IMPACT: (Apr. 19th, 2010): What a great IMPACT that was... wait. IMPACT?!!

Against my better judgment, I saw TNA Impact... and holy hot damn. This is actually a good show. I mean, seriously. What the fuck happened? Just last week, I watched five seconds of a show that made me shake my head in disgust and stick with the complacent RAW. This week, I find myself constantly switching between RAW and Impact just to see what happens next. I think I might actually go ahead and catch the replay this coming Thursday to watch the whole thing, because from the bits I saw in the second hour... Impact pulled off one of their best shows... well, ever.

We finally get to see the return of Samoa Joe, fresh from his time off getting abducted by ninjas months ago, as he came in, killed everyone in the 8-man tag-team match (which is essentially Wargames without the cage), and walked out. Oh yeah... that's a mean motherfucker right there. Just the way I like it.

We get to see a solid match between Rob Van Dam and Jeff Hardy... a match we've seen in WWE, but still, they put out a good show. Best part? Both guys are still buddy-buddy and even complimenting each other on various bits when they watch the replay. You rarely see that kind of follow-up these days, so that was a rather nice change of pace.

Then we see RVD beat AJ Styles to win the TNA World title... yeah, that caught me by surprise. No bullshit ending, no swerves, no nothing, just a nice clean finish to a solid main event. And the celebration to cap it all off. Absolutely brilliant stuff.

Heck, even the Knockouts title was watchably good.

You see... THIS is the show that they should have been doing when they made their live Monday debut. Top-notch matches, balanced and proper use of both veterans and younger talent, and well-structured stories. If they keep the pace going with shows like this, then maybe there's hope for TNA after all.

I kinda doubt it though. Next week's show has match between Ric Flair and Abyss... and the winner gets both Flair and Hogan's WWE Hall of Fame rings.

Oh well. So much for that.