6/15 TNA in Essex, England: Detailed report with Samoa Joe vs. Abyss, comparing the TNA house show experience to WWE house shows, Total Nonstop Borash

TNA house show report
Essex, England at the Brentwood Center
Report by Lawrence Kasmir

The show was two and a half hours long with a twenty minute interval which in my book was way too short, I was expecting a three hour show at least like WWE or even longer in my ROH experiences.
 
The arena was a genuine sell out, with 2,000 extremely passionate fans for the TNA product, and everyone seemed to know all the wrestlers. I was not a TNA fan, I’ve tried watching it a few times on UK TV but have mostly seen backstage skits (which aren’t good) rather than any actual wrestling and so have flipped the channel, but have seen most of the stars on WWE/ROH shows and I read yours and (PWTorch.com's) James Caldwell’s reports so I feel I know who most of them are. My friend (who is also a Torch subscriber) is a WWE fan and knows nothing about TNA, so we both went along as sceptics looking to be won over.
 
The show started just after 5 p.m. with some random person coming to the ring to warm the crowd up for a couple of minutes and then introduced the ring announcer Jeremy Borash, who has his own video and entrance music, and then handed over the mic to him while kneeling down like Borash was some rock god. I was thinking that Lillian Garica would never get this treatment.

Borash proceeded to get the crowd going for about five minutes, offering backstage passes to the fans who cheered the loudest. Perhaps I am a cynic but this seemed desperate to me and really cheap, my friend and I were exchanging significant looks. Compared to my experiences at WWE, Lillian comes out welcomes the fans, sucks up a little, explains what’s going to happen with TV etc and then announces the first match in a couple of minutes.

I feel she accentuates the product, rather than Borash who seemed to think he was the embodiment of TNA. He’s also not cool which doesn’t help, and just makes the entire show seem like they are sucking up to the fans rather than just trying to wow them, he also spoke for 5 minutes while I’m waiting for my first match.
 
1. Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin beat Sonjay Dutt and Petey Williams. The match was probably about 10 minutes. There was nice athleticism but nothing really stuck with me.
 
Borash then spent several minutes talking to the fans and pumping them up, which wasn’t necessary as they were all very excited.
 
2. Awesome Kong beat Gail Kim to retain the TNA Women’s Title. This was also about 10 minutes and was the best Women’s match I’ve seen live from a move perspective, which doesn’t say much. However, I saw Mickey James beat Beth Phoenix for the Women’s Title in April at the Raw taping and they were so much better at controlling the crowd and getting the crowd into the match rather than these two who played to the crowd rather than getting the crowd to follow them.
 
Borash then spent a few minutes asking us what games consoles we owned, and said on September 2 (and then asked us on what day) the TNA game comes out, he then asked us to turn our attention to the video screens for a short video on the TNA video game. This segment must have taken five minutes plus, when all I wanted was wrestling.
 
3. LAX (Homicide & Hernandez) beat James Storm and Robert Roode in about 15 minutes. This was an enjoyable match, made better as the two heels actually wrestled like heels, getting heat from the crowd on Homicide for the hot tag. Hernandez hit his big dive to the outside on the two heels which got a “this is awesome” and “TNA” chant.
 
4. AJ Styles beat Jay Lethal and Doug Williams in about six minutes. This was the shortest match of the night, which was disappointing as AJ is one of TNA’s biggest stars. After the match, Borash spent a few minutes introducing Doug Williams to the fans and saying he will wrestle in the World X Cup later this month. It was all very nice, but wouldn’t that make sense before the match? Quite a few people knew who Doug Williams was as he is a local British wrestler, but if you are going to spend several minutes talking about him, it might be best before the match starts.
 
Borash then spent a good five minutes or so on a segment where fans got backstage passes to meet the wrestlers. A fan in the row in front of me got one. Then he announced a quick 20 minute intermission (as opposed to a slow one I guess)
 
Dixie Carter was out during intermission and was signing things and taking photo’s with fans at ringside.
 
Borash came out to start the second half and said how great the fans were again and that they were going to film some footage for the TNA website so we should cheer loudly which we all did, but by this stage my friend and I thought it was enough and we’d like to see more wrestling.
 
He then announced Dixie Carte,r who came out. Her mic wasn’t working I think she said how great all the fans in the UK were again. By now I was really thinking enough already, how about you entertain us rather than keep talking to us. Interestingly she said they were happy to perform in front of us, rather than wrestle in front of us.

She then said she just found out on her blackberry that TNA are coming back to the UK in January and would be performing in the M.E.N arena at Manchester, the N.E.C in Birmingham, somewhere in Glasgow I didn’t recognise, and Wembley Arena in London. All these arenas are 10,000 seats plus so I’m going to be interested to see how well they do on ticket sales. This segment took about 10 minutes.
 
Borash then introduced “the most infamous referee in wrestling history Earl Hebner” for the next match. I was perplexed why TNA were announcing a referee, also considering he had been out for a match already. I guess this is the same company which has an announcer for the announcer.
 
5. Booker T beat Rhino in just under 10 minutes. There was a lot of stalling and playing to the crowd in this match, and the action was very WWE-ish rather than the quicker stuff I had scene previously. Rhino came out to ECW chants, he got on the mic to say, “You mean TNA” which I thought was the best pro-TNA brand thing they did all night. However, my friend and I thought they were the experienced pro’s rather than what felt were the wannabees wrestling for the rest of the card. Unlike everyone else playing to the crowd for pops, they had the crowd in their hands and could gain the same reaction for much less.

Rhino was pointing to the different blocks of the audience to get loud cheers, Booker T kept teasing the spinarooni and then flipping the crowd off to get boos, Rhino did a spinarooni to get a top. It was an average match but probably the most fun. Booker was also the most over heel (even though he did get some cheers too). To my friend and me it just showed the difference in ability to work a crowd between the ex-WWE workers and the Indy scene graduates on the rest of the card.
 
Jeremy Borash then said in six years TNA has grown for a weekly PPV company to Spike TV, (he missed the part about Fox Sports Net and then streaming live shows onto the internet) and so wrestlers began to notice them, including this man and then introduced “possibly the greatest wrestler to ever step inside a wrestling ring," I was expecting Ric Flair, an Olympic gold medallist and some other superlatives then Kurt Angle came out, looking much thinner then when I last saw him, and I would say arguably less healthy.

Angle said people ask him why he left WWE (he got lots of “what” chants, which was funny, he then said he hates Stone Cold, which got a lot of laughs). He said it’s because he wanted to work for a company where the wrestlers wrestle for the fans. He said something to get some “F--- you, Vince” chants and then left, because he was too injured to wrestle tonight. That was probably about five minutes as well.
 
Jeremy Borash then announced the main event with a 60 minute time limit and for the TNA world title.
 
6. Samoa Joe beat Abyss in just under 15 minutes. Borash then did full match introductions again with the ref announced, and the 60 minute time limit again, which I didn’t understand. Joe got the biggest pop of everyone, lots of “Joe” chants, “Joe’s going to kill you”, “Ole" chants for the Ole kick which he did with Abyss sitting on the chair. Joe was dominating the match, came across as a massive star, having the crowd in the palm of his hand. Joe hit some nice stiff chops, some of his signature flying kicks and was in control.

Abyss staged a comeback, then Earl Hebner got bumped, Joe got a visible three count on a school boy, Abyss hit the black hole slam, got a four count, then a second ref came out and Joe kicked out at two. Abyss then hit the second ref with a torture rack slam, then rolled out the ring and got the title belt. He was going to hit Joe with the belt but Joe reversed and kicked the belt into Abyss’s face with a running drop kick. Earl Hebner then came too, to count the three. Joe celebrated with the belt and then left, and then Abyss left as well.
 
Borash came out to say that the VIP ticket holders and backstage pass fans should stay for the meet and greet with the wrestlers, but for the rest of us, we can meet Shelley and Sabin outside. The show ended just after 7:30 p.m.
 
Notes: Overall, I would say it was really average. We weren’t blown away. In media interviews before the tour Kurt Angle said that all the top stars would be there. Where were Christian, Team 3D, Scott Steiner, Kaz, Shark Boy? That was really disappointing for me. The finish to the main event was so disappointing. I really wanted to see Joe essentially squash Abyss and hit all his signature moves, but the match had ref bumps and Joe didn’t hit the corner STO, the Musclebuster or the Kochina clutch.

At least when I saw Raw with the main event of JBL vs Triple H the match ended in a DQ after six minutes, but Orton, JBL and Triple H all hit their signature moves and Triple H pedigreed JBL and Orton to send the fans home happy, here I wasn’t sent home happy at the end, just disappointed, especially for a houseshow, I wanted to see the champ win convincingly.
 
Also your correspondent for the house show in Coventry said that Borash knows how to work the crowd. He does, like a youth leader at a summer camp. He must have spoke over the course of the evening for 20-25 minutes at least, which was longer than any single match, and over twice as long as I saw A.J. Styles for. All his cheerleading and sucking up to the crowd seemed so desperate. For a promotion which calls itself Total Nonstop Action, there was a hell of a lot of talking!
 
Also very few wrestlers stood out. Booker T, Rhino, Samoa Joe and Homicide were the ones who really knew how to contact with the crowd through the little things. Shelley, Sabin, Dutt and Williams really didn’t. My friend who didn’t follow said that apart from Joe, none of the other non-WWE wrestlers really came across as stars.
 
At the show TNA really tried to put themselves across to the fans, and to me seemed really cheap. Borash is not cool and he was the embodiment of TNA tonight, and that really hurt their efforts. Overall they came across as a more athletic WWE-lite, and that didn’t impress us.
 
Coming home in the car, we felt underwhelmed. It was a short show, and it seemed like the wrestlers were on the whole were not going all out, which is fair enough considering they have wrestled four days straight in a foreign country, but unlike the ROH show we went to we were not blown away. ROH came out, and put on their show knowing they would win us over and they did. WWE is WWE you know what you get, you see the big stars, the production values, the WWE style wrestling and the big signature moves and you go home generally happy.

TNA seemed to be begging us to like them with Borash always trying to get an already hot crowd hotter and constantly talking. Also my friend (who cares a lot about production values and music, hence why he’s not an ROH fan) said the music was rubbish and the entrance videos were all the same and very five years ago WWE. I can’t disagree with him.
 
Overall, nothing was bad, but nothing really stood out either, disappointingly none of the wrestlers really won us over either. In my opinion TNA should have cut out all the talking and tried to win us over with the wrestling, which would probably have improved our enjoyment of the show. We’ll see whether we go again next time, though I guess it will be much of the same.