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Because TNA had already held a Final Resolution PPV in January of 2008, this one is subtitled "December." The previous show, Turning Point 2008, wasn't available on YouTube so I skipped that one.
This show kicks off with TNA's annual Feast-or-Fired match involving Jay Lethal, Sonjay Dutt, Chris Sabin, Alex Shelley, Lance Hoyt, Jimmy Rave, BG James, "Cute" Kip James, Curry Man (Christopher Daniels), Homicide, Hernandez, and Consequences Creed. This is a fun one with lots of nifty high-flying spots and double-team maneuvers. Highlights include Homicide hitting an insane flipping cannonball dive to the floor, Hernandez' border-tossing Jimmy Rave out of the ring, and the MCMG delivering the goods in terms of double-team moves. LAX ended up with two briefcases, Curry Man got one (and took a nasty fall getting out of the ring to hold onto it), and then Lethal stole the remaining one from the Guns when they were celebrating what they believed to be a victory for them. After the match, Jeremy Borash gave the winners the chance to give away their briefcases and then announced that they would be opening one of the briefcases immediately. Lethal opened his up and - no shocker here - it contained a shot at the TNA World Tag Team Championships. This set MCMG off (they'd remained in the ring complaining this whole time) and JB went off on them. Keep this in mind as we move further along in the show...(3/5)
Backstage, Sharmell cuts a not-so-great promo and then the Beautiful People - Madison Rayne and Angelina Love - beat a dead horse by going on and on. We get a dated joke about Governor Mike Huckabee. This is not a good segment and it goes at least 2 minutes too long.
Angelina Love, Madison Rayne, and Sharmell take on ODB, Roxxi, and Taylor Wilde in the next match. With the pre-match promo and the extended introductions for everyone, it feels like it has been a good 10-15 minutes since the last match ended. They get a little under 10 minutes and the work isn't awful, but it is nothing to write home about. People love to look back at this era of TNA and claim that the Knockouts Division was some bastion of great women's wrestling, but there was a huge drop in ability between the Gail Kims and Awesome Kongs of the division and the Sharmells and Madison Raynes. The stipulation was that, if the heels won, they would get to keep their plush backstage area and I'm sure that played out with all sorts of "comedy" segments on Impact over the next few weeks. (1.5/5)
Backstage, JB is interviewing Eric Young, who is challenging for the X Division Championship in the next match against Sheik Abdul Bashir. The story coming into this match is that Young won the championship, kept it for a week, but then had the title stripped from him because the referee, Shane Sewell, did something wrong (I don't recall what and don't care enough to look it up). Young's promo is interrupted by the Guns, who get in JB's face and demand to know where Foley is. To the ring we go for another ho-hum match. Young was over with the live crowd when he was a loveable, somewhat goofy underdog, but he's noticeably "cooled" since then. Bashir's anti-US gimmick was too generic. This match is really all about the Sewell/Bashir feud and not Bashir's title reign or Eric Young's "comeback" story. Young eventually gets the win when he hits a sunset flip, Bashir grabs the ropes, and Sewell causes him to lose his grip by kicking his hands. We've seen that spot a million times, but that's not egregious. During the post-match, Bashir back body drops Young - the new champ - out of the ring to "protect his heat" but it really deflates Young's victory. He proceeds to beat down Sewell, who has bladed something awful and is a real bloody mess. I can understand them wanting to go full bore with this storyline and making it really visceral by having Sewell bleed all over the place, but it feels "cheap" because this all feels like a real undercard storyline where nobody is really over and Bashir's gimmick is such a dated, been there-done that character. Keep in mind too that, with the JB/Alex Shelley feud going on, this is the second match out of the first three that results in a story that is more focused on a "wrestler vs. non-wrestler" beef than anything at all having to do with the guy who actually won the match. (2/5)
Next up - Christy Hemme challenging Awesome Kong for the TNA Knockouts Championship. The story coming in was about how Hemme had been training with AJ Styles to prepare for this match. Hemme gets in some big offense, including her distastefully-named leg drop from the top rope, but this match was booked weirdly to me. Despite Kong having the size advantage, the experience advantage, the in-ring skill advantage, and every other advantage, she needs Raisha Saeed to cheat for her? Even knowing that she's the heel, it doesn't make much sense. This wasn't too bad - at 5 minutes, it doesn't go long enough to be too bad - but it wasn't great either. (1.5/5)
The TNA Tag Team Championships are on the line as Beer Money defends against Matt Morgan and Abyss. They really stretch this one out as there's some pre-match shenanigans in which Beer Money try to get out of the match before things settle into standard tag team fare. Nothing special about this match once it goes into its formulaic steps, but both teams put out good effort. Felt like a long 12 minutes. (1.5/5)
The Motor City Machine Guns, who had multiple segments before this too, come back out to the Impact Zone and demand that they receive a future Tag Team Championship match. Cornette tries to get them to leave and then asks for help from security but, instead, out comes Suicide. I'm not sure if this was Suicide's on-screen debut, but he looked good out there. I think they switched wrestlers under the mask a few times, but this was definitely Kazarian.
Rhyno vs. Kurt Angle follows. This felt like it could've been a big moment for Rhyno and the match does start off quite good. I liked the pacing as it stretched on and Rhyno showed he could withstand a ton of Angle's best offense. Unfortunately, things sour when Rhyno and Angle's timing for two different Gore attempts really miss their mark. There is just nothing worse to see then two guys go from working 80 mph to 0 in order to transition and it is jarring when it happens in this match. I also wasn't a huge fan of the finish, which saw the TNA debut of Al Snow, as he came to distract Mick Foley. Angle needing a chair to defeat Rhyno was a clear attempt to protect him, but sadly, it didn't really matter anyway as he needed a big performance to really capitalize on such a spotlight match and I didn't see that happen for him on this night. Instead, Foley and Snow now had beef and Angle's post-match promo makes it clear that he's focused on Jarrett. (3/5)
Main event time - Sting, Booker T, Scott Steiner, and Kevin Nash of the Main Event Mafia taking on The Frontline consisting of AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, and Team 3D. I wouldn't call this "must see," but this is the clear match of the night and a really fun contest. The stipulation here is that if any member of The Frontline wins, AJ Styles becomes the new TNA World Heavyweight Champion. I understand wanting some sort of stipulation to add to the suspense, but they didn't end up doing much with that angle/storyline in the match itself, opting instead to just deliver a pseudo-Survivor Series "classic" multi-man. This was smartly layed-out and smartly worked as none of the Mafia members had to spend too much time in the ring and all of them got to not only hit some of their signature moves, but also did a great job of bumping and selling for the babyfaces. The crowd was also super into this from beginning to end, which always helps gets a match over. Considering the match was built around him possibly winning the World Championship, AJ Styles really only had extended stretches in the ring to start the match and to end it, but Joe and Team 3D (suprisingly) worked well together and I particularly liked how Team 3D didn't do too much "shtick." This has to be the first match the Dudleys wrestled in years and years that didn't receive a "We Want Tables" match within the first 4 minutes. I wouldn't call this a hidden gem, but it was much better than it probably had any right to be considering the ages and relatively abilities of the heel side. (3/5)
With a Kwang Score of 2.21-out-of-5, the second Final Resolution PPV of 2008 was an improvement from the previous pay-per-view I reviewed (Bound for Glory IV), but not by much. This show had a stronger main event (thanks in large part to the work of AJ Styles and Samoa Joe) and the Rhyno/Angle match was above-average too, but the Knockouts Championship match and the X-Division Championship matches were both disappointments and the Tag Team Championship match was underwhelming as well.
FINAL RATING - High Risk Maneuver
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