TNA Weekly PPV #5
Date: July 17, 2002
Location: Nashville, Tennessee (Tennessee State Fairgrounds)
Announcers: Mike Tenay and Don West
The Setup
Here we are in week five, and Jeff Jarrett was supposed to face Malice in a number one contender’s match for the NWA title, despite Jarrett never winning a match in the promotion. After last week’s X Division elimination match, AJ Styles was defending the title against Low Ki, in an early homage to ROH.
The Business
We don’t have much data on PPV buys from the weekly shows, but we do know they were reportedly in the 10,000-12,000 range at the beginning of this endeavor. This was the last show at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium, as the company moved to the Fairgrounds (Asylum) permanently after this show.
The Results
NWA World Heavyweight Championship #1 Contender’s Ladder Match: Sabu def. Malice in 13:23 ***
K-Krush def. Norman Smiley in 3:21 *1/2
The Flying Elvises (Jorge Estrada and Sonny Siaki) def. Christopher Daniels and Elix Skipper in 9:49 3/4*
Hardcore Midget Match: Puppet def. Meatball in 6:14 NR
Francine vs. Jasmin St. Claire ended in a No Contest in 1:24 NR
TNA X-Division Championship Match: A.J. Styles (C) def. Low-Ki in 10:36 ***1/2
Scott Hall def. Brian Lawler in 8:17 **
Notable Happenings
Jarrett got into a squirmish with Scott Hall to start the show, who famously vowed revenge last week over the phone. This led to Bill Behrens kicking Jarrett out of the building, thus removing him from the number one contender’s match. They are building the asshole heel to get a title shot, and, frankly, being screwed repeatedly until getting there.
Jarrett appeared after the main event, dressed as a paramedic, and started creaming everyone with chairs, including Scott Hall, who was already doing his second stretcher job in the last three weeks. None of the Jarrett build in this role makes any sense whatsoever other than him owning part of the company. Making him the top heel and wrestler does from a business standpoint, but not like this. No one ever wanted this version of Jeff Jarrett before or after it happened.
When Malice still wanted to compete after Jarrett’s removal to start the show, the lights went out, and Sabu appeared to a massive pop. Sabu and Malice had a somewhat clunky ladder match, but because it’s Sabu, it also worked better, with that wild feeling that anything can happen. Malice took a wildly dangerous bump off the ladder through a table at ringside for the finish. After the match, Malice destroyed Sabu with a chokeslam through a table with help from the New Church. All of this worked really well with the live crowd.
K-Krush did the best promo in the company’s early history, anointing himself the Truth. Killings talked about being held back in WWE. Still, unlike Brian Lawler’s consecutive stupid weekly promos on his father, this type of shoot angle actually seemed like it could benefit the performer and TNA. Killings was incredible here.
The Dupps probably got their first legit babyface reaction in their tenure when they attacked the Elvises after the latter’s messy tag win.
Speaking of the Elvises, Sonny Siaki was doing commentary while his tag match with Estrada was going on, saying that he was only out for himself. Almost every tag team there seems to hate each other.
Jasmine stormed to the ring and called out Francine because they had fought backstage. They did the whole catfight thing, and Francine spanked Jasmine’s ass in a thong. The Blue Meanie saved his girlfriend, Jasmine, and DDT’d Francine, who did a stretcher job with Ed Ferrara, commenting on it as if Francine were seriously hurt. We haven’t seen this much raunch and drama mixed since the ill-fated Showgirls. All of this was made ten times worse by the fact that they did a stretcher angle with Hall near the end of the show. It should also be noted that Killings hanged Smiley with a belt after their match, and then they did the same to Hall when Lawler and Truth got to Hall. Everything was being repeated.
Jerry Lynn did a strong in-ring promo on his partner, AJ Styles, about paying dues, only to eventually be laid out by Styles. Lynn returned with a SICK spear as Styles was walking to the back after his title defense. Lynn left Styles lying with a cradle piledriver. The feuding partners thing is played out and bullshit, but as far as this particular cycle goes, it hasn’t been bad to start. Both men seemed to get over in Nashville.
Puppet, the hardcore midget, was caught by interviewer, Goldilocks, masturbating in a trash can. Seriously. And this was before a match that went over six minutes.
The Best, The Worst, The Underrated
The Best: The Division as a whole between the title match and the angles with AJ and Jerry Lynn. It remains the most consistently good thing on these shows.
The Worst: Jorge Estrada was so indy and looked so bad here. It’s not surprising he wouldn’t be around much longer.
The Underrated: The New Church. It doesn’t seem like there’s really anywhere for them to go with the group, but they’ve also had strong early performances.
Backstage Notes
Francine and Jasmine were both gone from the promotion after this. Both were there to show a little skin, and there weren’t any long-term plans for either.
Rating: 6.0/10.0
There was still a lot of bullshit on the show, like masturbating midgets, a stretcher angle after an ass-paddling, and Jeff Jarrett being booked in a way that would make 1997 Steve Austin jealous. But overall, the show had a good flow, some good wrestling, and some good-great mic work.
The Video
