TNA Slammiversary 2007

Date: June 17, 2007 

Location: Nashville, Tennessee — Nashville Municipal Auditorium

Announcers: Mike Tenay & Don West

The Setup

Time for the company’s annual birthday show, always headlined by the most convoluted ladder match concocted in the bowels of Vince Russo’s brain – King of the Mountain. I’d review all the rules, but why make myself angry before this starts? Let’s say, “TNA lol.” 

This was to crown the first-ever TNA World Champion since the company was ditching its NWA roots. We had Angle, Joe, AJ, Christian, and Chris Harris (subbing for Jeff Jarrett) in the multiman affair. We were supposed to get a “dream match” with the Steiners vs. Team 3D, but Scott suffered a mothetfucking TORN TRACHEA in Puerto Rico that nearly cost him his life, so we got a replacement. Daniels finally got the Sting match he had been hinting at in storyline for months. 

The Business

The show was reported at 22,000 PPV buys, which was only good for ninth out of twelve company PPVs in 2007. That’s pretty abysmal since this show has always been positioned as the second biggest snow of the year behind BFG, but King of the Mountain wasn’t a draw in the slightest. 

The Nashville Auditorium was packed, with Prowrestlinghistory listing 3,500 people in attendance. I’m assuming there was a lot of paper, like when they ran Nashville weekly, but leaving the Impact Zone and changing their crowd and scenery greatly helped this show. 

Results

-Rhino & Senshi (w/ Hector Guerrero) defeated The Latin American Exchange (Homicide & Hernandez) — 8:25 ***1/4

-TNA X‑Division Championship — Jay Lethal defeated Chris Sabin (c) — 8:52 ***1/2 

-Frank Wycheck & Jerry Lynn (w/ Kyle Vanden Bosch) defeated James Storm & Ron Killings (w/ Jackie Moore) — 8:52 **

-Bob Backlund defeated Alex Shelley — 3:46 *1/2

-The Voodoo Kin Mafia (B.G. James & Kip James) defeated Basham & Damaja (w/ Christy Hemme) — 2:47 3/4*

-Eric Young defeated Robert Roode (w/ Ms. Brooks) — 9:09 ***1/4

-TNA World Tag Team Championship — Team 3D (Brother Ray & Brother Devon) (c) defeated Rick Steiner & Road Warrior Animal — 6:39 *3/4 

-Sting defeated Christopher Daniels — 6:33 **1/2

-No Disqualification Match — Abyss defeated Tomko — 13:54 *1/2

-King of the Mountain Match for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship — Kurt Angle defeated Samoa Joe, A.J. Styles, Christian Cage & Chris Harris — 19:21 ***3/4

Snap Bumps

-Angle won the intense ladder match, which was only really hurt by the convoluted rules. However, fans had grown accustomed to the match’s silliness, so they overlooked it. 

-Angle and Joe were involved with each other almost every PPV without fail once Kurt showed up. Jesus. Enough. You sign your most legit WWE star and immediately run out of good ideas/opponents for him. 

-I’m sure the internet fans lost their collective shit in the Daniels/Sting match because it was so short, but I thought it was fine. Should Daniels be beating Sting? Probably not? Do you want a back-and-forth ROH match between the two? Probably not either. Instead, we got a short match that looked like a kid randomly picked two action figures out of his box. I was okay with that. 

-Road Warrior Animal took Scott Steiner’s place in the tag. The odds must have been awful that they could find someone less mobile than 2007 Scott Steiner, but they did. The work wasn’t good, but the same fans into the Steiners as a team were into the surviving member of the Road Warriors here. It was perfectly fine for what it was. 

-Jay Lethal ended Chris Sabin’s X Division title run. The match could have used more time, but it was still really good. Sabin played the cocky young prick very well and had some kick ass matches during this run. Lethal was much more over than Jerry Lynn when he was working his program with Sabin. 

-Rhino & Low Ki vs. LAX was a great fit together for a match since the teams were so similar in style and makeup. 

-Frank Wycheck was solidly okay in the celebrity (if you want to call it that) match, but the workers did an excellent job carrying things. I wish we got a Truth vs. Lynn singles out of this. Their brief interactions were the best I’ve seen of Lynn during this return run. 

-Alex Shelley was entertaining enough to go out there and have an okay match with 2007 Bob Backlund, but Bob’s run didn’t add much to the promotion and made little to no sense. Shelley was being backburnered while he was super over with the TNA faithful.  

-Abyss vs. Tomko wasn’t much. They got in a big fall off something high and a lot of weapons, but the stuff in between wasn’t good, and it just felt like they were filling time to get to the next spot. Tomko took a blackhole slam on broken glass for the finish. 

-The Eric Young/Robert Roode stuff is so simple, but damn good. Roode is such a dick, EY is so strong at playing the loveable babyface, and the in-ring was so damn good. It’s funny how people would have pegged Petey Williams as the future star in the old Team Canada, but these two lapped him. 

-Add one more shitty match to the Christy vs. VKM feud. Jesus, this is still going on? 

-Lance Hoyt turned on VKM after the match, and Christy leapt into his arms, so maybe we’re finally moving past this bullshit. 

-They aired an emotionally heavy Jeff Jarrett interview before KOTM, not too long after his first wife passed. He was very emotional. It may have been better to air this during Impact because it was A LOT, but I get why they feel like they wanted to play the video in Nashville. 

-Chris Harris was the Jarrett replacement in KOTM. He speared Christian off the ladder to help set up the finish. Even in Nashville, he struggled to connect with the crowd. Storm really was the charisma of that team. 

The Verdict

Thumbs up. The wrestling wasn’t a blowout, but strong, and moving this to Nashville did the show a great favor because the audience helped a lot. This was worth a watch.