What's up people and welcome back to pro wrestling review; today I'm going to be giving my Bound for Glory 2013 review. Now I don't watch Tna on a weekly basis anymore I usually just catch stuff from them here and there but I did see last weeks episode. The build up for the show hadn't been too good before that but that episode was good enough that it made me want to watch the ppv. In really liked the segment between Angle and Roode and I though Bully Ray cut and awesome promo on AJ Styles. So I ended up watching Bound for Glory, Tna's wrestlemania...yeah right.
Pre Show:
Ultimate X Match: Chris Sabin vs Manick Jeff Hardy vs Samoa Joe vs Austin Ares
I was expecting this to be a pretty good match but it did not live up those expectations. The match wasn't horrible but it wasn't all that good either. There was a few cool things in it but especially since this was a such a big stimulation match it should have been a lot better.
Jeff Hardy brought a ladder into the ring which was kind of cool but it also kind made the whole match pointless; I mean it looked a lot easier than climbing all the way up onto those big Xs why hasn't anyone else every thought of doing that. There was also no big moment where the competitors climbed up on to the Xs which is usually what this match is known for.
In the end it was down to Hardy and Sabin; Sabin get thrown out of the ring and then he tells his girl friend Velvet Sky to go in the ring and stop Jeff Hardy. She doesn't want to and he ends up pushing her in the ring. She just kind stands there and Hardy tells her to get out of ring. Then Sabin jumps onto the ladder and Hardy isn't able to stop him in time because of the distraction by Velvet Sky. This finish came off very weird; I don't know what it was about it, but the way it happened just seemed strange. So then Sabin's celebrating and Velvet's mad because of him using her to win the match.
This match was ok but I've definitely seen better ultimate X matches and it didn't really to live up to it's expectations especially since this was supposed to be an all star type match. Also Sabin winning I guess could be good. I haven't been watching tna every week so I don't really know how his new heel character is but it just seems really odd to me that they turned him heel. I mean he was on the roll of the his career this summer when he won the Tna world championship and he was a maineventer and was a big face. I would have just kept him babyface because turning him heel kind of makes people forget that he ever won a world title because he doesn't even have the same main event character that he had. It seems like tna kind of wants people to forget about his world title reign because they want AJ Styles to be the one that defeated Bully Ray and the Aces and Eights. It just seems odd, them turning Chris Sabin heel. We'll have to see though at least they're doing something with him and his heel character could turn out to be very good.
Next we had a segment with Bad Influence cutting a promo saying that they deserve to be in the tag team title match even though they didn't win the #1 contendership match on the pre show. Then Eric Young comes out and he says that they need to run; Bad Influence starts beating him up but then Abyss comes out, takes out Kaz and Daniels and shakes hands with Eric Young so I guess maybe they'll be a tag team now.
This segment wasn't too bad, and I'm glad that they got Bad Influence on the show but I really wish they would have been in an actual match because they've been doing some really good and entertaining stuff and they deserve a lot better than just being on the pre show. In 2012 we had Bobby Roode as the top heel in tna, this year we had Bully Ray as the top heel, and I'm hoping that next year will be the year for Christopher Daniels, I'm not sure what they'd do with Kazarian maybe have Bad Influence be world tag team champions of the world and have Daniels be WHC too. I just really hope they get to play a bigger role in tna going forward.
Tna World TT Championship Match: James Storm and Gunner vs The Bromance Robbe E and Jesse Godderz
This match was actually pretty good and Robbie and Jesse end up winning the tag titles. I was surprised by this; I was thinking that the titles would change hands but I was thinking they were gonna go to Bad Influence. Robbie and Jesse have just been booked like jokes especially with their name being the bromance and if tna wants to get serious about them being tag team champions then they need to really build them up and make them look like a serious team. Over all this was a pretty good match.
EC3 vs Jobber
The big debut of EC3 aka Ethan Carter the Third aka Derrick Batemen from nxt. I guess his gimmick now his that he the nephew Dixie Carter. Earlier in the show it showed him backstage with "Aunt Dixie" and they were saying that they're family motto is "we're the Carters the world needs us".I remember liking him in nxt but this sounds like a really dumb and corny gimmick and I wish that they would've given him something better. I'm willing to give it a shot though.
His big debut match was with a jobber whose name I can't remember. This was basically just a squash match and you might know that I'm not a big fan of squash matches at all. For one they're not memorable and two the person that wins it seems unimportant. I don't understand why they think it's better to have someone have a forgettable minute or two match instead of an actual one; I've never understood that.
EC3 gets the win with basically the same finisher that Dean Ambrose uses and that was the end of it. If they wanted this guy to debut at Bound for Glory then at least give him an actual match. I mean this is their wrestlemania and they're going put a squash match on it...really?
Kurt Angle's Tna Hall of Fame Induction
They show a video package of the hall of fame dinner from Saturday night and then Sting comes out to present Kurt Angle with the Hall of of Fame watch. Angle thanks everybody and then says that he respectfully declines. He says that recently he hasn't been worthy of being in the a hall of fame and that when he is worthy of it, then he will accept.
There's a few different possibilities here; this could have been that Angle wanted to do this because he didn't think he was worthy of it since he had just gotten out of a rehab center and maybe he wanted to wait until he has his life straightened up to accept it. If that is the case then I can respect that. The other possibility is that tna wanted to do this for storyline purposes. I'm guessing that it was the second reason or a combination of the two.
I'm not really sure what to think of it; hopefully they can make a good storyline out of it and make it into to a good redemption angle. The thing about it though is that a lot of fans that aren't really plugged in to the Internet with wrestling and aren't reading wrestling websites aren't going to know that Kurt Angle just got out of rehab, so to them this must have been a very very strange segment. They would be thinking he's a 13 time world champion and Olympic gold medalist, one of the greatest of all time, what the heck is he talking about. I wish they would've have had Kurt explain it more fully and say that he was in a rehab center or something like that so that people who aren't really plugged in with everything going on behind the scenes aren't left out in the dark with this.
Bobby Roode vs Kurt Angle
This was a pretty good match from a technical standpoint but no where in it did it really start to heat up a whole lot. That's one of the reasons that I like Daniel Bryan so much, he's one of the best technical wrestlers in the world but he can also really get the crowd into the match and get you exited. Now Bryan does that a lot more than most wrestlers do, when he gets super intense and starts doing tons of kicks and drop kicks and suicide dives super fast. I'm not saying that all matches have to get to that intensity level (even though it would be nice) but at least have some spots in the match that really get the fans exited. I felt like this match didn't have a whole lot of that.
The match ends when Kurt hits an angle slam off the top ropes and apparently hurts himself when he hits the mat. Roode is able to stand up before the ten count and he goes over and pins Kurt to get the win. Then Angle doesn't move at all for the next few minutes and they put him on a stretcher but then he wakes up, gets out of it, and is able to walk out. I was wondering if this was real just because of how strange of a finish it was so either Angle could have actually got knocked out when he hit the mat or probably this was the intended finish. If it was then it was a very strange finish, actually pretty much all of the different type finishes or what ever you want to call them came off wierd at this show.
I'm glad that Roode got the win and I'm guessing this probably isn't the end of their feud. Overall a good technical match but I felt like it never really started to heat up a whole lot. Considering the other matches on this card this one was probably the match of the night.
Magnes vs Sting
This was pretty bad. The match was kind of short for one thing and it ends when Sting taps out to the Kingsmen clover leaf. I wasn't expecting this to be a great match but I was expecting it to be better than this. The general consensus that I've heard on the internet was that this was at best an ok match but I think it was worse than that. I was waiting for it to pick up and get good and it just never did; I like Sting but he's like 54 or 55 and when you get to the point where you can't put on a decent match anymore than it's time to hang it up. I don't want him to be one of those guys that doesn't know when to quit and then they then end up putting a bad reputation on their whole career. Sting needs to be used like Hulk Hogan was as a gm or something like that where he doesn't have to wrestle very much because it's just not working anymore.
They were talking about how this was supposed to be the night where Magnus proves himself and it was basically just a joke of a match. I am glad that Magnus won though and afterwords Sting goes to shake his hand, but Magnus just barely shakes it, laughs, and then walks off. I was thinking judging by last week's Impact that Magnus was going to be turning heel and it seems as though I was right. I'm not quite sure what I think of that, he has been getting lost of fans behind him this year so judging by that it would seem like a good idea to keep him face but his character is kind of bland and I liked him as a heel last year. Also think back to Bobby Roode, my favorite tna wrestler, in 2011 at bound for glory he was doing really good as a face and becoming a big star but then they turned him heel and he became awesome. Far better than he would've been as a face. So if tna does Magnus's heel turn right like they did Roode's then I think it could work out well but this match just wasn't good at all.
Tna WHC: AJ Styles vs Bully Ray (No DQ match)
This match I didn't like a whole lot either. The big thing that happened in it was AJ had Bully Ray layed out on the announce table and then he dived onto to him from inside the ring, Bully rolled of the table though, and AJ went crashing through it. That was a really cool spot. After that Bully starts cutting up the ring and exposes the wood underneath it.
Earlier on in the night it had shown Bully Ray talking to I think three guys that you couldn't see, they were presumably either former or new aces and eights members. During the match Bully calls for them to come out but they don't and since Garrett Bishoff and Kucks had already been taken out by AJ earlier in the match it had to the people backstage that Bully was calling. They didn't come down but Dixie Carter did and she stopped the ref from counting.
In the end AJ wins the match and becomes the new TNA world champion. Not a whole lot happened in this match, besides AJ's move onto the table Bully cutting up ring and AJ's finisher off of the top rope. Besides that there wasn't really anything else notable.
Overall this wasn't a very good show at, the only match that was good was Roode and Angle and even that match I didn't think was super good either. Also the tag team championship match wasn't bad and I guess the ultimate x one was entertaining but it wasn't as good as an ultimate x match should be. Also wasn't the big thing with tna going to only four ppvs a year so that they could build those four up and have tons of time to prepare for them, yeah not so much. The build up to the matches weren't wasn't rthat good and most of them were very predictable. It's basically a joke that tna would compare this to wrestlemania, I mean this would be bad for a regular ppv, tna's impact ppv themed episodes are usually better than this.
I didn't pay for this I just watched it the next day and I'm really glad I watched that way. This was very very bad for the biggest show of year. This was tna's big chance to get me back into their product and get me watching it again on a weekly basis and they failed miserably, in fact they did the opposite of what they should have done.
You can tell me your thoughts on everything that I discussed in this article and/or check me out on twitter: @ENC98, Facebook: Enc Wwe, and Instagram: ENC98. Also on Pro Wrestling Review's very twitter: @PWReview, you can follow that account for information specifically related to this column such as when new articles come out etc. Thanks for reading.
You can tell me your thoughts on everything that I discussed in this article and/or check me out on twitter: @ENC98, Facebook: Enc Wwe, and Instagram: ENC98. Also on Pro Wrestling Review's very twitter: @PWReview, you can follow that account for information specifically related to this column such as when new articles come out etc. Thanks for reading.
