.

2nd match was Zema Ion defending the X Division Title against Douglas Williams. Decent pop for Williams, Zema got little to no heat. I'm a fan of his character and they told a funny story about Williams constantly messing up Ion's hair. Match went about 10 minutes and ended with Hebner distracted enough to let Ion spray Williams with his hairspray and then hit a tornado DDT for the win.

3rd match was Miss Tessmacher vs. Gail Kim for the Knockout's Championship. Decent response for both ladies. Tessmacher has really stepped up her game as a wrestler, but she missed a couple spots pretty badly on this show. Gail even sold one of the botches by laughing at her and calling her a rookie. I wondered how much of that was legit feelings. Nonetheless Miss Tessmacher won in about 10 minutes with a reverse spinebuster type move.

4th match was a Bound for Glory Series match between James Storm and The Pope De'Angelo Dinero. The Pope got a good reaction, but made it be known he was playing the heel tonight as he ripped on the OKC Thunder and the fact LeBron beat them in the finals. James Storm came out to a great pop and took the mic to let Pope know he doesn't get paid by the hour, so he's going to whoop Pope's ass & then head to Toby Keith's bar. This match lasted all of 2 minutes. Pope beat down Storm in the corner, grabbed Storm's beer bottle, took a drink and when he turned around to spit it in Storm's face, Storm hit the Last Call for the 1-2-3 & 7 points in the series.

This led to intermission. At intermission, they offered the 1st 20 people who bought a $40 backstage pass, a chance to meet James Storm/Austin Aries/Jeff Hardy/Mr. Anderson. Since I realized I had gotten screwed with the $50 tickets and this was my only was of meeting the guys I actually wanted to meet, I bought the pass and got to meet those 4 guys, along with DLo Brown, who was road agent.

After intermission we had a TNA Tag Title match between Christopher Daniels & Kazarian vs. Jeff Hardy & Samoa Joe. Kudos to these 4 guys. Whereas everyone else, including the main event, had a feel that they were mailing it in tonight (lot of rest holds, comedy, etc.) these 4 guys brought it with a great 15 minute match. Daniels/Kazarian got the place hating them with a promo before the match that was hilarious in it's delivery. Both Joe & Hardy got massive pops. As I said, all 4 men put on a bell to bell awesome match. End came with Joe getting Daniels in the muscle buster and Kaz hit him with the tag belt and draped Daniels over Joe for the pin, all while Earl Hebner was checking on Jeff Hardy who had been thrown into the post outside. Big ovation for both faces as they leave after the match.

It was now time for the main event, Austin Aries defending against Mr. Anderson. Anderson got a good pop, but was playing heel for some reason tonight. Made fun of Oklahoma and then when he went to do his "Mr. Anderson!" gimmick, stopped after "Mr." and told everyone to shut up & dropped the mic. Aries comes out to a decent pop of his own & these 2 stalled for quite some time to start. Anderson finally ends up working over the arm of Aries. They battle backstage and through the crowd for just a couple minutes, and once back in the ring, Aries gets the advantage and hits the Brainbuster for the 1-2-3.

Show started at 7:35, was over at 9:45 and that's with a 20-30 minute intermission. So less than 2 hours of actual in-ring product. Crowd was probably around 600. As much as TNA has improved on TV, this was absolutely no way to help themselves establish a good house show presence and get people to come back. They absolutely have to do better. There were other complaints with the show, but the fact I've written so much already, I don't want to keep harping on it.

 

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