I will go on record and say that Bound for Glory has been the best PPV this year, even surpassing this years WrestleMania. From the opening Ultimate X bout to the TNA World Championship match, the crowd in Atlanta was non stop loud showing their support. Even better the matches themselves were excellent and I have to give the competitors a thumbs-up for a job well done. If anyone ever had a doubt in their mind that Bound For Glory is TNA’s biggest PPV of the year, buy the replay, get yourself a copy of last nights show by any means and you will fully understand how well this show was put together.
BFG starts off with Triple-X against Latin American Exchange in an Ultimate X Match. This was one hot opener and one wild ride from start to finish with all 4 competitors. Hernandez and Senshi are two of the most stiff mofo’s in wrestling and they showed it here in the opening contest. On the flipside, Homicide and Elix Skipper showed as to why they are so darn athletic in that ring with some of the crazy moves they were pulling off. There was a few times where I thought that those cables were going to snap with just Hernandez hanging off of them. We didn’t see any crazy Skipper stunts tonight, but 2 memorable parts for me were the neckbreaker by Homicide on Skipper off of the cables and Skipper dropkicking Hernandez as he was hanging off of the cables. We almost saw 2 Gringo Killers, 1 off of the structure and another off of the top turnbuckle. I like both teams, but was glad to see LAX pick up the win here to become the number one contenders. Hopefully this spells a tag title soon for them.
Up next we have the Fight for the Right match, which could have been good since it’s an interesting concept, but turned out horrible during the first half. We started out with 16 competitors outside the ring, Jimmy Rave, Lance Hoyt, Havoc, Shark Boy, Petey Williams, Kaz, Motor City Machine Guns, Sonjay Dutt, Voodoo Kin Mafia, James Storm, Eric Young, Robert Roode, Chris Harris, Junior Fatu. Their goal was for 8 of them to make it back into the ring, which would turn into a battle royal setting with the final two competitors than wrestling each other in a singles match. To take this one step further, we also have a second part to this match, as guys were getting eliminated they would be getting seeded for a tournament that would take place on IMPACT with the winner getting a World Title shot. Why did the first half turn out not to be so good, well you can tell that there were many guys standing outside the ring without an opponent trying to keep them from jumping into the ring…..but instead of trying to get into the ring they were standing around and it looked very bad. Guys like Lance Hoyt, James Storm, and Chris Harris just looked confused out there. The final two came down to Young vs. Roode, which I wasn’t too thrilled about since this feud just never seems like it will ever go away. Maybe they will be our two finalists in the tournament also. Young picked up the win here, which I think was a mistake and it should have gone to Roode. Roode is the type of guy that should be getting elevated to the top soon and hopefully this is his launching pad. Again, the concept was great, the execution was disappointing.
After the dud of the night, we get Team Pacman vs. A.J. Styles & Tomko for TNA Tag Team Championship with an added twist. With Pacman not being able to get into the ring, they added a new member Consequences Creed whom is a knockoff of Apollo Creed from Rocky, LOL! This match actually turned out to be good, and this Creed kid could really wrestle which is good if TNA has signed him. I’m glad that Killings wasn’t out there by himself again, only bad part of the match was when Pacman was going to throw the money at Styles and the money ended up going all over the ring and instead of Hebner making the 3 count we had Hebner pocketing the money. Things like this in a title match are just plainly idiotic, but good match otherwise and it’s nice to see Styles and Tomko with the belts.
Up next we get title match number two of the evening, Jay Lethal vs. Christopher Daniels for X-Division Championship. I like both competitors, but Jay Lethal really needs to ditch this Macho Man gimmick, it is doing nothing but hurting his persona and he is such a good wrestler. The action between Daniels and Lethal was non stop and they had some exciting moments in the ring that left you breathless, especially with Lethal’s finisher the Lethal Combination off of the top turnbuckle. Amazing is all I will say about this match and many reversals + false finishes. I will agree with Keller here that this match should have been the last match before the main event on this card, it would have helped bring back that importance to the title and this would have been a better lead-in to the World Title match than the Monster’s Ball.
What looks like the conclusion of this feud, we had The Steiner Brothers vs. Team 3D in a 2 out of 3 Tag Team Tables Match. This feud has been one strange feud that started in May/June leading to Slammiversary and seems to finally of concluded here at BFG. I was very excited and anticipating this feud since I grew up watching the Steiners and of course T3D, so this was a dream feud for me. With Scott Steiner getting hurt in June during a match that almost cost his life, this has gone on a bit longer than expected. This feud has been one of those where these guys wrestled one month, took one month off, and then the trend continued. The one thing that was missing from this feud was the tag team titles, I would have loved for these 2 teams to exchange the title back and forth between June to October………….but no, TNA had to run the Joe/Angle and Team Pacman experiments. Back to the match itself, I think the match wasn’t bad and it was your typical tables match. MCMG interfered which leads me to believe that they might be feuding with T3D next, which were the cause of T3D losing here. I hope that these two teams meet a few more times, except with the tag titles on the line next time. Where do the Steiners go from here? Where does T3D go from here?
Its time to crown our first TNA Knockout Women’s Champion in a Gauntlet Battle Royal. I’m not a big fan of the naming of the title, but it wouldn’t be TNA without doing that. It’s like WWE taking the Women’s title and naming it the Diva’s title. LOL! This contest turned out much better than expected, since all the women in the ring know their way around the ring and could put on a good match, even Ms. Brooks. We had Ms. Brooks, Gail Kim, Shelley Martinez, Jackie Moore, ODB, Angel Williams, Awesome Kong, Christy Hemme, Roxxi Laveaux, and Talia Madison. I think the standout in this match was Kong, she literally due to her size took out all the women one by one upon her entering the ring…..but things changed when all the women ganged up on her and with a team effort eliminated her………this is when things got a bit gross, there was a wardrobe malfunction as she fell out of the ring exposing her belly and both boobs. That was a nightmare if you ask me. It came down to Kim vs. Laveaux, whom is another nice looking woman that I wish would just ditch that stupid voodoo gimmick that makes her look ugly as sin. They had a good match between each other with Kim coming out the winner and new champion. I really hope they keep around some of the new knockouts + I look forward to a Kong vs. Kim match. My daughter keeps on calling Kong, Big Momma V. LOL!
Drum Roll please………………..Match of the Night…….I’ll go as far as Match of the Year Candidate……………..Samoa Joe vs. Christian Cage with Matt Morgan Special Guest Enforcer. TNA please open your eyes, these two have some very good chemistry together and if you want your main event scene to be torn up and the roof blown off of arenas, these are your two men that should be feuding over the TNA World Title in the future. Pure wrestling and fantastic ring psychology really set this match apart from anything else on tonight’s show. I was even surprised that Matt Morgan didn’t interfere as I thought he would attack one of these two guys for a feud, but their holding off which is a good idea.
Raven vs. Rhino vs. Black Reign vs. Abyss in a Monster’s Ball Match. The one match that I was dreading the whole night, actually turned out to be ok. My biggest complaint is that this Monster’s Ball was missing the caged up for 24 hours gimmick that gave it that aura of violent type matches. With 3 out of the 4 competitors in this match, these guys are TNA’s hardcore division….Rave, Rhino, and Abyss. I wish it would have just been a three way match instead of also including Black Reign, whom I still feel has brought no value to TNA. This match was all over the place, there were times where I thought that Raven and Rhino killed themselves with some of the stunts that they attempted. It was another brutal match, I look at Rhino and Abyss trying to outdo each other with the hardcore antics as they are trying to be the next Mick Foley. Abyss finally picks up the win here after giving Raven the blackhole slam on glass and tacks, I was afraid to see Raven’s back afterwards which they didn’t see + Raven looks like is back to good shape. Good for him.
The main event for BFG…Kurt Angle vs. Sting for the TNA Championship. TNA turned out another good main event for BFG, but one thing that holds it from being great is the over booking that was done at the end of this match. Their booking team confuses the hell out of me with their wacky booking in the main event matches, that they need for some reason to overbook these with drama beyond the norm. The whole Nash, Karen Angle, Kurt Angle mess is one thing that was crazy because yet again they tried to dupe the fans into thinking that they were against each other only to unite together at the end. Then the weirdness starts again this week on IMPACT with all 3 not getting along. LOL! Besides the Nash interference, ref bump, and Karen Angle distraction the match turned out to meet expectations. It was nice to see Sting win his second World Title in TNA, but his first TNA World Title totaling that to 9 World Heavyweight Championships to his resume.
This years Bound For Glory was great compared to past iterations from top to bottom except with the “Fight for the Right” match being horrible and “Monsters Ball” being ok, but not great. All the competitors brought their “A” game for TNA’s big PPV of the year. If you haven’t seen this yet, I recommend this very highly.
