TNA Slammiversary X

TNA Slammiversary X

Arlington, TX - June 2012

CHAMPIONSHIP RUNDOWN: Coming into the show, Bobby Roode was the TNA World Champion, the X-Division Champion was Austin Aries, Brother D-Von was the TNA Television Champion, the Knockouts Champion was Gail Kim, the TNA Tag Team Champions were Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian, and the Knockouts Tag Team Champions were ODB and Eric Young.

The show kicked off - after an introduction video package - with a welcome message from Hulk Hogan, who announced that tonight's opening contest would be Samoa Joe challenging Austin Aries for the X-Division Championship. Tenay and Tazz noted on commentary that Joe was obviously above the 225 X-Division weight limit but that, as Hogan had said in his promo, TNA would be going "old school," which meant they would be going back to the original X-Division premise: no weight limits. Anyway, this was a good match and one of the better Joe performances in at least a couple years in TNA as he actually seemed motivated and eager to put on an impressive match-up. Joe used his size to dominate the early going, while Aries showed his toughness and resiliency by capitalizing on Joe's mistakes. The Dallas crowd was super into this too, which helped. They filled their 12 minutes well and seeing Aries put Joe up for the Brainbuster was impressive. Good match, but not "must see." (3.5/5)

Hernandez made his return to TNA (he'd been off TV for about 2 months) taking on another guy coming back from injury - Kid Kash. I thought this would be a fairly one-sided squash in an effort to put over Hernandez, whose physique, size, and, at one point at least, popularity, made him seem like someone TNA could've/should've gotten behind. Instead, this is a competitive match and Kash almost outshines Hernandez. They only get about 6 minutes, but Kash gets in so much offense that Hernandez' victory doesn't feel very dominant. (2/5)

Brother Devon teamed up with Garrett Bischoff to take on Robbie E and "Big" Robbie T (Rob Terry) in the next match, a continuation of their never-ending rivalry revolving around the Television Championship. The fans in Arlington absolutely hated Garrett Bischoff, chanting "You Can't Wrestle" and "We Want D-Von" throughout the match. Madison Rayne showed up by the entrance ramp as part of some "mystery crush" angle. This only going 6 minutes was a relief and kept things from ever getting boring. I will say this too - Robbie E had clearly made some progress as a worker over the previous year and having a reliable, popular opponent like Devon clearly helped in him becoming a good chickenshit heel. (2/5)

A battle for the Number One Contendership was next with Jeff Hardy taking on Rob Van Dam and Mr. Anderson in a 3-way dance. They kept things moving from beginning to end and really filled their 15-or-so minutes with some nice three-man spots. I really liked the pinning combination they did after Anderson tried a roll-up and then Hardy tried to get the pin with his weird spit-legged pin thingy. Hardy took a nasty bump to the outside towards the end. Anderson took the W with a decisive Mic Check on Van Dam, which didn't seem to be what the fans wanted necessarily - both Hardy and RVD seemed to have more audible crowd support - but nobody came out of this match looking weak. (3/5)

Crimson cut a promo backstage about how he had been undefeated for the past 400+ days and then went into the ring and cut another promo about how the crowd was full of losers and that he was issuing an open challenge to anyone brave enough to fight him. Was this the 2nd or 3rd or 4th open challenge in the same number of PPVs in a row? Anyway... James Storm came out and beat him in under 3 minutes. It's funny - I've been pretty anti-Crimson since he first popped up in my TNA viewing, but his mic work on this night was maybe the best he'd ever done so, of course, this is the night they have him lose his one interesting/suspenseful attribute. This was more angle than match, making it hard to "rate," so I won't.

Dixie Carter makes her way out to the ring for the segment, bringing out the TNA roster with her. She then announces the first ever inductee into the TNA Hall of Fame - Sting! Sting seemed genuinely surprised by the announcement. Watching it, I did wonder if Sting was the wrestler who had received the most "flowers" of any wrestler because, paired with his retirement match (and the post-match celebration that came with that), it kinda seems so.

Gail Kim defending her TNA Knockouts Championship against Brooke Tessmacher in the next match. Tessmacher was the "hometown hero," though her hometown of Houston sits about 3.5 hours north of Arlington (which might explain why she didn't really get the usual hometown pop). Gail Kim brought her working boots on this night and, considering I've never seen another memorable or remarkable Brooke Tessmacher match (not that I've seen all that many altogether), I'm not afraid to call this something of a "carry job." For a match that went under 10 minutes, this felt "complete" and like it told a good story with Kim dominating most of the match until her arrogance cost her the victory. (2.5/5)

The next match pitted Bully Ray against Joseph Park in a No DQ match. The storyline leading to this match was that Abyss's "brother," attorney Joseph Park had shown up in TNA, one thing led to another and Abyss went "missing" after a match against Bully Ray a few months earlier. Anyway... I'll give credit to the TNA audience for not shitting on this entire storyline and actually playing along and I'll also give credit to Joseph Park/Abyss for his performance in this match as he really plays the non-wrestler role perfectly. This match has a woeful 3.25 score on Cage match as of this writing but I found it to be one of the better Abyss matches I've ever seen. For what was a gimmicky/shtick match, they worked it in a way that made a lot of sense to me. Bully was in complete control until Park scored the occasional lucky shot or he got distracted by the loud anti-NY chants. Park, not being a real wrestler, was also easily distracted by his "unfamiliarity" in the environment and couldn't sustain any offense. The No DQ stipulation allowed Park to get lucky and find himself with a chair in hand and allowed for a table to be set up in the ring. Eventually, Park ended up under the ring and Abyss appeared and even this was surprisingly well done with the Park/Abyss switch-a-roo looking somewhat seamless and not taking too long. (3/5)

Hulk Hogan came out and welcomed Christian Cage to the show to announce the Number One Moment in TNA History. Seeing Christian back in TNA was a cool moment, though the crowd being aware of his return - it was not a well-kept secret at all at the time - did seem to cause a milder reaction than what might've expected. Still really cool to see an active WWE performer show up in a TNA ring. (+1)

The TNA World Tag Team Champions, Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels, defended their titles against AJ Styles and Kurt Angle in the next match. This was a continuation of the ongoing Kazarian/Daniels/Styles/Dixie Carter storyline, but that aspect of things doesn't come into play at all. This match is considered one of the best in TNA history and while I wouldn't go that far, it is very good. Daniels and Kazarian have some very good tandem offense, Styles' Shooting Star Press to the floor is ridiculous, and Angle has his work boots on and throws some cool suplexes, but at under 15 minutes, there's way more "sizzle" than steak. I would've liked a little bit more milking of Angle's hot tag and the finish is imperfect with Kazarian well within arms' reach of the bottom rope but tapping anyway. I think this needed some sort of "twist" beyond just being total non-stop action to put it in the upper echelon of greatest TNA matches of all time but, then again, the bar isn't super high when it comes to TNA. A hair or two short of being must-see in my book. (3.5/5)

Main event time - Sting challenging Bobby Roode for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. They did a great job with the pomp and circumstance, the crowd was hyped, and Bobby's pre-match shtick got plenty of heat. The table was set, but the meal they delivered was just not good. Sting in 2011 wasn't going to bring the high energy/high impact offense from bell-to-bell and Roode is a guy who tends to cater his workrate and energy to match his opponent, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, if you're going to build a main event around some "smoke-and-mirrors" by slowing things down and building towards a bullshit finish, you need some more creative elements and turns to make it special. The finishing stretch saw Sting apply a Scorpion Death Lock on the announce table and then complain about the referee not accepting that Roode was tapping as a legitimate finish. At this point, Sting was a 25-year veteran with 1000s of matches under his belt and he doesn't know you can't win by submission outside the ring? This led to Roode grabbing a six pack and eventually cracking a beer bottle over Sting's head when the ref wasn't looking to steal the victory, once again cheating his way to a successful title defense. On the biggest show of the year, one kinda expects a more unique and dramatic end. After the match, Sting got his heat back by hitting a Scorpion Death Drop off the stage and through a table, but the quickness he had in recovering from getting hit with a beer bottle rubbed me the wrong way too. If you're going to sell a "death shot" finish, it should be a "death shot" finish. Underwhelming. (2/5)

Hailed by some as one of the best top-to-bottom PPVs in TNA history, Slammiversary X's 2.81-out-of-5 Kwang Score would put it in 6th place on my own list (based on the 55 TNA PPVs I've watched over the years). The show starts off well enough with Aries/Joe, goes through a bit of a rough stretch with the poorly conceived Hernandez return match (I'm a Kid Kash fan but this should've been a squash to re-establish Hernandez as a major threat) and the Garrett Bischoff match, then picks up with Anderson/Hardy/RVD. The Crimson segment is easily the best 10 minutes of screentime I've ever seen from him, but the show continues to go through some serious ups-and-downs with the disappointing Knockouts match before the entertaining Bully Ray/Joseph Parks and strong Tag Team Titles match. Christian's appearance was cool too. It's a shame the main event is a dud.

FINAL RATING - High Risk Maneuver