TNA iMPACT! Results - May 22, 2008

Homicide vs Brother Ray

Good match. Brother Ray will never be accused of being the most athletic guy in the ring, but he does work well enough with the X division guys. Homicide gets the DQ win after Brother Devon interferes.

The match itself was a 7, but the attack on LAX afterwards bumped the overall ratings up a notch. Nice continuity by having Booker T continue his alliance with Team 3D. Makes you wonder if that will come into play at Slammiversary.

Winner: Homicide

ODB vs Angelina Love

Want to know why the TNA Knockouts are vastly superior to the WWE Divas? Just take a look at how much focus each company puts on the division.

Awesome Kong and Gail Kim are both great at what they do. TNA knows that, and they're now focusing on their second tier of women wrestlers (ODB, Velvet Sky, Angelina Love, and Roxxi Laveaux). They spend time each week developing the second tier.

This was a good match. The interference from Velvet Sky worked out well because the writers are still trying to get people to hate the Beautiful People. Roxxi Laveaux making the save was a nice touch. Even nicer was the fact that she tried to cut Angelina Love's hair.

The Voodoo Drop that Roxxi Laveaux does to the referee was simply amazing to see.

Winner: Angelina Love

Samoa Joe's List

Great segment here. Samoa Joe doesn't waste anytime by going into his selections almost immediately.

He gave props to AJ Styles, who was the first choice. The next two choices were former champions, Christian Cage and Rhino. A sign that Samoa Joe is growing more comfortable on the mic, by the way, is the fact that he acknowledged the audience chanting for Christian Cage and turning it into a way to praise TNA.

As Samoa Joe was praising his final choice, the camera catches Kevin Nash in the background assuming that he was the final choice. When Samoa Joe reveals that the final choice is Booker T, Kevin Nash loses it. Instead of doing the "angry rage", he does the "calculated rage" by reciting a few things to Samoa Joe before walking away.

Samoa Joe came off really well in this segment. His character was allowed to develop further as a champion who didn't back down. The segment also showed major improvements from Samoa Joe as a mic worker.

King of the Mountain Qualifying Match
Matt Morgan vs Robert Roode

Decent match here. Not sure where they're going with this, but Matt Morgan is displaying some anger issues. During the match, he picks up the referee and moves him out of the way after the referee tried to warn him about choking. That enables Robert Roode to get the old school heel victory by pinning the opponent with his feet on the ropes.

Winner: Robert Roode

As the Angle Turns

For the record, Kurt Angle and Karen Angle are both tremendous performers on the mic. Very few people would be able to make a segment like this work.

However, I absolutely hate how much of a soap opera this thing has become. In fact, TNA almost pushes the fact that it's an annoying soap opera.

Personally, I don't think this stuff is needed at all. The match between Kurt Angle and AJ Styles is going to be good regardless of what storyline they throw out there.

It's almost as if one of the TNA writers is auditioning for a job in Hollywood by using the Angles in segments.

Sting Interview

They continue the Sting interview from last week. This week's episode wasn't nearly as good as last week, but it was still quite entertaining.

Sting talks about Jeff Jarrett and his real life struggles to cope with the death of his wife. Can't help but think that this is setting something up for Jeff Jarrett. Personally, I think they could have used another segment to do that. This interview should be just about Sting's career.

Awesome Kong vs Melissa

The match and segment was brilliant. To prevent Awesome Kong from growing stale by having her tear through the current group of Knockouts, they're going to be bringing in some indy female wrestlers posing as audience members.

Jeremy Borash does a tremendous job throughout the night of selling this program by refusing to be a part of it.

Not sure who "Melissa" is, but she took one hell of a beating. The powerbomb that she took from Awesome Kong is easily one of the most devasting powerbombs in the history of the business. Melissa was folded in half.

If TNA plays this right, then they're going to be able to introduce a brand new Knockout whenever someone does beat Awesome Kong for the $25,000.

Winner: Awesome Kong

King of the Mountain Qualifying Match
Booker T vs AJ Styles

Match was decent. Would have been pretty good had they given it more time. However, the match itself wasn't the focus.

The focus was on the vicious beatdown that AJ Styles would take at the hands of Booker T, Tomko, and Team 3D. In order to give AJ Styles more sympathy from the audience, the heels proceeded to beat him down for several minutes. Plenty of blood was lost for the effect.

By the way, the use of blood in this beating actually had a purpose. Karen Angle made sure that there was plenty of blood from AJ Styles on her clothing. That gave it a special effect. Plus, Brother Ray went old school by smearing some of AJ Styles' blood his own face. That was pretty psychotic.

Nice move at the end to give Kurt Angle even more heel heat as well. Karen Angle had ran backstage to get some help. Kurt Angle ran out with a chair and cleared the ring of the heels. The heels then got Kurt Angle to turn on AJ Styles, and he nailed an already blood AJ Styles with the steel chair.

This was a ridiculously awesome segment.

Winner: Booker T