The wrecked car from last week is here. When Raw ignores reality and common sense it really takes away from what you’re watching. Why did they bring a wrecked car across country? Who brought it? If Heyman had said ”I brought your wreck here to remind you of what to expect at Battleground!” or something it would have been fine, but to have it be there and the commentators be like ”well, why wouldn’t it be here?” like it’s Herbie and it drove itself.

Rollins came out and pointed out the wrecked car was here in case Stevie Wonder was in attendance. He stumbled over his words (which’ll be in the next vid, cheers Seth) but what kind of hack was paid to suggest using”an inanimate object” several times in one promo? Are they paid by the word and so didn’t want just ”car”?

Orton & Ryback vs. Show & Sheamus
Glad they put the two least interesting things on Battleground together for a tag match so it couldn’t bother the rest of Raw. Orton and Sheamus is one of those things that make me feel like a really spoilt wrestling fan because I know WHY they’re feuding (They went to a few non-finishes on Raw) but I don’t care. It’ll likely be a decent match, but so what? Given that the end of MITB saw Sheamus pulling Neville’s hair like a fat lass fighting outside a kebab shop, you’d think Neville would come out and mock Sheamus’ fighting style or having to cheat to win, right? AmbroseSayingNOPE.GIF

Likewise, the three-way Ryback/Show/Miz thing. OK: Miz is best when being a dick, Ryback’s best when throwing guys around and Show’s best in small (hurr) doses. So Miz gets to be a bit of a dick, but not a full-dick (it feels like Mizdow took all the good dick-ness with him when he left), Ryback’s already thrown Show around and we’ve seen Show vs. Ryback several times now (including the previous PPV). So Ryback and Show have slammed each other in pointless matches already so the appeal of the three-way is…what? Miz giving Big Show a Mizard of Oz? Oh wey.

Wyatt and Ambrose are scheduled to wrestle each other but Reigns finally comes to his senses and instead of ignoring Wyatt and wrestling anyway he sneak-attacks Wyatt during his entrance. You knew he was serious because he didn’t wait for his Titantron or music. Yeah! Reigns is a REAL MAN and he doesn’t need to wait for a ring bell so he can beat up a guy who threatened his kid. It took him three weeks to snap into Liam Neeson but it’s better than nothing.

Highlight of the show was the introduction of the NXT women into the Divas division. THANK CHRIST. The gap in quality between them is the same as Speed and Speed 2. Crowd was white-hot during it all and knew before Steph finished the full intros which ones she was talking about which made it even better. Like gaffa tape, there’s no problem that can’t be solved by throwing NXT at it so no issues here.

Yeah, right. This all came about because Paige was trying to bring the Divas together to fight The Bellas, who can’t be defeated by one Diva because of the numbers advantage. But all the other Divas pointed out that Paige was no saint herself so the revolt failed. But instead of Paige going ”hang on, I know a few mates from NXT…” and they all come out and kick fuck out of Bellas, STEPH of all people plays compère for the segment that got a great crowd reaction. EVIL STEPH, The Dark Queen of The Authority, took issues with The Bellas or something even though they were chummy a few weeks ago. Only Stephen King finishes stories worse than WWE. REAL WOMEN don’t need no HEEL WOMAN.

New Day vs. PTP & Mark Henry
New Day are still great, there’s still no real feud between them and the PTP but there hasn’t been a ”real feud” (i.e. something other than ”you beat me so let us wrestle”) since The Usos vs. Harper & Rowan so I can live with it. Henry danced with PTP to remind us all his original contract was for MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.

King Barrett vs. R-Truth
Twenty years ago, if a wrestler get fed up in a company he was able to go elsewhere before he got jobbed out or humiliated and his stock would fall. Sometimes I miss those days. Former five-hundred time IC Champ Barrett lost to R-Truth (who has only held the IC Title three-hundred times so he needs to catch up) in roughly three minutes. They will wrestle on the PPV, even though Barrett’s clean win last week swerved us into thinking something else would happen. Like an IC Title win.

Cesaro vs. Owens vs. Rusev (Winner gets Cena, Loser gets Ryback)

Rusev tries to answer the challenge but Owens interrupts him and Cesaro interrupts him. Everyone’s got the right to a shot at Cena so they decide to have a three-way with the winner facing Cena later on. This’ll be the token great match of the show then, made even better with Owens realising ”hey I don’t need this I’ve got the shot on Sunday” and just leaving. Cesaro and Rusev go balls to wall and Rusev beats Cesaro. Awkwardly, Rusev doesn’t annihilate Cesaro or anything so Rusev is on the defence for the whole match. Perfect babyface booking for Rusev! Anyway, Owens re-appears and beats everyone up.

Cesaro’s loss to was-feuding-with-Ziggler-but-he’s-doing-a-film-so-he-needs-to-do-something-else Rusev annoyed some people as it was seen as the worst thing ever for Cesaro’s momentum, but see it as an excuse for more Cesaro vs. Owens vs. Rusev vs. Cena. They could have set up the match a bit better sure, but Rusev couldn’t take a loss in the match after a spring and summer of losing to Cena and Ziggler. Cesaro’ll be fine.

peaking of which, Ziggler’s re-signed with WWE.

Ziggler: What long-term plans do you have for me?
WWE: None.
Ziggler: I’LL TAKE IT.

Neville vs. Stardust
Cody’s first appearance since Dusty’s passing and the crowd responded positively. Stardust heeled it up on them though and the crowd begrudgingly booed. He cheated to win too but at least the match graphic was nice.

Michael Cole: ”The WWE Network, it’s just like Netflix!”
It’s true, you’re not going to find Hannibal on either.

Then Rollins & Brock did the contract signing which is surplus to requirements. Brock got beat up which is going to make Battleground all the more sweet when Brock gets his hands on him.

Battleground has: Cena vs. Owens III, Rollins vs. Lesnar, Reigns vs. Wyatt and everything else is just salad dressing.

———–
Show started with Dixie talking to the whole roster. ”I will do everything I can to help you” apart from pay you on time.

Bully Ray returned and sided with Dixie Carter. It was like Raven returning to ECW to team with Dreamer, along with the imminent death of the promotion. It’s a shame Bully reinvented himself to be one of the best things about TNA but when trying to go back to WWE, they only wanted him as The Dudley Boz circa 2001 so he’s back being a big fish in a drying pond. Ah well, at least he’s back.

TNA loves ex-WWE guys so much they’ve even signed one of the old fake crowd noise machines from Smackdown. YAYYYYY WOOOOO YAAYYYYY

First match is a battle royal with the winner facing TNA Champ EC3. Nice idea, except Hernandez was in it. In case you hadn’t read, Hernandez returned to TNA a month ago and joined the Beat Down Clan. He then stayed and did a few pre-taped shows that will be shown over the course of the next few weeks. Sounds good, right? Except Hernandez was actually still under contract to Lucha Underground and couldn’t legally appear on another wrestling show. So there’s a whole bunch of stuff that has to be edited out of the already-filmed shows. This was one of those matches. They couldn’t remove it completely as the winner (Drew Galloway) took on EC3 in the main event so they took an axe to it instead. They took a break shortly in and when we came back it looked like Hurricane Katrina had hit the ring and we were very quickly shown what happened during the adverts. So thee was no way of enjoying this match given the backstory, but the back-stories at least interesting. God knows what they would have done if Hernandez won the match and had a title shot.

Spud is feeling down backstage but Bully cheers him up with tough love. ”You’re upset you lost to Kurt Angle? Everyone’s lost to to Kurt Angle!” Spud was so happy he gave Bully a hug.

Tigre Uno vs. DJZ vs. Rockstar Spud vs. Grado
Grado continues to be one of the reasons to watch TNA (a recurring theme for UK guys on Impact), not because he’s doing his best work but because so many Americans tell me they don’t get his schtick. ”Is he supposed to be mentally retarded? He’s fat, why doesn’t he moonsault?” It doesn’t help they’ve just thrown him out there with the assumption everyone knows who he is so no back-story, no vignettes, no nothing. Anyway, Grado being in these X-Division matches actually means there’s a degree of story-telling and characterization in these matches rather than just movesmovesNOSELLmoves so I’m all for it. Then Tigre blows his splash and hits Grado’s leg with the splash, Josh Matthews dead-pans ”oh he connected” and that was the finish. Huh.

Dinero: Spud & Grado teaming up, makes sense they’re from the same country.
Josh: No, one’s from Scotland one’s from England.
Dinero: Same thing.

Mind you, a TNA supergroup of Grado, Andrews & Galloway joining together because they’re sick of being called English would be good.

Taryn Terrell vs. Brooke
Taryn’s held the title for ages and she has Mia Yim with her and I have no complaints. Gail Kim interfered via the lights turning off (like she’s Sabu) and Brooke fucked up her finisher (also like Sabu) for the win and the title.

One of TNA’s worst issues that’s unchanged since day one is the lack of emphasis on supposed big moments. Here, a long title reign ended and they spent all of ten seconds on the moment before cutting to something else. If the company doesn’t make a big deal of it, then there’s little reason for fans to see it as a big deal.

Oh and the commentators. Josh Matthews says ”We have a new Knockouts Champion!” in the same way he’d say ”Oh, Son of The Mask is on TV.”

Angle demands a rematch from EC3 because EC3 did a pussy finish in their last match. However, Angle then announces his neck tumour so it won’t be for a while. Only Angle would focus on wrestling THEN his life-threatening issues. Angle’s going to die, not notice and then go out and moonsault off a cage anyway.

Hernandez (Latin for ”Benoit”) meant we had a ton of recap of the James Storm vs. Magnus feud, including highlights of their Slammiversary match. So TNA focused on two guys who are no longer with TNA to focus on another guy who is not longer with TNA.

Ethan Carter III vs. Drew Galloway
No fucked up finish and no Hernandez. They had to cut to a Tom & Jerry cartoon mid-way through but after from that it was fine.