By Will Pruett

Dot Net Members are listening to Jason Powell's 59-minute audio review of TNA Victory Road. They will be listening to his Q&A audio show later today, and his WWE Raw audio review later tonight. Join us on the ad-free version of the website by signing up for membership via Prowrestling.net/amember/signup.php.

- Given the circumstances that TNA was working with (James Storm's recent ankle surgery), the Bully Ray promo to begin the show followed by the short match with Storm was well done. Storm looked strong going into Lockdown. Bully Ray will be more than able to get his heat back with one or two promos.

- I hope TNA is not delivering Devon because of a chant that is meant to get under the skin of Bully Ray. Yes, crowds say they want Devon, but that is only because they dislike Bully Ray in the right way. Don't confuse one man's heel heat with another man being over.

- Eric Bischoff is in a feud with Jeremy Borash. What wrestler will this get over?

- While it does seem that TNA is trying to do the right thing and push Austin Aries like he is a big deal, putting him and the X Division Championship in the second match of the night does not accomplish that goal. Why not position the X Division Championship as the semi-main event?

- The Twitter obsession in wrestling has been taken to new extremes. Austin Aries tweeting during a match was humorous and is not a bad heel tactic, but the rest of it is exactly what frustrated people when WWE's obsession was at its height. Trending suddenly became more important than the matches happening.

- I'm mildly surprised that TNA hasn't been trying to get an "I Want Impact Wrestling" hashtag going.

- Zema Ion and Austin Aries have some good chemistry in the ring. Their match was well paced, fun to watch and included an interesting crowd dynamic. I'd be happy to see a little more from these guys.

- Interestingly enough, the fans were behind Austin Aries for the entire match and even after. He had to overcome a cheating heel and he even walked out of the ring playing to the crowd for a very audible round of applause. Was this the babyface turn for Aries? While it would be a fine idea, I tend to think it would be a little too soon.

- It seems that every division in TNA could use the Motor City Machine Guns. I'm willing to bet that they'll end up in the tag division, but Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin could also standout in the X Division, the TV Title Division and even in the World Championship picture if they did it the right way.

- It looks like TNA finally figured out that Crimson comes off as kind of a jerk and is willing to embrace that. Good for them.

- As good as Samoa Joe and Magnus have been as a tag team, they were not the focus of the tag title match. Joe and Magnus looked weak because Crimson was almost able to beat them on his own. This is not how you treat a tag team that is actually getting over.

- I'm going to assume that Matt Moran said "duck you" to Crimson.

- Why did TNA just read every live tweet of Victory Road instead of actually having commentators call a match or interviewers conduct interviews? If Twitter can do their jobs, why pay them?

- Robbie E's open challenge segment took a little too long. He killed a ton of time at ringside and it was not drawing enough heat to actually be interesting.

- Devon winning the TV Championship will be good to pop the TNA crowd, but the title just does not matter. Also, doesn't the open challenge series normally go on for a little while effort ending? Robbie only had one other open challenge before Devon beat him.

- Trending on Twitter is not an accomplishment, please stop treating it as such.

- While Austin Aries and Zema Ion had a successful heel vs. heel match, Gail Kim and Madison Rayne did not. The crowd was confused by the two women and could not get behind either. This was technically a fine match, but the lack of crowd involvement made it quite unexciting.

- I normally complain about the Impact Zone's crowd, but on this show they were pretty decent. The matches that deserved credit and decent crowd heat got them. Perhaps TNA just got the right combination of tourists in this month.

- What was actually accomplished by Mr. Anderson an A.J. Styles going over? The babyfaces now have one up on the heels. In fact, Kazarian was pinned by Styles, which seems like it should be the match we're building to. Why should I watch them in a cage now?

- Here is something that concerns me about TNA's current booking: there are no logical feuds going into Lethal Lockdown that lend themselves to the eight or ten man match. Could Team Hardy vs. Team Angle be in our future? Would TNA sacrifice the opportunity to have them in a singles match? Would Team Styles vs. Team Daniels be big enough to matter?

- The Jeff Hardy eye paint is just creepy. I love Hardy's face paint gimmick, but the eyes on his eyes are a little too much for me. Also, was Jeff Hardy supposed to resemble a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle designed in 2004?

- Kurt Angle and Jeff Hardy never fail to disappoint with their chemistry in the ring. Their matches in TNA have all been in the good-to-great range. Victory Road was no exception as these men took their time in the ring together very seriously. Sure, the feud was weakly built with an angle that Angle stole from Mick Foley, but the match delivered. Hopefully the feud in the coming month follows suit.

- Wrestling fans, stop chanting "This is awesome" and start actually cheering for someone in the match. It makes no sense to just cheer for the match itself.

- How is it that we are getting a repeat of the Bound for Glory finish? TNA needs to use a finish like that one once every couple years (especially in high profile matches), then put it in a box that is not to be opened for a long while. This is the only way to keep them from overusing convoluted and frustrating finishes repetitively.

- The worst thing about TNA's dirty finishes is that they require the referee to be in such an awkward position to count the pin. In Angle vs. Hardy the referee couldn't even see Hardy's shoulders from whee he was. What a bad finish to an otherwise great match.

- Sting's face paint looked pretty cool here. I'm not a big fan of the sloppiness of the Joker-style paint, but combining it with the crow look was a solid choice.

- I'll say it again, the crowd made the main event seem better than it was. That is a compliment. It was a decent match that felt good or great because of how into it the fans were. This was a great environment at the Impact Zone.

- I had hoped to see Bobby Roode leave the main event of Victory Road looking at least mildly strong after beating Sting. Instead, he won a match against an aging semi-retired wrestler when that wrestler accidentally hurt himself doing an offensive move. Bobby Roode could have been a great heel champion, but he is just another disappointment from a creative standpoint.

- What does it say about TNA when "Cowboy" chants were overwhelmed by "Hogan" chants. The upper management doesn't seem to want new stars to get over. Their content with this show look like, feeling like and featuring the same talent as WCW in 2000. If only we were getting that ridiculous triple cage next month.

- Where exactly was every babyface or semi-honorable heel on the TNA roster when Bobby Roode was attacking Sting and Dixie Carter? Couldn't Taz have tried to do something? Did everyone leave the back early? This was an angle that seemed to be only halfway thought out. Saying that there are logic gaps in TNA is not surprising, just frustrating.

This was a decent show with an odd ending. From the pin in the Angle vs. Hardy match to the end of the show, everything was just a little bit off. The closing angle defied logic and that made it frustrating to watch. Bobby Roode has to garner cheap heat for himself because the creative effort in TNA has failed him. Instead of allowing their champion to win any matches in his title reign clean and of his own volition, they have used every screwy finish known to man.

Still, this show is less ignorable than most TNA pay-per-views. It felt like something of consequence happened, which is surprising. TNA at least tried with this show.

Let's do some good old fashioned talking about this show! Feel free to email me at itswilltime@gmail.com or to follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/itswilltime.

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