TNA Wrestling held their Lockdown pay-per-view last night from the Tsongas Arena in Lowell, Massachusetts. Aside from being another effort outside of Orlando, the pay-per-view is considered an “A level show” for the company alongside Slammiversary and Bound For Glory so the event had extremely high expectations. TNA set their live attendance record at the event. For those of you that read our exclusive Lockdown pay-per-view coverage on the site which included my “Richard Reacts” opinions in real time, than you already got a taste of what I am going to talk about in this blog. Unlike my WrestleMania piece I am going to write this blog with the matches in the order in which they occurred.
The show opened with a very weird promo with Mike Tenay in the ring with all of the lights down. Tenay explained the stipulations of the main event and made it clear that if Samoa Joe lost tonight that his career was over. Like I said in my Lockdown coverage, it was downright creepy, and I thought that something had gone terribly wrong. Nonetheless it took us to the opening video package for us to get back to the arena. The bit where JB and Don West were in the crowd was fun and helped with the excitement of the record crowd.
TNA decided to open the show with the Xscape Match for the X Division Title. This was a good move to get the energy going for the event and to set the pace for the night. There were two spots in particular that stood out for me. One was Johnny Devine doing a Shooting Star Press off the cage, he missed and did not go off the top, but I did not know that Devine could even execute a SSP. Another one of the big spots in the bout was when Curry Man Christopher Daniels nailed an insane moonsault off the top of the cage onto Consequences Creed and Johnny Devine. The match was gaining good momentum and came down to Devine and Jay Lethal when it ended abruptly with the eliminated participants keeping Devine from escaping and allowing Lethal to get out. I would have rather seen Curry Man get the title here but they decided to keep it on Lethal. The match was good but it could have gone another couple of minutes with a better finish.
The match that gets my vote for the Worst Match of the Night was the Queen of the Cage bout which ended up being a short Impact style cage match between Angelina Love and Roxxi Laveaux. The match advanced the story line but did not do anything beyond that. All of the Knockouts came to ringside to have a brief fight on the outside which resulted in Love making it into the cage with ease. Roxxi finally got in and we had a very basic match that would have been better suited on free television. I do not understand why they did not cut this match out and give the Xscape match more time.
I still do not know how I feel about Kip James vs. BG James. The match was very basic and could have been on Impact. Kip dominated throughout, showcasing his strength, only for BG to eke out the win at the last minute. After the match they teased that the feud was over with BG extending his hand to Kip. Kip shook his hand only to turn on him to get some heat from the crowd. Not a big surprise here as it looks like this will continue.
Cuffed In The Cage was not the train wreck that I expected. I liked the way that creative booked Scott Steiner by having him come out and dominate only for four guys to team up and get him cuffed to the ropes. Don’t get me wrong, I still think the stipulation is incredibly goofy and hope to never see it again, but that was the right move to get Steiner out of there early. Since the company had the monsters beating up Eric Young in the back prior to the match starting, you had to figure that Super Eric was going to emerge. The spot of the match came when Kaz hit the Flux Capacitor off the top of the cage onto Jimmy Rave. Super Eric made a grand entrance with his crossbody off of the top of the cage onto four guys. I found it funny that it came down to Super Eric and Dustin because I do not feel like Dustin should even be in a pay-per-view match but it advanced the story line. Super Eric is over no matter how juvenile that it may be.
The women’s tag team match was the best match on the Lockdown undercard. I feel like a mark because I had no idea of Raisha Saeed’s past and did not know that she could go. Saeed, better known as Cheerleader Melissa in promotions such as SHIMMER, is the real deal. I fully expected Gail Kim and Awesome Kong to carry the match before it began and was pleasantly surprised when Saeed proved that she is very capable of working with the company’s top Knockouts. Gail had the spot of the match when she hit a hurricanrana off of the top of the cage on Saeed. While Gail may lack emotion in her facial expressions, she is the best female worker in the business today. She worked just as fluently with Saeed last night as she has with Kong in pay-per-views past in what were some of the best women’s wrestling matches that I have ever seen. I wouldn’t mind a Kim/Saeed feud after seeing this one. ODB stayed out of the way and did not do anything spectacular but she ended up eking out the win for her team. Kong was not as much of a factor in the match which was the right call from creative because you do not want her as Champion to appear weak.
Booker T & Sharmell vs. Robert Roode & Payton Banks was a disappointment. I thought that the match was going to be an intense blow off match between Roode and Booker and while they did provide some good spots – the finish was abrupt and ugly. After the match, Roode chewed out Banks in a complete repeat of what has already been done with him and Traci Brooks. As much as I like both Roode and Booker this program was stale before this match. Sharmell getting the pin was – abrupt and ugly. Sharmell is not a wrestler and should not be working matches. Bobby Roode is an up and coming superstar and deserves a more serious run with Booker. I feel that it is worth mentioning that Roode has the best drop kick in the business only second to Randy Orton.
The Lethal Lockdown match between Team Cage and Team Tomko was by far the match of the night. As I wrote in my “Richard Reacts” piece during the pay-per-view coverage, you would have to be a pretty sour person to have not been entertained by this one. The action built slowly with AJ and Christian working together first with the intensity picking up as everyone else entered. The spot of the match was when everyone had entered and James Storm and Christian Cage were working on top of the Lockdown structure. Christian is insane – he did not have to do what he did last night. When Storm’s leg pierced the cage I thought that someone was going to get hurt. I was stunned when AJ setup the ladder on top of the structure with Cage on the table. When Christian popped off of the table I thought that it was a good tease but had no idea what I was about to witness. Christian went on to climb the ladder with AJ already on top to duke it out. To make a situation that was already dangerous as hell even more insane, James Storm climbed the ladder to join the fight. So now we had three men on top of a ladder which was on top of a steel cage that was above a wrestling ring. I held my breath when the ladder toppled and Cage and Styles went crashing through the table. The spot with Storm breaking a beer bottle over Matt Morgan’s head only for Rhino to end up leveling Storm and getting the pin was a good way to finish. After the intense action on top of the structure – it didn’t even matter who won. It also didn’t matter who else was in the match as Sting did not play a big factor. Mega props to Storm, AJ, and Christian although they all three need to be told to never do that again!
TNA did as good of a job as ever with the build for Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe. They plugged the match throughout the event and made me very eager to watch. I told Ryan before the match that on paper it had five star potential if Kurt didn’t get carried away pretending like he was in the UFC. Joe came out serious as ever, determined to win the strap. When Kurt came out wearing boxing/MMA trunks barefoot I smelled trouble. Frank Trigg did guest commentary and Marcus Davis was at ringside with Joe. The match started slow with a lot of worked MMA – a style that I am very much opposed too. The problem with passing a worked match off as a shoot is that you are basically telling your audience that everything that you just watched isn’t real but this is the real deal. That is the wrong message to send and I do not think that the majority of pro wrestling fans or the majority of MMA fans are going to accept it. The match started gaining momentum when they started mixing in the traditional professional wrestling that we all love. The finish was overbooked but that isn’t a big problem with workers as good as Joe and Angle. Angle went for the Olympic Slam, Joe countered, ended up hitting the Muscle Buster for the pinfall. There were a lot of near falls and near submissions which made this entertaining. This match was good – very good – but it could have been the match of the year had it been pure professional wrestling. It ended up taking a back seat to the Lethal Lockdown match but it was still probably the second best match on the show. They had the crowd throughout but that was probably due to the tremendous job that the company did in building towards the match. Nonetheless the time is now for Samoa Joe as the new TNA Heavyweight Champion.
In conclusion Lockdown was a fun pay-per-view and I would recommend watching it. The Lethal Lockdown match itself is worth checking out and you won’t want to miss the women’s tag match or Angle vs. Joe. There were enough good spots in the under card to keep you from going to sleep. Skip right through Queen of the Cage and Kip vs. BG and you’ll be just fine. If you would like to check out my pay-per-view report of the event which is still online with pure match results and my immediate opinions, click here.
Richard can be contacted at richard [at] grayinternet.com
Richard Gray is a professional wrestling journalist and frequent contributor to Rajah.com. He has been covering the world of professional wrestling since 1999 and has had the opportunity to cover ground breaking stories such as the demise of ECW, the WCW buyout, the Benoit tragedy, Bobby Lashley leaving WWE, and more. For more on Richard check out his web site, Wrestling News World.