More Notes From Tonight's Impact Taping (Contains Spoilers): Kurt Angle In Rough Shape, Abyss
Thanks to WrestlingINC.com reader Nathan Topping for sending in these notes from tonight's Impact Wrestling taping in Manchester:
I was at the TNA Impact tapings tonight at Manchester, and was planning to write in with results for you before I got home and saw you already had them :)
I was reading them through them, here are a couple of other things I think deserve a mention, so figured I'd send this in:
- At the end of the tapings there was a second match taped for Xplosion: Eric Young vs EC3. EC3 went over in an OK match, and then Kurt Angle came out to the stage. Kurt was limping very badly, and just spoke to the crowd a bit before getting Young to give EC3 the Angle Slam and Anklelock for him. He looked like he could barely move going off again, and a fan I spoke to who'd attended the fan interaction told me that he'd been in a wheelchair at that. I wasn't expecting to see him wrestle given previous reports, but was shocked at just how bad he looked.
- The Abyss promo (2/13 taping) basically consisted of Abyss ripping Young for making him Abyss again, how he couldn't stand being the monster because of all the things he's done as the monster, and how Young never should have got into his business. The segment closed with Abyss leaving saying he was going to "fix this", which came off very much as 'get rid of Abyss again'. Young was left alone in the ring shaking his head looking disappointed. It definitely wasn't friendly, and I was somewhat confused by the outcome given we've only just got Abyss back.
- The Roode promo for the 2/20 taping didn't come about because of Dixie messing with his contract. Roode came to the ring and cut a promo about how he was done with TNA and was leaving. He basically said his goodbyes and thanked the fans, and ripped on Dixie a bit for not keeping promises regarding title shots when he helped Magnus lately. Dixie then came out and told him he couldn't leave because he was under contract. The Team MVP vs Team Dixie match at Lockdown is for ownership of TNA, so she said that if Roode led her to victory she'd give him 10% of the company, and told Roode to get his lawyers to draw up a contract to that effect. Roode accepted. The fans were hugely pro Roode in this segment despite him being a heel, and very vocal about him not accepting Dixie's offer. This was really the only part of the night where the fans broke kayfabe and didn't boo the heel.
- It's worth noting that while the ladder match on the 2/13 show was good, they REALLY messed up by having the briefcases so low above the ring. You could reach them by pretty much stepping on the first rung of the ladder, and as a result when false attempts were made to grab the briefcases they had to put the ladder way out of position very obviously. Didn't spoil the match, but it did look a bit silly.
- The arena was probably about 3/4 full for the tapings. But it looked like some of the upper tier was tarped off, so that estimate is for the areas that were open only. I was quite surprised the open areas weren't sold out. Crowd was loud and good throughout the night though, so it didn't spoil the show.
- Re-iterating your reporter's point, I was amazed at how much Magnus and Spud got booed out of the building. Bar myself about about 5 other fans in my vicinity, it seemed like the entire arena were ripping into Magnus particularly at every opportunity. Gunner was HUGELY over in the main event just because he was facing Magnus – "paper champion" chant was very common. There were a lot of Magnus shirts in the audience though, and the heat didn't feel like anything personal, just the arena toeing the line when it comes to booing heels and cheering faces. I was expecting Magnus to be very over in England though.
Biggest pops:
1) Samoa Joe (incredibly over, every time he was seen)
2) MVP
3) Gunner (due solely to the fact that he was facing Magnus)
Biggest heat:
1) Magnus / Dixie heel faction
2) Bully Ray (thank you Liverpool shirt)
3) Probably Chris Sabin I think