horrorfan_1986

TNA Victory Road
November 7th, 2004

20 Man X-Division Gauntlet Match
For the very first match in TNA's 3 hour ppv era, they showcase the X-Division. This is pretty much a 20 man Royal Rumble with only 60 seconds in between entries. Frankie Kazarian starts off after losing a match on iMPACT. Sonjay Dutt comes in at number 2. To make a long recap short, the match is your typical battle royal, but with every X-Division wrestler hitting one of their trademark moves. You get your typical X-Division guys like Michael Shane, Chris Sabin and Shark Boy, but you also get the indy stars of Matt Sydal, Spanky, and Jason Cross. But that's not all, you also get some of the has beens from WCW's Crusierweight division with Hector Garza, L A Park (Damn legal battles) and Psicosis. I personally don't understand the logic behind this match. You're trying to showcase what your company (at the time) was so well known for. Yet, most of the guys in this match have only wrestled in TNA a couple of times. What's the point of showcasing other people when Michael Shane, Kaz, Dutt and Sabin aren't properly showcased? Even though he's a heel, Kaz lasts the entire match, but finally loses to Hector Garza. This would be the beginning of Garza's push that would end with him getting in legal troubles and not being able to return back to TNA. Personally, I feel they should have just held a 4 man Ultimate X Match (Kaz, Shane, Dutt and Sabin) with the winner going on to Turning Point to challenge for the X-Division championship. It would of accomplished the same goal of showing what the X-Division can do, but actually focus time on the people who deserves it. Zero psychology, but some cool looking flippy moves. Oh and there's even some D-Ray 3000, if that doesn't make you want to watch this, nothing will. 27 Minutes. 2 Stars.

Kid Kash, Dallas and The Naturals vs The Truth, Erik Watts, Johnny B Badd and Pat Kenney - 8 Man Tag
Okay so Dallas is of course Lance Hoyt, Watts is the untalented son of Bill Watts, Johnny B Badd is the Ex Mr Sable, and Pat Kenney is the failed face run of Simon Diamond. Your standard multi man tag match. For being inactive for several years, Badd actually puts on a good match. Everything is going well until everyone gets involved. It becomes a mess with no one able to hit their moves properly. The end comes with Johnny B Badd hitting a top rope Hurricana on Andy Douglas with Killings hitting his split legged Pedigree on Douglas to pick up the three. Nothing special, but it's not painful to watch. Go figure, the only man still employed by TNA these days is Lance Hoyt. Kash and The Naturals deserved better than this though. 5 Min. 2 1/2 Stars.

A limo pulls up, but the driver claims it isn't Nash. Douglas still wants to talk to the person.

Mascarita Sagrada vs Pirata Morgan - Midget Match
Your typical midget match where it looks VERY choreographed. Idk, the fans seemed to enjoy watching it. Nice "Get them a ladder" chants. Teney does what he does best by bringing up Rey Mysterio and always mentioning the WWE. It gets old Mike. Oh and Mascarita wins. 3 Minutes. 1 Star.

Scott Hall comes out and does the "Hey Yo" to get some cheap pops. I thought he was supposed to be a heel. Hall informs us that Nash won't be here. Go figure, out of both members of the Outsiders, Nash no shows.

Team Canada (c) vs 3 Live Kru - NWA Tag Team Titles Match
Team Canada is of course Eric Young and Bobby Roode while 3LK are BG James and Konnan. Road Dogg stars off with his New Age Outlaws remixed intro. James plays the face in peril for most of the match. Memorable moment comes when Konnan gets the hot tag and kicks Roode in the gut. Only problem being was that Konnan's foot was 2-3 feet away from hitting Roode's gut. Probably one of the most noticeable botches I've ever seen. In the ring, Roode hits the Northern Lariat on James, but misses on Konnan. D'More tries to interfere, but Killings chases him away. Back in the ring, Konnan hits the face a face buster to pick up the win. For a Konnan match, it was fairly good. With this being such a big night for TNA, I'm confused as to why they put these two teams in the tag titles match. 3LK was the number 2 face team for over a year while up until they won the tag titles, Team Canada wasn't even the number 2 heel team. So you have the battle of the number 2 teams for the tag titles. For big events you should really book your title matches with the best you have to offer. Neither team was the best they could offer. 7 Minutes. 2 1/2 Stars.

Roddy Piper's In the Pit with Piper - Special Guest: Jimmy Snuka
Having Piper hold a In the Pit with Piper is a great idea. However, having his guest be Jimmy Snuka is a terrible idea. Piper tells Snuka that he's regretted hitting Snuka with a coconut for years now. It's finally eaten away at him enough that he allows Snuka to return the favor. Okay, problem is they've already resolved the problem. Hell, Snuka was on Piper's Survivor Series team in '89. But just in case Piper still felt bad about it, it still doesn't make sense though. Just the year before, they renewed the rivalry in the WWE with Sean O'Haire and Rikishi. Now Piper suddenly feel bad about everything? Okay...sure. It's bad enough Mike Teney mentions the WWE every chance he gets, but now they're using a 20 year old storyline for their ppv? If you're going to steal another companies storyline, don't leave things out. It just makes both Piper and Snuka look like two old men who can't remember whether they're friends or rivals. Before Snuka can do anything, Kid Kash comes out and brings up Snuka's famous cage dive in '83. Kash claims the only thing Snuka could do was fall off of a cage. Snuka chokes Kash until Kaz and Michael Shane comes out to make it one-on-three. Piper does the unthinkable (ha) and joins forces with Snuka. Sonjay Dutt comes out and helps out his hero (damn, Dutt had a lot of heroes). Through all of the chaos, Kash hits Dutt with the coconut. On the outside, Shane and Kaz scolds Kash. "Dude, that wasn't cool." Uh...you two just came out to attack Snuka, yet you can't believe what Kash did? That's logic for you. All this this way totally worthless since Kash and Kaz would both leave the company within a few months, which makes the rub meaningless. I can't believe they wasted three of their best wrestlers in Kaz, Shane and Kash in two meaningless segments.

Trinity vs Jacqueline - Mystery Opponent Match
The whole idea is that Trinity is going around claiming to be the best woman ever. Vince Russo booked her against a mystery opponent. Trinity comes out with the New York Connection (Disco Inferno and Johnny Swinger). Right away she gets on the mic saying that there must of been a no show. Um...okay. Even though you just got in the ring. It's like when Edge comes out at the Great American Bash and grabs the mic saying that Hunter must of no showed, so he must be awarded the winner. It makes zero sense. Jacqueline jumps in the ring and attacks Trinity. Teney spends most of the match proclaiming Jackie's past title reigns in the WWE. God Teney, how badly do you want to work for the WWE? Stop talking about them. Swinger and Disco (Jackie's old rival in WCW that Teney doesn't even bring up...what a tool) keeps interfering. Swinger pulls Jackie down from the turnbuckle and across the top rope. This sets Trinity up for the moonsault for the victory. She may be able to hit a nice moonsault, but this match was yet another worthless match. 3 Minutes. 1 Star.

Abyss vs Monty Brown vs Raven - Monster's Ball Match
Your standard hardcore match with the gimmick being that all three men were kept in a dark room without food or water for 24 hours. All three men sells it by acting like the light and pyro hurts their eyes. Besides that, it's just like every other hardcore match. They fight a little in the crowd while the camera cuts to the rafters with a mystery man in black watching on. That person is the one who acts as the mouthpiece for Abyss. Of course it'll turn out to be James Mitchell, but for whatever reason they try and make it a mystery. This is completely crazy since Mitchell wore the same getup during his feud with Raven a year before. What's even more ridiculous is the fact that in all of the promos, Mitchell talks without changing his voice. For a guy who's been known for his voice, how is it a secret for who he really is? That's TNA for you. Not much psychology in this, but the fans are loving it. Abyss brings in the bag of thumbtacks, but Raven powerbombs him on it. I'm actually enjoying this. Raven throws Abyss off of the apron and through a table. He turns around right into a Pouncing Monty Brown. The Pounce through the table gets Brown the victory. This was supposed to be a hardcore match with a gimmick, but all three men forgets about it very quickly. Not sure what's the point of calling it a Monster's Ball, but whatever. The fans helped make this even better than it was. 10 Minutes. 3 Stars.

Shane Douglas keeps trying to find out who's in the limo. Head of security, Don Harris shoves him back.

AJ Styles (c) vs Petey Williams - X-Division Title Match - Petey Loses = D'more leaves for good
In the pre-match interview, Scott D'More tells Williams that he will go back to Windsor if he loses another title. Wow, just what this PPV needs, yet another stipulation/gimmick match. Once the bell hits, these two go full force. There's no point in describing everything. It's your typical memorable X-Division match that made TNA a must see wrestling show. Both men are at their best in the match. Late in the match, Styles rolls Petey up. The ref counts to 2, but because D'More gets on the apron *Note* not in the ring, the ref stops the count to tell D'More to get down. What the FUCK?! Why the hell would you as a ref stop counting (especially at a 2 count) to tell someone who's on the other side of the ring to get down? Something so dumb is an extremely easy way to kill a match. Petey hits AJ with the belt, but only gets a two count. AJ sits Petey on the top turnbuckle, but a little distraction by D'More allows Petey to push AJ down. Petey jumps from the middle rope only AJ's neck and hits the Canadian Destroyer. Easily, one of the coolest Canadian Destroyer's I've seen. The ref's complete lack of logic hurt this match so much. This all happened within the last couple of minutes. So by time the match ended (In a cool way), it lost all momentum. Such a shame. 10 Minutes. 3 Stars.

America's Most Wanted vs Triple X - Last Team Standing Match
The better name for this would be a Last Man Standing Elimination Match. The last iMPACT Daniels injured Storm's knee with a chair. Storm quickly hits a nice slam that I can't even begin to describe to get the 3 count on Daniels. Daniels stands up by 8. Storm gets hit with the reverse Natural Disaster and gets pinned. He stands up at the last moment though. As soon as Storm gets up, he takes a nasty chair shot to his injured knee by Daniels while Skipper distracts the ref. Daniels pins Storm and Storm is eliminated. Daniels misses the BME on Harris and Harris hits the running hug of doom. From there it's a middle rope leg drop and Daniels is pinned and eliminated. While the ref was counting, Harris attacks Skipper on the outside. Back inside, Skipper botches a Playmaker and Harris hits a powerbomb. Harris nails Skipper with the Catatonic on the chair. Skipper gets his shoulder up, but the ref no sells it and counts to three. Teney, the fans and Harris are all convinced that Skipper kicked out. The ref counts to 10 and Skipper is eliminated with Harris wins the match for his team. The whole ending was confusing and hurt the match. We find out in the middle of the main event that Skipper doesn't remember a single thing about the match and is now on the way to the hospital. It seems as if Skipper's head hit the chair at the end and in his confused state, he kicked out. Either way, the match went from exciting to botchtastic borefest once Storm is eliminated. A major disappointment once Storm is eliminated. This match should have been much better. The match was also very rushed after the Tennessee Cowboy was eliminated. If I haven't made it clear enough, this match fucking sucks once Storm is eliminated.
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11 Minutes. 2 Stars.

Dusty Rhodes is announced as the new DOA of TNA beating Vince Russo in the internet election. Honestly, this whole election ate away from the PPV way too much. It was beyond obvious who was going to win. Rhodes announces AMW vs Triple X in a 6 Sides of Steel match for Turning Point.

Jeff Jarrett (c) vs Jeff Hardy - NWA World Title Ladder Match
The whole story behind this was that Scott Hall was going to be in Jarrett's corner, while Kevin Nash would be in Hardy's corner. Hall doesn't even come out at the start of the match. Teney claims that Jarrett wants to make this a fair match. Yeah, that really sounds like Jarrett. Teney does his typical WWE shill of talking about both Jeff's past. The match is your standard Jeff Hardy match with Hardy bringing doing all of the famous ladder spots while Teney acts like he's never seen them before. Hardy hits a Swanton on Jarrett while Jarrett is laying on the ladder. Too bad Hardy totally missed Jarrett. Hardy climbs the ladder, but Hall runs in and hits the Razor's Edge on Hardy. Now, you would think that Jarrett would get up first seeing how he's had more time to heal up. But no, Hardy gets up as if nothing happened to him. Later on in the match, Jeff botches a sunset flip from on top of the ladder. The only thing to do then is to botch a sunset flip to the outside of the ring. God, Hardy is a fucking mess. On the outside, Hardy pulls out the tall ladder and starts climbing it. Why Hardy is climbing a ladder on the outside is beyond me. Jarrett making even less sense climbs up too. The two men punches each other on top while Jarrett uses his foot to tip the ladder over. The ladder and the Jeff's all land on Hall. Back in Hardy gets double teamed again. Jarrett climbs the ladder with his guitar and is able to touch the belt while Nash's music hits. Nash walks down slowly with two guitars with a smile on his face. Scott gesture's "It's about time." To the absolute shock of...no one, Nash gives on guitar to Hall and all three men takes their turn hitting Hardy with the guitar. Jarrett easily pulls the belt down. Nash gets on the mic and tells everyone that they're here to take the money and destroy some people. He then challenges anyone to fight them. AJ comes out and springboard closelines Hall and Jarrett, but the numbers are too much for him. 3LK comes out only to be attacked too. Finally, the limo door opens and Randy Savage's music comes on. The show concludes with Savage pointing towards the new trio. God, what a clusterfuck. TNA's tagline at the time was "The New Face of Professional Wrestling." Well this new face looks a lot like the old face. The final image we see of the ppv is a star of the 80's and 90's and 6 stars from the 90's. Only AJ is a star of today. The match was a terrible main event. Nothing in this match was a surprise. Hardy was on fire for botching. 19 Minutes. 2 Stars.

Overall
TNA had a fairly good roster and some entertaining storylines at this time. There was NO need to have so much gimmick. The ONLY match that doesn't have some kind of stipulation or gimmick was the Tag Titles Match. But even that had interference and a run-in. Be confident enough in your company to not make every match a gimmick. If anything, doing all of these stipulations hurts the show.

It seems as if they tried to involve as many people as possible in as many different match types. All this did was make half of the card complete filler. The show had so much potential to be great. Instead, it's a complete disaster. The only match that made this ppv worth getting was AJ Styles vs Petey Williams. Everything else was either a total mess or not PPV quality.

Final Grade
D+

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Dman

Lol, seems like a bad ppv.

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Kizza

Did Savage appear in TNA besides that?

And nice review, I always enjoy reading reviews.

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horrorfan_1986

Yeah, he wrestled at the next PPV of Turning Point teaming with Styles and Hardy vs Jarrett, Nash and Hall. After that he was gone. Besides that, he appeared at 2/4 iMPACTS (Non-wrestling roles) in between the ppvs. Once the PPV was done, so was Savage.

I don't have Turning Point, but I have Final Resolution, Destination X, Against All Odds, Lockdown, (No Hard Justice) and Slamiversary that I all recorded from PPV. I might re-watch and review all of them. It's interesting looking back and seeing the same thing that fans complain of today, but didn't complain back then. Luckily, I remember the next few ppvs being a lot better.

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Tommy Platinum

Oh man I was hoping to see you do a review of this PPV, just because of the main event.

In all seriousness though, lets take a look at this. You gave Edge v Undertaker from One Night Stand 2*, in what I felt was a very good match. Sure, you didn't like the fact that it took so many guys for Edge to win, and there were certainly a few problems with the match, such as Undertaker moving the ladder away from the title in order to get closer to the tables. However, in my opinion to give that match the same rating as Hardy v Jarrett is an insult. Hardy/Jarrett really was a horrible match in my opinion. So many botches, and a horribly sloppy match overall with pretty much no good spots. The whole thing just showed what a mess Hardy was at that time, as you pointed out.

How can you give the Taker/Edge match the same rating? It has a surprisingly outcome, a lot of nice spots and was overall a far better worked match than the horrible Hardy/Jarrett match, which is probably the worst ladder match I have ever seen.

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horrorfan_1986

I've already expressed how much I hate the TLC match and how it had flaws. They're both the bottom of the barrel as far as I'm concerned for their matches.

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Tommy Platinum

If you actually think that as a match, the TLC was just as bad as the Ladder, then your opinions are too biased to take seriously.

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horrorfan_1986

Well it's not like I forced anyone to read them.
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I gave plenty of reasons as to why I disliked Taker vs Edge. Now, just because you didn't agree with them doesn't mean I'm biased. Besides, what would I be biased against? I gave their WM match 4 stars.

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Xanta

I just re-watched my Victory Road DVD a few days ago. To even compare Taker/Edge to Hardy/Jarret is an insult to Taker and Edge. I agree with Tom on this one.

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horrorfan_1986

If I mentioned that a random match was booked very poorly, relied on overused spots and wasn't even exciting for me, would you even question anything if I said that it was 2 stars?

The Jarrett/Hardy match was so bad at times that it made it entertaining. The waiting for Hardy's next botch kept me into the match. Whether a match keeps me entertained because it's great or because it's so bad that it's funny, it doesn't matter as long as I'm entertained. If I could compare it to anything, it would be people loving the film Plan 9 From Outer Space. Even as terrible as it is, it has a cult following because of how incredibly bad it is. Meanwhile, Edge vs Taker tried to be an epic match, which I feel it failed.

Anyways, since I intend on reviewing as many TNA ppvs in a row, I will keep a "Top 5 TNA PPV Matches Ever" list that I will update after every show.

Top 5 TNA PPV Matches Ever

5. 20 Man X-Division Gauntlet Match - Victory Road '04
4. Bobby Roode and Eric Young vs Konnan and BG James - NWA Tag Titles - Victory Road '04
3. The Truth, Johnny B Badd, Erik Watts and Pat Kenney vs Kid Kash, Dallas and The Naturals - Victory Road '04
2. Abyss vs Raven vs Monty Brown - Monster's Ball Match - Victory Road '04
1. AJ Styles vs Petey Williams - X-Division Title - Victory Road '04

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