And so my journey through TNA/Impact continues with Sacrifice 2007. Before the show begins, Tenay and West reveal that multiple title matches on tonight's show will be triple threat matches. Classic TNA there to make something that should be unique into something that feels less so. The X-Division Championship is on the line in the opening contest as Chris Sabin defends the gold against "Black Machismo" Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutt. Sabin was coming off a lengthy feud with Jerry Lynn that I didn't enjoy too much while Lethal and Dutt had been mostly doing comedy sketches with Kevin Nash at this point. All three performers are very good at the technical aspects of wrestling - their timing is great, their execution is great, the amount of innovative offense and three-man spots they can bust out is remarkable - but not a single one has an interesting or well-defined character, which really hurts this match and kept me from really caring about who would win. Dutt might actually be the best of the three despite being the least flashy or over-the-top with his gimmick. As I've written about Sabin previously, the guy is a bit too hammy at times for me, his facial expressions more than a touch corny. I don't like the one-dimensional Black Machismo gimmick at all despite Lethal's undeniable efforts. And so I found myself rooting for Dutt, the most "serious" of the workers involved but also the guy who wrestled the match most clearly focused on winning the titles, refusing to form a true alliance with Lethal after an initial 2-on-1 onslaught against the champion. There were some great nearfalls towards the end that I must admit to biting on, making the actual finish - a roll-up by Sabin with a handful of tights - feel extra cheap and unearned. I guess that's the point and it does make Sabin feel even less deserving of the title, but it was still a disappointing end after a flurry of really good sequences in the closing minutes. Better than average due to the athleticism and the razor sharp three-man sequences, but lacking in terms of character and drama. After the match, Dutt and Machismo argued and then came to blows, which led to Kevin Nash separating them. Dutt kicked Nash in the back of the leg before bailing. (3/5)
Backstage, Robert Roode and Traci Brooks are with JB. JB asks him about Eric Young, who Roode still "owns," but Roode wants to talk about his opponent tonight instead: Jeff Jarrett. This had to be Roode's biggest singles match up to this point, though it would be at least a few years before he really got a major push as a World Championship-level main eventer.
At ringside, Nash challenges Sonjay Dutt for the next episode of Impact before Tenay and West run down the rest of the show's card.
We then cut to a video of BG and Kip James - the Voodoo Kin Mafia - getting beaten down by Damaja and Basham, a team that only the most astute OVW fans would ever know.
Another video follows, chronicling the long-running feud between Jeff Jarrett and Sting. I really liked how this video package went all the way back into 2006 and the earliest days of TNA to tell the full story of Jeff Jarrett's face turn.
Jeff Jarrett's big comeback match is against Bobby Roode. This is a bit of a "meta" angle, which was less common in 2007 than it is these days. Jarrett had the reputation of running TNA as a "vanity" promotion designed to get himself over and while he did dominate the main event scene for years, there weren't a ton of other main event-level workers he could rely on. It's also true that this booking strategy wasn't novel. Countless territorial promotions had done this sort of thing for decades, including the USWA and various NWA territories and, maybe most famously, the WWE during the Monday Night War when Vince McMahon became the top heel in the company and the rest of the family were among its most featured on-screen personalities. But while the practice of booking yourself as the top act wasn't invented by Double J, it did lead to a considerable amount of fan backlash - especially online - which made Jarrett's face turn something to be leery about. Coming into this match, Roode wasn't exactly putting on high-caliber matches and the feud with Eric Young was lower midcard fodder at best. Young got good reactions. Roode's valet, Traci Brooks, got good reactions. But Jeff Jarrett was 100% expected to get the W here. Anyway...the match is okay for what it is and Jarrett does go out of his way to make Roode look like a tough competitor. Gone are Jarrett's heel mannerisms, though, which hurts things a bit because there really aren't any "moments" to build the match around. Without the strut and the pratfalls and the begging off, Jeff Jarrett is a run-of-the-mill babyface worker and not one that the crowd was particularly enamored with. At one point, the crowd is chanting for Eric Young, which just shouldn't happen in a main event guy's first match back in several months. Somehow, the Observer gave this match over 3 stars, which is too generous for what was a good-not-great TV-level match. Maybe Dave was just happy that (spoiler alert) Robert Roode actually got the W? We get a paint-by-numbers post-match run-in from David Young that pops the crowd too. Nothing special despite this clearly being designed to get Roode over. (2.5/5)
Next up - Christopher Daniels vs. Rhyno. This was a tricky one for the booking team, I'm sure. On one hand, Christopher Daniels' new heel gimmick, built around a bizarre fixation on Sting, required him to be booked strongly. On the other hand, Rhyno was a former NWA World Champion and was coming off a major feud with AJ Styles and also deserved consideration. Unfortunately, as I noted in Daniels' match against Jerry Lynn at Lockdown, its clear to me that TNA Creative - and maybe Daniels as well - wanted to have their cake and eat it too. Daniels is a very capable worker and is known for his agility and innovative offense, but this new character needed to show, in the words of Vince McMahon, ruthless aggression more than technical wizardry. Daniels does come off as more violent at times and more likely to cheat, but he never dominates the match the way a new potential top heel should. Rhyno is fine here...but he's Rhyno. In certain scenarios, the Rhyno character absolutely works as an unrelenting monster, fearless and quick to anger, but not exactly a strategist. He was the wrong character to be up against this version of Christopher Daniels and the match just sorta "happens." After using a baseball to get the victory, which Rhyno essentially no-sells after eating a pinfall, Rhyno gets the last word by chasing Daniels to the back (so that he can apply fake blood?) and then bashing him with a chair back in the Impact Zone. This wasn't bad, but it certainly didn't present Daniels as the kind of threat that is on a collision course with Sting and it adds nothing new to the Rhyno character that we didn't get in the AJ feud. (2/5)
Next up - The Voodoo Kin Mafia vs. Damaja and Basham. This is a continuation of the absolutely dreadful VKM/Christy Hemme feud. Damaja and Basham were known as "The Bashams" in WWE for their brief spell there but saw their greatest success in Ohio Valley Wrestling where both guys were OVW Heavyweight Champions and treated like major stars (Doug Basham especially). A video is shown of Basham and Damaja attacking the Mafia before the show and sending BG James to the hospital, which makes this one a handicap match. Yuck. I'm not sure what the booking process here was - did the Outlaws refuse to put Damaja and Basham over clean? Did they think the bait-and-switch would lead to fans being more eager to see an actual match between the two? Was the idea to protect the VKM because their salaries were likely among the higher ones in the company? - but the result made for an awful match/segment. Damaja and Basham get the W, but its meaningless as they had the 2-on-1 advantage. Lance Hoyt shows up in the post-match to make the save and, again, I'm wondering why they didn't just have him turn heel here (as I expect will eventually career)? The best thing about this is that it only goes 5 minutes or so. (0.5/5)
At the previous pay-per-view, James Storm and "Wildcat" Chris Harris had a horrendous Blindfold Match that led to audible chants of "Fire Russo." With that fiasco behind them, they had a big opportunity here to put on a much better fight under Texas Deathmatch rules. Storm and Harris were former tag team partners so the heat was there and, while I personally am not a huge fan of either guy (Storm is the better worker in every way, but he's still not a guy I find to be especially thrilling), the TNA crowd was into this story. This match got a super-positive rating in the Observer at a time when TNA and WWE just weren't getting the star ratings that they get today. Highlights include an awesome crossbody from Harris to Storm on the floor within the first couple of minutes, James Storm bleeding a gusher after getting catapulted into the bottom of a table, and a good finish with Harris drilling a very bloody Storm with a beer bottle to the skull. This match was really good, but it didn't quite reach "great" level for me. Part of the issue is the stipulation itself. Seeing a wrestler get a pinfall victory is always going to seem like a finish and then having to wait to see if a wrestler will get up by a 10-count means that the momentum of the match will be halted at times. I'd have much preferred if they had just made this a straight-up No DQ match. Still, clearly the best match of the night up to this point. (3.5/5)
An X-Division Fourway follows as Jerry Lynn takes on Alex Shelley takes on Senshi takes on Tiger Mask IV (Yoshihiro Yamazaki). A brief history on the Tiger Mask gimmick: Inspired by a manga character and brought to life in the ring by Satoru Sayama in the early 80s, the Tiger Mask gimmick has been a staple of Japanese wrestling for 40 years now, though the wrestler on the mask has a changed over the years. The original Tiger Mask is probably the most well-known in the US, mostly because his matches with Dynamite Kid have been cited by countless wrestlers as among the most influential ever wrestled. Wrestling die-hards, though, would argue that the best incarnation was Tiger Mask II, played by GOAT-level star Mitsuharu Misawa. This version of Tiger Mask (the fourth) has actually donned the mask for the longest of any version, beginning his run in the mid-90s and still performing under the hood to this day. Anyway...this match was designed to be a palate cleanser and it was an effective one. I'm not sure why Jerry Lynn was given the victory as Senshi continued to sink down the card and feel more and more like an afterthought after an initial strong push as a serious competitor and potential X-Division Champion. During the post-match, Bob Backlund shows up and goes after the Motor City Machine Guns. Again, this is the sort of hokey nonsense that TNA relied a bit too much on. Kevin Nash working with Shelley was fun. Kevin Nash working with the rest of the X-Division guys was too much. Similarly, Bob Backlund's involvement with Senshi and Austin Aries did not help either guy and I don't see how it would benefit the Guns, who were excellent workers and had a great natural chemistry. Solid match. (2.5/5)
The TNA Tag Team Champions, Team 3D, defended their titles in a three-way tag match against the former champions, LAX, and the unlikely duo of Scott Steiner and Tyson Tomko. I wasn't expecting much here so I wasn't disappointed with what we did get. Some good throws by Steiner in here and Homicide brought his usual energy. Today, some of this would qualify as "Big Meaty Men Slapping Meat." When Team 3D called for the tables, the crowd turned a bit on them, chanting "Same Ol' Shit." So I wasn't the only person completely bored by Team 3D by this point? Tomko and Steiner's in-fighting eventually costs them the match. In the post-match, Rick Steiner shows up and beats down Tomko. The crowd goes wild for this, very happy to see the Steiners reunited. All in all, not terrible, but nothing I'd recommend or want to rewatch. (2/5)
Samoa Joe vs. AJ Styles is next. These two had a reputation for putting on show-stealing matches, which makes this one just a touch disappointing. This is like one of those "lesser" Sting/Flair matches in that you knew they could've taken this to a higher degree, but were more focused on selling a story - AJ working heel and trying to use trickery to defeat Joe, Joe getting increasingly frustrated before figuring out a way to outsmart AJ - than putting an all-time classic. They were given less than 15 minutes too, a fraction of the amount of the time they could've used to put on a true showcase of their talents. As other reviewers have noted, AJ and Joe don't get heavy-handed with the finishers or signature spots in this match, another thing setting it apart from their more legendary encounters. When they could've just "thrown bombs" for 10 minutes before getting to the finish, they actually build and pace this match as if they are going to go toe-to-toe in an endurance-based physical chess match before Joe realizes that he is going to have to sink to AJ's level in order to get the victory. (3/5)
Main event time - Christian Cage vs. Kurt Angle vs. Sting for Christian's TNA World Heavyweight Championship. Definitely on the short side, this 10-minute match was still very heated and the crowd was into it from the beginning. This might be what some fans call a "sprint" as there is no down time and everybody involved is going for killshots from the opening minute. The turning point of the match happens when Angle flies into the ring post, essentially taking him out of the match for a couple minutes...which, in a 10-minute match, accounts for about 20% of the action. Sting seems to have Christian reeling before Angle grabs holds of him and slams him on the floor. We get a cool Tower of Doom spot a couple minutes later, the crowd erupting into a "This Is Awesome" chant. Again, this match was fought basically in fast-forward, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because the crowd was into it. We get a Double Stinger Splash at one point and Angle applying the Ankle Lock to both of his opponents, which was neat (even if the logic was a bit murky). The finish is screwy as Cage is rolled up and getting pinned by Sting while Angle hand the Ankle Lock applied. One ref counts Cage's shoulders down, which should give the W and the Championship to Sting, while the other ref sees Sting tap out at the same time (which would give Angle the win). Angle is announced as the champion to end the show. For what this was, it was a fun match, but not a "great" match. (3.5/5)
With a Kwang Score of 2.5-out-of-5, a slight improvement from Lockdown's 2.3ish score, Sacrifice 2007 features some really strong matches (the main event, Joe/AJ, Harris and Storm redeeming themselves after their woeful Blindfold match), but suffers from a dreadful Voodoo Kin Mafia match and some matches that don't live up to what they could be/should be (Jarrett/Roode, the Tag Titles match) or are just uninteresting (Daniels/Rhyno).
FINAL RATING - Watch It...With Remote in Hand
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