It’s time to step into the Impact Zone once again as we take a look at TNA’s latest pay per view offering as Rob Van Dam challenged Bobby Roode for the World title in a ladder match in the main event of Sacrifice, shown this past Wednesday night on Challenge here in Britain.
The show began with the first title match of the evening as Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian challenged Samoa Joe and Magnus for the Tag Team titles.
Sadly I won’t be reviewing this particular match. If you don’t know why then have a browse through my archive.
The second title match of the evening saw Brooke Tessmacher challenging Gail Kim for the Knockouts title.
This was pretty good, certainly better than I thought it would be. Both girls put in good performances here, with Tessmacher looking to take Kim down for the fourth match in a row with her very own finishing move.
Kim bailed during the first two attempts before taking control of the match. But after a series of good moves Tessmacher eventually got her wish, taking Kim down with her own eat da-feet finisher. She couldn’t get the pin though as Kim rolled out of the ring.
Tessmacher followed her out to ringside to push her back in, but after Kim kicked out of the pin she made her comeback, and it wasn’t long before she rolled Tessmacher up with her feet on the ropes for the winning pin.
The third title match of the evening saw Robbies E & T challenging Devon for the TV title in a triple threat match.
Although it was well executed it was obvious how this one was going to play out. It was basically a handicap match early on as the Robbies took it to the champion, but after Devon muscled E out of the ring and waited for him to come back in T attacked him from behind.
The big Welshman then took him down with a running power slam, but as he made the cover E stopped the referee’s count, which didn’t sit too well with the big man. As the two of them argued Devon recovered and pushed one into the other in the corner, pinning T with a schoolboy roll up for the win.
As far as the relationship between the two Robbies, it was quickly mended after a hug and a noogie.
The battle of the former Enigmatic A**holes followed as Mr. Anderson went up against Jeff Hardy.
I really enjoyed this one. Everything about this match just seemed so good as they put together some good sequences, with both guys looking in top form.
The best part came when each man tried to put the other away with their own finisher. This only worked twice though. When Anderson went to the top rope for a swanton Hardy countered by bringing his knees up.
The somewhat surprising pin came shortly afterwards. As Hardy held Anderson’s legs in preparation for his patented double leg drop Anderson countered, pushing Hardy down and rolling him up for the pin, although several replays showed that Hardy raised his shoulder before the referee counted to three.
A short time later we were treated to an appearance from the undefeated one himself, Crimson, demanding competition and issuing an open challenge. Eventually the Knockout Tag Team Champions Eric Young and ODB appeared on the stage as the world’s most annoying wrestling personality accepted the challenge.
Young did pretty well at times, pulling off some good moves, but it wasn’t long before the inevitable happened and Crimson took control. ODB tried to interfere and Young made a brief comeback until Crimson thankfully took the win after his sky high power bomb.
Then it was on to the big grudge match between Bully Ray and X Division Champion Austin Aries.
What we had here was the proverbial David versus Goliath battle, and it was a very entertaining match.
After losing the mind games at the beginning Ray took Aries to the woodshed after knocking him off the top rope and into the ringside barrier. But no matter how hard he tried, no matter what he did he couldn’t put the smaller man away.
Aries paid the part of the plucky underdog to perfection, with Ray playing his part equally as well as he became increasingly frustrated with his inability to put Aries away.
When Ray tried to bring his chain into the match Abyss’ brother Joseph Park, who looks like he’d make a killing in a Penn and Teller tribute act, marched down from his seat in the crowd to stop him. The Bully ended up dragging him through the barrier and pushing him to the floor.
Both men then pulled out their finishers, but they still couldn’t get the win, and when Aries countered a power bomb attempt with his last chancery submission hold Ray finally gave up, tapping out to give Aries the win. Nice work all round.
The penultimate match saw Kurt Angle taking on A.J. Styles.
Despite the fact that we’ve seen these two against each other on numerous occasions this was still a riveting encounter.
Angle may not be at the top of his game anymore but he’s still a hell of a wrestler and still capable of great performances.
I know it’s an old cliché out these two were made for each other. The back and forth action was great to watch as they pulled out all the stops, and as seems to be the case with many big matches these days they kicked out of the other’s finisher.
Towards the end Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels came down to run interference and were mildly successful.
A few moments afterwards it as all over as Angle finally synched in the ankle lock for the submission win.
The main event saw Rob Van Dam challenging Bobby Roode for the World title in a ladder match.
This may not have been the best ladder match I’ve seen but it was still quite entertaining.
Both men put in good performances here, and once again RVD seems to be looking a lot better than he did when he first arrived in TNA, and once again Roode proved why he’s so good as the hated heel champion.
The ladders, yep, all two of ‘em, were put to good use throughout, and we even had a chair brought into the equation at one point. No tables though.
The ending was almost disastrous for the challenger. As Roode climbed one side of the ladder RVD jumped off the top rope with the intention of landing on the ladder. But a slip through the rungs put his leg at an awkward angle, and although he was able to finish the match he couldn’t stop Roode from grabbing the belt for the title retaining win.
In conclusion – this year’s Sacrifice was a very entertaining show. Those match I could reviewed varied in standard but overall the show was pretty good, with the Austin Aries/Bully Ray encounter the match of the night for me.
So after all that the only thing left for me to say is that TNA Sacrifice gets the thumbs up.
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