As usual, there was a lot going on during Thursday night's episode of TNA Impact.
Raven made his surprise return. Mick Foley's face was burned as the result of a fireball thrown at him by Raven. Desmond Wolfe laid out Kurt Angle – again. TNA world champion A.J. Styles was pinned by Samoa Joe in a non-title match. TNA world tag team champions The British Invasion were pinned by Beer Money in a non-title match. Team 3D turned heel. D'Angelo Dinero turned babyface. Traci Brooks' disability was acknowledged for the first time on TV and became the basis for an angle. Scott Steiner attacked Bobby Lashley in his hotel room while a horrified Crystal Lashley looked on. And TNA ripped off Raw's guest host concept by having Super Dave Osborne involved in the show.But what really stuck out was the appearance of Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart. Actually, what stuck out the most was "The Anvil's" bulbous belly. I know Neidhart was never svelte, but good Lord.
How fat was he?
Neidhart was so fat that it looked as if Natalya was about to gain a sibling on national television. He was so fat that his profile made Alfred Hitchcock looked like Michelle McCool – if she hadn't eaten for a week. People talk about Matt Hardy and Mickie James gaining weight, well Neidhart was so fat that he looked like he had swallowed Hardy and James. Neidhart was so fat that he moved slower in the ring than The Great Khali on a slow-motion replay. I'm here all week.
It was an embarrassment to put someone who looked like that on TV and it was absurd to have him beat one of the company's talented young stars – "Black Machismo" Jay Lethal – clean. So much for Lethal's challenge to the "legends." By the way, referring to Neidhart as a legend is a real stretch. And speaking of a real stretch, Neidhart's tights must have a heck of a sturdy waistband.
I'm not sure what TNA is thinking here, but I have a few ideas.
The most obvious answer is that Hulk Hogan is up to his old tricks and he's bringing in a cast of WWF has-beens who will bury the young talent. I don't buy it. If I know Vince Russo, he's trying to work the smart marks into believing that's the case. You know, another one of his infamous worked shoots? Perhaps the ultimate goal of this angle is for Lethal top shed the Randy Savage impersonator gimmick. If so, then I suppose the ends justify the means. While I do find Lethal's act entertaining, he has no chance of moving up the card unless he takes on a more serious persona. A heel turn might do wonders for him, as well.
Other thoughts on Thursday's show:
More on Neidhart: I was amazed that the fans at The Impact Zone were cheering Neidhart and booing Lethal. They also were chanting "You still got it" at Neidhart. As the WWE announcers would say, it was Bizzaro World. ...
TNA is doing a great job of making Wolfe look like a major star, but I'm not sure they needed to do yet another beat-down of Angle. Sometimes less is more. I think Angle cutting a promo and Wolfe appearing on the video screen would have sufficed. ...
I found it a bit ironic that Wolfe said he was healthier than Angle. The whole reason that Wolfe is in TNA and not WWE is because he failed WWE's medical exam. I wonder if that was another one of Russo's lines aimed at the smarks. ...
I'm not a big Super Dave Osborne fan (he's no Ozzy, that's for sure), but I didn't have a problem with him being on the show – other than the fact that his voice started to annoy me after a while. I did think that it was stupid to have Osborne and Jeremy Borash doing comedy when talking about Foley being rushed to the hospital after having his face burned. That's one of the big differences between WWE and TNA. If a major babyface had been injured like that on a WWE broadcast, the announcers would have been somber and it would have been referenced throughout the show. In TNA, it's made light of and treated as just another angle on an episode that had so many of them. ...
When talking about Hogan, Angle said "The Hulkster" knows what works when it comes to wrestling. Yeah, he knows what works for Hogan. ...
It was good to see Raven back. I've always been a fan of the character, and I like him, Dr. Stevie and Daffney as a group. ...
Either wrestlingobserver.com's report last month that Daffney had suffered a broken arm at the Bound for Glory pay-per-view was incorrect or she is a fast healer. She did suffer a concussion at BFG. ...
Team 3D are awesome heels, but like I've said before, the motivation for them and Rhino turning – their belief that the younger guys are trying to take out the veterans – is the exact same angle TNA did with the formation of The Main Event Mafia (and Team 3D and Rhino were on the opposite side in that one). Russo has gone to the young vs. old well way too often throughout his career. When I worked at WCW, I remember asking him one time about him copying WWF angles. His response was that those WWF angles were his idea and you can't copy yourself. ...
Brother Ray referred to Hernandez as "an uneducated Mexican with no green card." I don't think you can say that. ...
I said several weeks ago that TNA was probably going to have to turn Dinero babyface since the crowd was cheering him. He's definitely a lot more entertaining as "The Pope" than he was as Elijah Burke in ECW. ...
For those who were confused about the angle with Brooks, she suffers from Erb's Palsy, which affects the nerves in her arms. I'm not surprised that it has been incorporated into a story line, but I didn't understand why Mike Tenay and Taz were saying that Alissa Flash had "crossed the line" by targeting Brooks' arm in their match. Isn't going after an opponent's weakness an acceptable thing to do? It looks like the idea here was to turns Brooks babyface, but the crowd booed her when she attacked Flash after the match. ...
I'm not really feeling the Styles-Joe-Daniels main event program. Perhaps it's because the on-again, off-again friendship between Styles and Daniels is so played out. ...
When Foley told Osborne that he could book a match involving the Knockouts "as long as they're dressed appropriately," I figured it was just a shot at WWE toning down the divas' attire in the company's new family-friendly era, but then I saw The Beautiful People showing a lot less skin this week. Look, I don't ask for much, but I'm begging TNA not to keep Velvet Sky in long pants. ...
I thought I had seen it all when Lacey Von Erich botched a chokeslam a couple weeks ago, but she looked awkward just locking up on this show. Any match involving LVE makes an Alicia Fox-Kelly Kelly contest look like Jack Brisco vs. Dory Funk. On a positive note, I thought it was funny how Sky and Madison Rayne stopped LVE from hugging Awesome Kong after the heels defeated ODB, Tara, Taylor Wilde and Sarita in an eight-woman tag match. ...
Steiner's pipe shots on Lashley looked incredibly weak, but he made up for them when he smashed him in the head with a lamp. ...
I liked the six-man X Division match in which The Motor City Machine Guns and Amazing Red defeated Homicide, Sheik Abdul Bashir and Kiyoshi. ...
Eric Young had a nice line about Hogan: "I was a huge fan of his – when I was 3."