TNA Turning Point 2004

The second ever monthly TNA PPV is known for two things; it's the last TNA appearance of Macho Man Randy Savage, who would fuck off soon afterwards... and I really can't blame him, really. And the other thing is for showing footage of that one time TNA wrestlers went over to visit some WWE guys who were shooting a commercial for an upcoming PPV at Universal Studios, which is where TNA was holding all their shows at that point.

Just to get it out of the way, they teased the airing of the footage by having a couple guys do bad impersonations of Vince McMahon and Triple H trying to stop TNA from airing said footage and being total fools of. This was making light of the fact that WWE actually did have a problem with TNA possibly showing this footage on their programming. And once they showed the footage, almost all the WWE guys' faces were blurred out so you couldn't tell them apart unless you paid attention to their tattoos. It all came across as really lame - about as lame as any time you saw AEW take a cheap shot at WWE these days.

Now that we got that out of the way, let's check out the rest of this Turning Point PPV.

Team Canada (Eric Young & Bobby Roode) defeated NWA Tag-Team Champions 3 Live Kru (BG James & Ron Killings) via outside interference from fellow Team Canada member Johnny Devine hitting the ol' Road Dogg with a hockey stick to win the titles. This was a perfectly acceptable tag team wrestling match, which is already off to a better start than Victory Road. My hopes have been lifted slightly here.

Sonny Siaki, Sonjay Dutt & Hector Garza defeated Kid Kash, Kazarian & Michael Shane in a surprisingly entertaining six-man match that didn't rely on endless high spots. Good, fun match. Already better than Victory Road.

Monty Brown defeated Abyss in what was dubbed a Serengeti Survival Match, which is a hardcore match (naturally) that can be won by pinfall, submission, or throwing someone into thumb tacks. Sure enough, Monty tossed Abyss into some tacks and that makes him the winner. Silly ending aside, this was a fun little bit of mindless brawling.

Johnny B Badd and some guy named Empire Saint (or is it Empire Stait? Fuck knows) defeated the Disco Inferno Glenn Gilberti and Johnny Swinger with outside interference from Jacqueline in a thing that happened. Not great, not bad... just "meh."

Diamond Dallas Page defeated Raven in another thing that happened... leaning more towards the bad sad. DDP and Raven had some fun matches in WCW, so if you need your fix, go watch those instead.

X-Division Champion Petey Williams defeated Chris Sabin via brass knux to retain the title. Great match, lame finish. Also, two matches with Petey Williams where Scott D'Amore interferes for the cheap win and I'm already fed up. Can't imagine dealing with this shit on a regular basis.

AJ Styles, Jeff Hardy, and Macho Man Randy Savage (kinda) defeated Jeff Jarrett, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall in a six-man whatever the fuck this was supposed to be. So apparently, Macho Man was "kidnapped" at some point, which left AJ and Hardy alone to take on the Kings Of Wrestling in a handicap match. Some stuff happens before Savage finally shows up, gets tagged in, throws a few punches, and just kinda sits on Jarrett for the pin after ol' Double J tried for a sunset flip. Man, what a bunch of carnies. You promise us Macho Man in the main event and he not only does fuck all - though, to be fair, it didn't look like he could do much even if he wanted to - but he only shows up for the last couple minutes of the match. What a pile of shit this was. Thank fuck this wasn't the main event.

Then the "controversial" and "scandalous" WWE tape plays. I've seen more scandalous footage from the Irate Gamer than there is here. Quite frankly, I'm amazed they didn't close the PPV with this shit.

And in the main event, America's Most Wanted (James Storm & Chris Harris) defeated XXX (Christopher Daniels & Elix Skipper) in a Steel Cage match where the losing team has to split up. Very smart move to have these guys close out the show because this was an EXCELLENT main event match. After the bad match at Victory Road, these guys came back and had an absolute banger of a cage match here with some great spots (that cage walk into a Hurricarana was insane) and good action. This more than makes up for the utter tripe that preceded this and caps what I thought was a largely enjoyable PPV.

Yeah, you drop the matches with the old-timers and you have a hell of a show on hand here because the good stuff on Turning Point was pretty good and the bad stuff... wasn't. AMW/XXX tag match is one worth checking out, if you can.