We open this week’s event with a video package recapping the Kurt Angle-Jeff Hardy match at No Surrender, during which Angle said he never even knew there was a 20 minute time limit. Neither did we, Kurt. Neither did we.
We start with Kurt Angle and Jeff Hardy already in the ring, and they are soon joined by Eric Bischoff and the lady who almost makes Eric Bischoff segments bearable: ladies and gentlemen, Miss Tessmacher. He starts by congratulating Ken Anderson for making it to the finals of the tournament at Bound For Glory, and as for who his opponent will be, that is what Bischoff will address right now. After 24 years in the wrestling business, Bischoff has never seen a match as intense and hard fought as what these two did at No Surrender. He agrees with the crowd that it was awesome, and it’s an honor to be in the ring with these guys, and asks the crowd to give it up for them one more time. The crowd obliges. Bischoff says that the problem they face now is that since there wasn’t a winner between these two, we still need a TNA World Champion, so the main event of Bound For Glory will be Ken Anderson, Kurt Angle, and Jeff Hardy in a Three Way Dance. Wait, we’re not done yet: Dixie Carter comes out from the back and said she just wants to take a moment to recognize that Kurt and Jeff gave it everything they have and they never let up (crowd starts a Thank You Both chant), and she says it was one of her favorite matches in TNA history, but she knows they weren’t happy with the finish. Dixie says that a few weeks ago, Eric overruled her where Ric Flair was concerned, and now she’s going to return the favor and overrule him. Tonight: Kurt Angle faces Jeff Hardy with no time limit, and the winner will face Ken Anderson at Bound For Glory.
We go backstage to the Pope, who is going to find Eric Bischoff because this is BS. He walks over to Kevin Nash and Sting and shares a handshake. Uh oh, what’s that about?
Last week, a TNA camera crew caught up with Tommy Dreamer at a gas station in Yonkers and asked him what’s next for EV2.0, and Tommy gets in his car and says it’s time to go home, and that’s all he has to say. He drives away.
Time for our opening match…
Kevin Nash vs Samoa Joe
Nash opens with a kneelift to the gut and pounds away at Joe, then works him over in the corner with elbows and kneelifts and Joe is flat on the mat early. Nash whips Joe to the ropes and Joe ducks a clothesline and nails him with a running boot, then drops him again with a clothesline. Joe whips Nash to the corner and follows in with a running forearm and an enziguiri, and Nash rolls to the floor. He pulls Joe out by the ankle and rams him into the ring apron, then continues beating him up around ringside. Joe fires back at Nash, but Sting attacks Joe from behind, Jeff Jarrett (who is in Joe’s corner) runs over to make the save, and it turns into a big brawl at ringside and both men get counted out. I bet Dave Scherer loves this show already.
Double Countout
Security comes out and tries unsuccessfully to break the fight up as all four men continue brawling around ringside.
We go backstage to Madison Rayne and Tara with Lacey Von Erich, who is wearing nothing but a towel. Lacey says she hasn’t made her decision yet, so Madison tells her not to hurt herself by thinking and get ready.
We go to Sting and Nash backstage, who say they’re having fun and plan to continue having fun on 10-10-10.
Back to the ring for our next match…
X-Division Title Match: Doug Williams vs Jay Lethal
Hey, Jay Lethal still works here! Lethal earned this title shot by beating Williams on Xplosion, which nobody watches. Williams is mad and goes right after Lethal and they go toe to toe. Williams comes out on top, slams Lethal, and gets a kneedrop for 2. He whips Lethal to the corner, catches his boot on a charge, but Lethal hits the pendulum kick. Williams no sells and gets a salto for 2, then he HITS THE CHINLOCK! He quickly releases it and opts to kick him in the head instead, Lethal tries to fire back but Williams cracks him hard in the face and covers for 2, then whips Lethal hard into the corner and covers again for another 2, then goes to an abdominal stretch. Lethal gets out, but runs off the ropes into a back elbow from Williams, who follows that up with a snap suplex for 2. Williams dropkicks Lethal’s knees out from under him and gets a bow and arrow, and he sets up for Chaos Theory but Lethal fights out. Williams gets backdropped to the apron, but nails Lethal and goes up top, but eats a dropkick coming off the top and both men are down. Lethal goes for a handspring elbow but Williams catches him and tries the Chaos Theory, Lethal blocks and hits the Lethal Combination and covers but only gets 2. Lethal goes for the Macho Man elbow, but takes too long and Williams moves, Williams goes for a second rope tornado DDT but Lethal shoves him off and hits the Lethal Injection for the win and the X-Division Title.
Winner and NEW X-Division Champion: Jay Lethal
Lethal goes out and celebrates in the crowd.
We go backstage to Abyss, who is dragging a body through the backstage area. Okay then.
Also backstage, Kurt Angle says that Jeff Hardy went the distance and proved himself to Angle. Hardy’s great, but he’s not a champion. Angle is a champion, and he’s going to beat Hardy and then go on to Bound For Glory and become TNA World Champion.
Time for our next match…
Knockouts Tag Team Title Match: Taylor Wilde & Hamada vs Madison Rayne & Lacey Von Erich
Oh god, Lacey’s starting. Taylor wrestles circles around her, then gets a hammerlock. Lacey manages to reverse to a headlock, but Taylor reverses to a headlock of her own. Lacey rams Taylor into her own corner, but eats boot on a charge and Hamada tags in and comes in with a top rope sunset flip for 2. Lacey tags out to Madison, who knees Hamada in the gut and pounds her down, then screams at Lacey and tags her back in so she can hit her stupid backflip elbow. She tries it a second time but Hamada moved out of the way, then slams Lacey and hits the top rope moonsault and Lacey seems to have forgotten to put her shoulder down so the ref can count, so he counts 2 anyway. Taylor tags in and hits a top rope crossbody for 2, and Madison yanks Taylor down by the hair from the outside and tags herself in. Madison with a three quarter nelson and rams knees into Taylor’s face, then hits a running clothesline. Madison tags Lacey in and they hit the worst double suplex in history for 2, and Lacey HITS THE CHINLOCK! Taylor escapes with a chinbreaker and tags in Hamada, who kills Lacey with several running kicks and a headbutt, then tags in Taylor, who nails Madison off the apron, then the champs hit a double team rolling neckbreaker thingy for the win.
Winners: Taylor Wilde & Hamada
Madison comes in as the champs leave and she does not look happy. She starts screaming at Lacey and shoves her, so Lacey shoves Madison on her butt. Tara comes in and nails Lacey with the motorcycle helmet from behind. Suddenly the Beautiful People music hits and Angelina Love and Velvet Sky come trotting out to make the save, and Tara and Madison bail.
Still to come: Jeff Hardy vs Kurt Angle, but up next, Tommy Dreamer has a message for Fortune!
Backstage, Jeff Hardy said he was happy with the three way idea, but now he’s got to beat Kurt Angle to advance to Bound For Glory, and if the boss says to work, he’s going to go work.
We go back out to the Impact Zone, as Tommy Dreamer makes his way out to the ring and we see clips of the Dreamer-AJ Styles match from No Surrender. Tommy, uncharacteristically, is wearing a suit and tie. He says that EV2.0 is not here tonight, and asks Fortune for no tricks, but to just come out to the ring. Fortune, minus Douglas Williams, comes out and flashes the Fortune hand signal at him. Dreamer thanks them for coming out and says he’s sick of seeing his friends get hurt, and wants to call a truce because when he first came here, he tried to make a difference, and this place is so damn special and Dreamer has a history with all of them and saw his company go away, and says that Fortune is the future of this company. If, one day, they can look at him in his shoes, this is his last chance and he’s happy to contribute. This is the house that AJ built, but he’s just looking for a place to call home. He tells Storm that never has someone gone from as much success as he had with America’s Most Wanted and then exceeded that as part of Beer Money, and the only other guy who’s done that is Stan Lane. He tells Kazarian that he got him his first job with WWE, but he left because he wasn’t happy anymore, and what was bad for WWE worked out great for TNA, and he rembers the kid that came to the Boston shows when he was only in the business for six months, and if it weren’t for this business he’d never have met his wife just like Tommy did. Tommy goes to Matt Morgan and says he remembers him when he was just a bouncer at a nightclub, and when he came to WWE, people said he could be the next Undertaker or Kane, but he came to TNA and proved that next time there’s some big goofy kid there, he’s going to be the next Matt Morgan. Tommy tells Bobby Roode that his tryout with WWE was against him, and when he offered Roode a WWE contract, he turned it down to stay with TNA because he believed in this place and he could help be a cornerstone with building this place. Tommy knows that Roode’s favorite wrestlers growing up were Rick Rude and Curt Hennig, and both would look at Bobby Roode and say he’s got it. He tells Flair that if he ever thought he’d be standing in a ring with Ric Flair, the one thing he’d ever say to him is thank you. He’s seen Flair wrestle Steamboat and do one hour broadways, and he knows he doesn’t get hardcore wrestling, but he wants to thank Flair because hardcore wrestling is all about hard work and giving it your all no matter what, and that makes Flair a hardcore wrestler. Flair calls himself the Dirtiest Player In The Game, but Dreamer says he IS the business, and the day Flair decides to never walk the aisle again, it will be the saddest day of all. And finally, to AJ Styles, he did something at the PPV that nobody else has ever done, and he didn’t do it because Dreamer had a bad knee, he didn’t do it by cheating, he made Dreamer quit because he was better than him. He helped Dreamer elevate his game and he is the best wrestler in the game today. The one thing he wants to do and was not able to do, and the reason he wanted to call Fortune out here for, was because he wanted to shake AJ’s hand because AJ was better. AJ takes the mic from Dreamer and says that he can appreciate what Dreamer said about all of them because it takes a big man and that is commendable, and if there’s one thing that can be said about Tommy Dreamer, he is all heart because he took a wrestling company in South Philadelphia and turned it into a revolution like no other. He never asked for respect, but he always seemed to get it, and with that being said, he has AJ’s respect and he will shake his hand. AJ puts down the TV Title belt and tells Fortune to stay back, and shakes Tommy’s hand. AJ says there’s one last thing: in his 20 years of wrestling, how many other wrestlers ever made Dreamer say I Quit, then answers his own question: just one, AJ Styles. He doesn’t need Dreamer’s endorsement and he doesn’t need his praise, and then he suckerpunches Dreamer and the entire group engages in an old school, Four Horsemen-style beatdown. Suddenly, Brian Kendrick comes running out and throws himself over Dreamer to save him from a further beating, but Fortune just kicks the crap out of him, too. AJ tosses Kendrick out to the floor and continues the beating on Dreamer, but Kendrick drags himself back in…and gets laid out again. Storm holds Dreamer up for AJ, who just clocks him with a stiff right hand and Dreamer goes down like a ton of bricks. Finally, security comes out to stop the beating and drag Dreamer and Kendrick to safety. AJ says if Dreamer wanted a truce, now he’s got it. Fortune leaves, but Brian Kendrick grabs the mic and asks if anyone in Fortune is man enough to fight him now. They thrive on intimidation, but…whatever, he rambles about stuff. The point is that he’s not afraid of Fortune, and he wants to know which of them if brave enough to fight him now. We’ll find out if anyone will answer his challenge…after this!
Okay, we’re back and looks like we have our match, already in progress…
Brian Kendrick vs Matt Morgan
Morgan rips Kendrick’s head off with a clothesline, then follows that with a big boot and then mounts Kendrick and rains down punches. Morgan with a nasty kick to the ribs and then hits the rapid fire elbows in the corner. Morgan with a charging splash in the corner and a fallaway slam and goes for the cover, but pulls Kendrick up at 2. Morgan just flings Kendrick across the ring, but wastes time playing to the crowd, and Kendrick hits a running boot and covers Morgan for the win.
Winner: Brian Kendrick
Morgan grabs a mic and says that didn’t count because he wasn’t ready, and he wants the match stricken from his record and wants Kendrick back out here now. Kendrick doesn’t come
Backstage, the Pope walks into Eric Bischoff’s office and only finds Miss Tessmacher. She says Bischoff is in a very important meeting right now, so Pope invites Miss Tessmacher to his dressing room instead. She says she thinks she can squeeze him in, then bends over so we can see her boobs. This girl is great.
Backstage, Abyss has one victim chained to the ceiling and another one strapped to a platform. He tears the second guy’s shirt off, and he says that Janice would never cheat on him, and you can’t have Janice without love. He then pulls out a hot branding iron (which he has named Bob) that says 10-10-10 on it and uses it to brand the guy strapped to the platform.
Speaking of people Abyss has messed up, we’ve got Rob Van Dam on the phone. Mike asks him how the recovery is going, and RVD says that Abyss has set him back a bit and he’s had to train hard to get back to where he was, and nobody knows how to take care of RVD better than RVD does. Taz asks RVD if he was upset about being stripped of the TNA World Title, and RVD says he wasn’t happy about it, but he understood that TNA did what they have to do, and when he comes back he’ll have to do what he’ll have to do because, in his mind, he’s still the champion. Tenay asks RVD if he knows when he’ll be returning to TNA, and RVD says he feels good and he’ll be back in the Impact Zone next week.
Generation Me come out to the ring looking very pleased with themselves. Nick asks if we saw what happened to RVD, and says that if a champion gets injured and can’t defend his title within 30 days, the title gets relinquished. Matt says that after what they did to Alex Shelley at No Surrender, they don’t think he’s going to be around for quite some time. People have to realize that they are Generation Me, and they represent the Me Generation: it’s all about us (meaning them). It took the Motor City Machine Guns about five years to finally just barely win the TNA World Tag Team Title, but Generation Me is not here to pay any dues, they know what they want and they always get what they want, and what they want is for Chris Sabin to come down to the ring and hand them THEIR TNA World Tag Team Title. Chris Sabin comes out by himself and gets in the ring and attacks Generation Me. As you might imagine…yep, there it is, the numbers are too much and Generation Me overwhelms Sabin and…we see Nick Jackson wearing a thong? Whatever, I won’t judge. They put Sabin on the top rope and hit a double DDT, then Matt stands over Sabin while holding up the belt.
Up next: Jeff Hardy faces Kurt Angle to decide who will face Ken Anderson at Bound For Glory!
By the way, the Shore is coming on 10/7!
We have another video package hyping the Angle-Hardy match we’re about to see, and then, it’s main event time!
TNA World Title Tournament – Semifinals: Jeff Hardy vs Kurt Angle
They circle each other and tie up, Angle gets a duck under and takes Hardy to the corner and breaks clean. Hardy with a wristlock and changes it up into an armbar, but Angle armdrags out and gets an armbar of his own and Hardy makes the ropes for the break. Angle with a headlock, Hardy fires him into the ropes and Angle takes him down with a shoulderblock and then a side headlock takeover. Hardy gets to his feet and takes Angle to the corner, but instead of breaking clean he kicks Angle in the gut, beats him down, then runs him shoulder first into the ringpost and follows it up with a baseball slide to drive Angle into the post again. Hardy goes after Angle on the floor and rolls him back in and starts putting the boots to Angle. Hardy with a gourdbuster for 2, then he HITS THE CHINLOCK! Hardy fires forearms down at Angle’s rib that he dislocated at No Surrender, but Angle elbows his way out of the chinlock, and Hardy tries a charge at Angle but Angle moves and Hardy sails through the ropes to the floor and the ref starts counting. Hardy makes it back to his feet and Angle with a slingshot dive over the top onto Hardy. Ken Anderson comes out from the back and sits down with Mike and Taz at ringside as we go to commercial.
We come back just as Hardy and Angle hit a double clothesline and both men are down. The referee starts their count as Dixie Carter sits and watches at ringside. Angle recovers first and nails Hardy with a couple of clotheslines and a backdrop. Anderson is with Mike and Taz in the booth and Taz asks him who he’d rather face, to which Anderson says both of them and neither of them. Angle with an overhead belly to belly suplex on Hardy and then goes for the Angle Slam, but Hardy escapes and hits the Twist Of Fate for 2. Hardy slowly goes to the top and tries a dive, but Angle runs underneath Hardy and hits a moonsault, coming down on his head but covering Hardy for 2 anyway. He pulls the straps down as he begins bleeding hardway as he hooks the Ankle Lock on Hardy. Hardy tries to mule kick his way out, but Angle holds on, but Hardy successfully kicks Angle off the second time and hits another spinning kick, then goes up top and hits the Swanton for a very close 2. Hardy goes up top for the Whisper In The Wind, but Angle moves and Hardy wipes out the referee. Hardy checks on the ref, so Angle comes from behind and hits the Angle Slam as a second referee slides in and counts another close 2. Angle with a second Angle Slam, and Hardy kicks out at 2 again. Angle picks Hardy up and brings him to the corner and starts unloading with hard right hands and…the show is off the air. The match rolls over into Reaction.
Okay, guess we’re going into overtime. Angle with a bodyscissors on Hardy, but Hardy regains his feet and fights his way out. He comes off the ropes and runs right into a knee to the midsection from Angle. Angle HITS THE CHINLOCK, but Hardy fights out again and starts hitting running forearms on Angle, followed by a springboard dropkick for 2. Hardy clotheslines Angle to the floor and goes out after him, ramming Angle repeatedly into the ring apron and then rolls him back into the ring. Hardy tries a wild swing, but Angle ducks under and hits the Rolling Germans, hitting five before finally covering and getting…that’s right, a 2 count. Angle goes up top and tries a flying headbutt, but Hardy moves and goes for the Twist Of Fate but Angle slips out, rolls Hardy to the mat, and catches him in the Ankle Lock again as the second ref revives. Angle changes it up to a heel hook and cranks back on it so far that not only are Hardy’s shoulders down from the pain, but Angle’s as well. Each ref counts one man’s shoulders down to the mat, and it looks like we have another inconclusive finish. Dixie Carter is standing at ringside looking perplexed, and Eric Bischoff comes out to sort this out as we go to commercial.
We’re back and Dixie and Bischoff are talking it over at ringside, and then Bischoff gets in the ring with a mic and says that he’s never seen two competitors who have given it all like they did, and both of them deserve a shot at the World Title, so right now he’s going to book the same three way we started with at the beginning of this show. Angle and Hardy share a moment and a hug, and then head to the back. Okay, as far as I’m concerned, we’re done. Call it…
Double Pin
Source: PWInsider.com
