TNA Sacrifice 2011

TNA Sacrifice 2011

Orlando, FL - May 2011

CHAMPIONSHIP RUNDOWN: Coming into the night's show, Sting was the World Heavyweight Champion, Kazarian was the X-Division Champion, Gunner was the TV Champion, Mickie James was the Knockouts Champion, Beer Money held the World Tag Team Championships, and the Women's Tag Team Championships were held by Rosita (a super young Zelina Vega!) and Sarita.

A bunch of the full TNA PPVs between the previous show I reviewed - Final Destination 2010 - and this one are unavailable on YouTube, so we're jumping forward a bit in the timeline. Between that show and this one, TNA hit a rough patch and the TNA World Championship changed hands a couple times - from Hardy to Ken Anderson back to Hardy to Sting. This is also when Jeff Hardy has his infamous flame-out on live PPV, coming to the ring inebriated and being "shoot pinned" by Sting. TNA - and Dixie Carter and Eric Bischoff, specifically - took a ton of heat for even having Hardy appear on-screen in the state he was in, but, if you believe their story, Hardy had shown up in fine shape and they didn't know he was wasted out of his mind until a few minutes before the main event (and, by that point, had no other options but to have him go out and lose quickly). The other big story was that the real-life soap opera drama between Jeff Jarrett, Kurt Angle, and Kurt's ex-wife Karen was being played out on-screen.

Sacrifice 2011 kicks off with a tag team match pitting Ink Inc. (Jesse Neal and Shannon Moore) against the team of Mexican America (Hernandez and Anarquia). Like the last match of theirs I reviewed - against Beer Money, if I'm not mistaken - Shannon Moore was the MVP for his team and did a bulk of the work, though Neal's hot tag wasn't terrible or anything. Hernandez had some real promise a few years before this, but he looks completely unmotivated and his character was staler than a 3-month old hamburger bun. I'm not sure what his contract situation was but had he gone to the WWE at any point in the previous 15 months, he may have become a star. Unfortunately, the Mexican America stable (with Sarita and Rosita [now Zelina Vega, though she's barely shown on-camera here]) was a tired retread of a better gimmick done by teams with better chemistry. Inoffensive is about the highest praise this can get. (2/5)

Brian Kendrick challenged Robbie E in the next match-up. Brian Kendrick was doing a weird gimmick that involved him wearing a white robe, mediating before (and after) his matches to get into a "Zen State," using big words in his promos, and trying to "save the X-Division" because it had strayed for its path as being a place for cutting edge wrestling and become nothing more than a space for undersized wrestlers to spin their wheels. It was a bizarre mix of elements that didn't work at all (and wasn't all that different from some of the nonsense and shtick that Kendrick had been doing months earlier, preventing it from really feeling "fresh" anyway). Robbie E wasn't/isn't the in-ring worker that Kendrick was, but his gimmick was timely and made sense in the context of TNA and didn't rely on a serious push or lots of promo time to make sense. Kendrick took a big swing with this but without the company or writing team behind it, it was DOA. The match they work is fine but Kendrick wrestles it the same way he almost always worked. Him getting his lip busted made the match seem more intense than it would've without the "color," a nice bit of happenstance that made the post-match even more creepy. Another "messy" match that didn't quite work and felt longer than its 7-minute duration (and not in a good way). (1.5/5)

Mickie James defended her Knockouts Championship against Madison Rayne in the next match. The additional stipulation here was that if James won, Tara would no longer be contractually tethered to Rayne as her bodyguard/assistant/henchman/whatever. This one goes 7 minutes, which feels about right, though the last 60 seconds are spent on a very poorly-acted "Will She or Won't She?" scene in which Tara must decide whether she is going to help Rayne or James when the ref is knocked out. I'll give credit to TNA and Russo here: I'm sure they were tempted to have Tara "turn" on James and reveal that she was on Rayne's side all along, but instead, they actually pulled the trigger and Tara decked her (in the chest? It looked weird) and helped James win the match. Tara and Rayne being "masterminds" that outsmarted James would have been supremely stupid but very much the "Russo Thing" to do here. Anyway, this was pretty bad. (1/5)

Next up - Frankie Kazarian defends his X-Division Championship against Max Buck (aka Matt Jackson of Generation Me/The Young Bucks). As one would expect, the execution and action and high spots are all good-to-great, especially a ridiculous sunset flip powerbomb on the floor of the Impact Zone towards the end. However, this is just heatless and Kazarian, as smooth as he is, is just someone I never find myself really invested in watching. Heel, face, or anything in between, I never care if he wins or loses, which makes a match where there was very little chance he was going to lose feel even more perfunctory. They go 11 minutes but it felt longer because I didn't care about any of it. (2/5)

Crimson took on Abyss in the next match. I wasn't familiar with any of Crimson's work prior to this match and was surprised to learn he's a Cleveland dude who used to work for Absolute Intense Wrestling. He was brought into TNA in late December 2010 as Amazing Red's younger brother and was then thrust into a major role in the Immortal/Fourtune feud. Despite considerable exposure and being teamed with popular babyfaces like Angle and Scott Steiner, Crimson did not seem over at all with the Impact crowd. Abyss tried his darndest to make Crimson look good here, but he was still clearly pretty green and stiff (not in his strikes or slams, but in how "wooden" he looked) at this point. Also, Abyss was really only good as a hardcore brawler and so, without any weapons or tables or tacks, his matches tend to drag. This match goes only a little over 10 minutes but felt like considerably more because of how slow-moving it was. Crimson maintains his impressive win streak with a weak-looking sitout slam (I won't call it a powerbomb because he never actually gets Abyss up too high). I'll give them some points for their effort as they were obviously trying to get Crimson over as a serious, credible big man, but his skills just weren't there and Abyss was not the guy to try to get a good match out of him. (1.5/5)

Beer Money defended their TNA World Tag Team Championships against the unlikely duo of Matt Hardy and "Wildcat" Chris Harris in the next match. I'm guessing Harris was brought in as a favor to James Storm, but the crowd was not kind to the returning ex-AMW member. Harris came in looking a bit chubby and was met with mocking chants of "Braden Walker," his brief alias when he flopped in WWE's ECW relaunch. Even Taz noted that Harris wasn't in "ring shape," which is not generally something someone says on commentary to get over a returning or debuting talent. Beer Money had carried Ink Inc. to a better-than-it-had-any-right-to-be match earlier in the year, but even they couldn't do much here with Hardy and Harris, who showed zero chemistry. I liked seeing Beer Money deliver the old AMW finish to get the win and there was some fun to be had watching Harris try to avoid Storm, but this was not PPV worthy. Another well-below average match. (1.5/5)

After a promo from Bully Ray, AJ Styles took on Tommy Dreamer in a No DQ match. Styles carried Dreamer to a decent enough "I Quit" match several months before before this, but I was still surprised that TNA opted to re-run this match considering Dreamer's age and abilities. This didn't start off too interesting but I'm willing to admit I wasn't 100% familiar with the storyline coming in and as to why Dreamer was somewhat reluctant and hesitant to compete and wasn't fully aligned with Bully Ray. Things get much better when they get away from the melodrama and just start beating the hell out of each other. I wouldn't call this an absolute carry job because Dreamer keeps up with AJ best he can, but seeing Styles do the subtle things to keep this one engaging and interesting is the selling point here. From ducking under the guardrail to deliver a Phenomenal Forearm on the guardrail (a nice little variation on the set-up that I'm not sure I'd seen before) to going full force into the frame of a stairwell in the crowd, Styles is great here. Unfortunately, the "schmozz" finish with Bully Ray costing him the match and Dreamer hitting a very ugly and awkward-looking piledriver through a table was a disappointment. Had Dreamer just gone with a DDT, it probably would've looked better. Oh well. This shouldn't be a Match of the Night on any show that people are paying for, but up till this point, it was the best this show had to offer. (2.5/5)

Jeff Jarrett and Karen Angle made their way to the ring for the next match as they took on Kurt Angle and Chyna. Chyna had debuted on TV a week or so before this as Angle's hand-picked "mistress"/mystery partner. Angle promised he would not lay a hand on the mother of his children, but teased that he knew someone who would. This is about what one would expect, which is a mostly "ga ga" match built around Angle (Kurt) and Jeff for 90% of its runtime as Karen Angle was untrained and Chyna was, well, not exactly a super worker even in her prime (which was a good decade before this). When Chyna did finally come in for the finishing stretch, she nearly botched a scoop slam (her vertical suplex looked considerably better but nobody would've mistaken it for a British Bulldog speciality). Chyna hit a pedigree on Karen. The crowd was into this but mostly because i think they just received to boo anything Angle did at this point as he was often the saving grace of a very poor show. (1.5/5)

Main event time - Sting vs. Rob Van Dam for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. Ken Anderson came out to do commentary. Underwhelming match that was helped a little bit by some good brawling in the crowd. This was too slow and the finish was extra sloppy with Sting's first reverse DDT looking awful (and forcing him to hit a second one). Van Dam did not look motivated in the least bit at this point in his career and Sting also seemed to just be going through the motions. Anderson's commentary felt heavy-handed at times to me as he ran down both guys and didn't really "sell" any of the action. I get that he's a cocky character, but a World Championship match should be called with at least a little bit of recognition that Van Dam and Sting were the toughest competitors on the roster. (1/5)

With a weak Kwang Rating of 1.61-out-of-5, Sacrifice 2011 is one of the worst TNA PPVs I can recall watching and was a chore to get through. Even mildly interesting-in-theory matches like the Chyna match, Max Buck/Kazarian, and Kendrick/Robbie E. failed to deliver anything memorable and the main event was very lackluster.

FINAL RATING - DUDleyville