The first Impact in the year 2012

A review of the first episode of Total Non-Stop Action(TNA) Impact in the Year 2012. Is it off too a good start?

By Carlos M Reynosa

 TNA began their new year with matches that prepared the wrestlers for their first Pay Per-view Genesis. What some fans always enjoyed when watching Impact is the great wrestling that they provided and this was no exception. This episode seemed to focus more on tag team matches, which after watching Monday Night Raw is a fresh idea. This was done of course to tease the fans in wanting to see the opponents in singles matches at Genesis. This idea would normally work if there were storylines that were interesting to watch. That always seems to be the problem with TNA, their wrestling is good but they lack promotion in their matches and their show.

However, the match that stood out was the Tag Team wild card tournament. For those who were unaware, this is a unique tournament were tag teams who are current, are broken or creatively form to compete. The winner would face the Tag Team Champions Crimson and Matt Morgan in the Genesis pay per view. I enjoyed watching this tournament because it was way to promote new storylines and promoted the tag team division. The final two teams were AJ Styles and Kazarian against Soma Joe and Magnus.  It was an interesting match because AJ Styles and Kazarian have always been a good team in past. Their fast pace and high risk style wrestling have always been exciting to see and it was no surprise that they made the finals.

Soma Joe and Magnus on the other hand, were a surprising a good combination of brute strength and aggression.  Some fans were excepting Soma Joe to return back to his loner personality and throw the match. However, Joe has decided to be a team player and at the end accepted his partner and competed in this match. It was an exciting match that could have gone either way, both teams were on their game and the wrestling was good. In the end, the match ended with Kazarian abandoning AJ who was attacked from behind By Joe and defeat him with the muscle buster.  While Joe and Magnus celebrated their victory, AJ was looking at Kazarian who for a moment stood by AJ’s well known rival Christopher Daniels. The two were seen before earlier in a locker room without AJ knowledge, and by confusing face left by Kazarian one can assumed that Daniels wishes to play head games with AJ.

Unfortunately, as I said before that seemed to be only match that was interesting to follow. Other matches were exciting to watch because of their wrestling, but none of the storyline that were behind them was curious to follow. Perhaps they drag these rivalries too long to show any interest, or perhaps I’m not seeing the potential that another fan would see, what are your thoughts?