TNA Victory Road 2009

Fun fact: Upon subscribing to the Global Wrestling Network service that houses all the TNA/Impact stuff, the first show that I looked up was Victory Road 2009. Yes, the one with the infamous MINUS. FIVE. STARS. match between Sharmell and Survivor Jenna. Now, for the record, I have seen the match plenty of times when it was on Youtube through "third-party intermediaries" for lack of a better term and perhaps that should've been a sign as to whether it was worth tracking down the rest of the show.

And so here I am; having just watched the show mere moments ago and wondering to myself what the fuck did I just watch. Sharmell vs Survivor Jenna should've been a warning sign that the show was off... but I didn't heed its warning and instead... let's get this over with.




Angelina Love defeats TNA Knockouts champion Tara (formerly Victoria in WWE, now owns a pizza place) to win the title... despite the fact that Tara's feet were on the ropes. Tara then beats up Angelina Love for good measure. Back in the day, TNA usually had a strong Women's division with compelling matches that usually proved superior to the forgettable WWE Divas division... this match was sadly not one of those compelling matches. I've heard that Angelina got a concussion during this match and that might explain why this match wasn't all that great, but in any event, not a very promising start to a PPV... but no minus stars.

Matt Morgan defeated Daniels... yes, as in Christopher Daniels, who is just Daniels for some reason. Now we know where WWE got their one name fetish from. This was a thing that happened and let's just leave it at that, shall we?

So now we get the whole Abyss vs. Stevie Richards recap, where Stevie was Abyss' psychiatrist for ten years... and apparently, not a very good one since he was busy being Raven's lackey, leading the Right To Censor, hitting JBL with a stiff chairshot, and other things that don't come to mind at the moment. And this whole package leads me to wonder what drugs Mr. Russo was consuming at the time when he concocted this whole deal.

Anyway, Abyss annihilates Stevie Richards in short fashion. It's not a pretty match nor is it a particularly good match, but at the very least, it was short. And that's probably the best compliment I could give a match of this utter caliber.

IWGP Tag-Team champions Team 3D (the Dudley Boyz) defeated the British invasion (Magnus and Doug Williams) in a pretty dull and boring tag match.

Survivor Jenna defeated Sharmell. This match sucked. It's been heavily documented how much this match sucked. And as such, nothing I could say could probably compare to what's been said before... and even then, I've got nothing to say except... well...

Kevin Nash defeated TNA Legends champion AJ Styles to win the title in a slow-paced match. Also... well...

Booker T and Scott Steiner defeated TNA Tag-Team champions Beer Money to win the titles. I'd much rather watch Scott Steiner do complex mathematics for twenty minutes that rewatch this match. I was alright with it until the old guys won.

Hey, at least I'm somewhat consistent.

Samoa Joe (who joined the Mafia for some reason) defeated Sting in a match that happened. Hey, look! A young guy beat an old guy... and only after some other old guy showed up to provide inspiration for Joe to power out of Sting's offense. This signified the TNA debut of former ECW World champion and Smackdown color man TAZ, who would be a manager of sorts before taking Don West's place on the announce table. I may have to rewatch some 201X TNA shows to re-acquaint myself to Taz's TNA commentary resume, but in any event, Taz showing up for this match was a "meh" moment for me. As for the match itself... eh, I've seen worse... on this show no less... and beyond.

Kurt Angle defeated TNA World champion Mick Foley to win the title in a match that had no drama because even without having seen any episodes of Impact leading up to this show, I knew Angle was going to win since booking of prior matches have been leading up to the Main Event Mafia stable winning with a clean slate. And as such, the Main Event Mafia stable would lay claim to all the championships in TNA and become the equivalent of Evolution in WWE... exception Evolution had SOME young guys, while the MEM has Samoa Joe and a bunch of old farts.

Final verdict... this show sucked. I'm sorry I ever watched this.

Fuck this company... circa 2009.