Two Live Reports From The TNA Lockdown PPV
Credit: Chris Cummings and Pwinsider.com
Fresh from the only arena in the whole world that serves RC Cola products exclusively .....
The crowd was bigger than Smackdown a couple of months ago ... All of the lower bowl, minus the camera area, and 1/2 of the top bowl were full.
Crowd was unbelievably loud and responsive for just about everything except Hernandez and Morgan. My son was starting to look tired, and I asked him if he was falling asleep on me. His reply was "It is Matt Morgan.". Not good at all, but I agree with him. His offense looks weak and his punches obviously are soft and short. Hernandez needs something different ... His time in AAA did nothing for him. Everytime I saw him on AAA TV he not no crowd pops, and tonight was no different.
Most shocking sight: LOTS of OJ/EY "I Love Tag Teaming" t-shirts in the crowd, and the crowd ate their act up. The shirt is just offensive enough to sell so I see this sticking around for awhile.
Very few Jeff Hardy shirts-I saw maybe five total. Saw more Rey Mysterio shirts than Jeff Hardy shirts.
Angle and Jarrett stole the show, hands down. Monster pop for Angle and great heat for Jarrett. Somehow Angle lived through this. Crowd gave both a good ovation out of respect. Kurt deserves a long vacation after that performance ...
Having to follow Angle/Jarrett was about impossible, but Sting held his own. Hogan got a massive pop, and the crowd was shocked Sting won.
What can be said about the main event other than WOW. Everybody had their working boots on tonight, and the crowd ate it up. Daniels earned a full time contract and full time spot in Fortune. Drop the ROH TV Title and come back full-time. He shined tonight. I think that the crowd really wanted to see the Beer Money entrance, but still ate them up, especially when Storm hit Flair with the beer bottle.
Overall this was the best card in Cincinnati in years. I heard no complaints from anyone in the crowd, and everybody seemed to be having a great time. Merchandise was selling, and everybody was alive.
Randall Brown sent in this report:
Just got back from Lockdown. Overall, up until the Angle-Jarrett match, I have to say a lot of the show felt kind of "flat" live. As for the crowd, it actually seemed like there was a lot of older WCW fans there. The biggest entrance pops of the night were for Hogan, Flair, Sting, and Scott Steiner. Even Eric Bischoff's music hitting got a surprisingly big pop. That being said, once he started talking, it felt like the standard boring IMPACT opening segment and the crowd just crapped all over it, to the point that I have no idea what he said because you couldn't hear him AT ALL over the boos. As I said, the first several matches came off kind of flat with a couple exceptions (Pope/Joe and the finish of Morgan/Hernandez). The Xscape match started off hot, but when all the crowd favorites (Suicide, Lethal, Red, Sabin) got eliminated right off the bat, the crowd really cooled off.
Angle/Jarrett was the match that really got the crowd back into it. After Kurt's moonsault they went nuts, but I don't think many people in the crowd actually noticed that he missed Jarrett. They didn't have the Jumbo-Tron on and it was on the other side of the ring from where most people were seated, so I think most people missed what was really a scary moment. The finish with Jarrett getting the win really kind of sucked the wind out of the crowd. The title match was fun and the crowd popped big time for the double Scorpion Deathlock and the double Mic Check. But just as soon as the match started heating up, Hogan hit the ring and next thing you know, it was over. Lethal Lockdown was great and the crowd went crazy for Daniels going off the roof and when AJ's music played. The finish actually got a lot of boos though because people didn't want to see Flair tap. Flair had gotten one of the biggest pops of the night and they were chanting for him before he entered. Honestly it felt really weird because I didn't expect a show where people were cheering more for the old guys than the younger stars.