TNA Victory Road 2007

Date: July 15, 2007

Location: The Impact Zone in Orlando, Florida

Announcers: Mike Tenay and Don West

The Setup

Vince Russo is writing, so we have feuding partners in the main event, as Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle can’t separate from one another and are challenging Team 3D for the tag titles. Angle was the TNA world champion, and Joe was the X Division champion, and those titles were on the line as well. To make everything messier, either Joe or Angle could win both tag titles with a pinfall and pick their partner to be champions. If this sounds stupid, it’s because it was. 

The Business

The Observer had the show doing 15,000 PPV buys, the lowest of the calendar year. This company was getting a million-plus viewers on Spike TV, so just over 1% of its audience converted to paying customers. With foresight being 20/20, this match was a bad idea. It’s almost as if no one cared or believed either of Team 3D would win the world or X titles, or either Angle or Joe winning the tag titles by themselves. 

The Results

Ultimate X Gauntlet: Christopher Daniels def. Jay Lethal, Puma, Homicide, Sonjay Dutt, Petey Williams, Shark Boy, Elix Skipper, Kaz, and Senshi in 18:48. The guantlet rules sound like more stupid Russo bullshit on paper. Still, it probably helped more than hurt here because a guy would come in fresh and instantly start hitting his spots. The crowd was megahot for this one. The biggest spot of this match was probably Kazarian hitting a cutter on Daniels while CD was hanging from the X structure. We eventually got to the point where everyone started hitting their finishes, which seemed to be a rule for the X division in this era. Senshi and Skipper started working together to allow Daniels to slide across the contraption to grab the X, thus reuniting Triple X. Daniels got a brief nothing program with Sting, and we’re right back to four years ago. Oof. The match was a fun spectacle, though. ***1/4 

Voodoo Kin Mafia (B.G. James and Kip James) def. Basham and Damaja in 07:03. Roxi was introduced to chants of “What is that?” from the crowd. I hate this feud so fucking much. It’s all wrong for so many reasons, and I don’t really care enough about it to type any of them. The highlight of the match was Kip James leading the crowd in boring chants. BG hit Damaja with a chair for the win. Roxxi gave Christy a dominator after the match. I can’t believe how long they kept this feud going. I’m guessing Billy Gunn felt the same since he was encouraging the crowd’s hostile chants. *

James Storm def. Rhino in 10:26. They were doing a story where Rhino was honest about his past drug and alcohol use, in addition to his father’s as a kid, and Storm was being an asshole about it. Have any of these storylines ever worked once in their history? But of course, the guy booking this show is the same one who booked Hawk falling off the Titantron. This match was a short but intense brawl. They started on the outside and in the crowd, then got into the ring. It seemed like they were rushing due to the time constraints, but it was still mostly fun. Storm ended up with the win after hitting Rhino with the beer bottle, as they were now just overdoing that gimmick to death. After the match, Storm toed up a bloody Rhino and poured beer down his throat. Jesus. **1/4 for the match. 

Motor City Machine Guns (Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley) def. Jerry Lynn and Bob Backlund in 08:44. This Backlund run is still going on? The crowd tried to be polite because he is a legend, but eventually there were boos because no one wanted to see a guy work a 1970s style. The stuff with Lynn and the Guns was fine, but also short overall. Backlund ran in when the heels were beating on Lynn and threw some forearms straight out of 1975 WWWF. The ref just stood there and then went to get him out after quite a bit of time, allowing Nash to come in and hit Lynn with the big boot. *1/4

Eric Young and Gail Kim def. Robert Roode and Ms. Brooks in 08:17. It’s Roode and EY, so the work was good and the match was fun. Gail was a good addition, and they did everything they could to minimize Traci’s involvement while also having her add to the match without doing a lot of traditional wrestling. They had a spot where EY did a dive onto Roode on the floor, and Gail followed with a pescado and looked like she landed right on Track’s head. The babyface comeback featured a lot of heel miscommunication spots because the Roode/Traci split was coming next. Gail gave Traci a drop toehold onto Roode, and Bobby dropped a big elbow on Brooks, which led to the finish. After the match, Young pantsed Roode, exposing a pretty embarrassing thong. This wasn’t a classic, but it was good and what you want to see in a match like this. The crowd loved this. ***

Christian Cage def. Chris Harris in 13:58. I’m not the biggest Chris Harris fan, and this match was a pretty good example of why. He was in there with someone who consistently had good matches, and it felt like guys just doing moves early. There was a shoulder-block spot where Harris was supposed to run into Christian, and it was as light as a feather. They did the obligatory near-falls, and some of them were at least believable, until Dustin Rhodes wandered onto the stage and watched the match. The ref was distracted, and he hit his old friend, Harris, with handcuffs so Christian could win. Once the announcers were putting over that Dustin once teamed with AMW, you knew what was happening because Russo booked this shit. I have no idea why they were trying to elevate Harris while simultaneously setting him up for a Dustin Rhodes program in 2007, but again, it’s Russo. The match was blah overall. *3/4 

Sting and Abyss def. A.J. Styles and Tomko in 15:33. They didn’t do any of the Abyss hardcore stuff you might expect, and it was a solid match. There was a sequence where everyone, either on purpose or by accident, kept hitting dives to the floor. They did double heat on the babyfaces and kind of subtly hinted at the idea that Sting and Abyss may not be able to work together, but all was well, and Abyss pinned Tomko with a black hole slam. **1/2 

TNA World Heavyweight Champion Kurt Angle (C) and TNA X Division Champion Samoa Joe (C) def. TNA World Tag Team Champions Team 3D (Brother Ray (C) and Brother Devon (C)) in 18:25. The match was weird because Joe was the only babyface, so even when they did double heat on the babyfaces, the crowd wasn’t really into Angle cleaning house. Team 3D teased dissension with Brother Ray walking out, only for him to come back in with a low blow on Joe to help Devon. Overall, I would call the work solid, but unspectacular. It was a Vince Russo main event, so we had to have an overbooked finish. The Steiners came out to fight Team 3D, including Scott laying out Brother Ray with the pipe, but Angle broke up a pin attempt by Joe because everyone hates each other in Vince Russo’s world. 

The Recommendation

Thumbs down. There’s too much goofy shit on this show to make it worth the time, and nothing was remarkable by any stretch of the imagination. There’s a pattern with TNA shows: the fans in the Impact Zone seem to like it early, but grow tired of it as it goes along. Generally, I feel the same.