Back to TNA. It’s 2007 and Christian Cage is the NWA World Champion, a title at the top of TNA for the last five years. The story goes that he didn’t want to defend the title in NWA territories, so NWA pulled their agreement with TNA and stripped Christian and Team 3D of the NWA titles they held. Christian was scheduled to defend his belt against Kurt Angle and Sting, so TNA just held that match for a new TNA Championship.
May 13, 2007 – Orlando, Florida
Kurt Angle def. Christian and Sting {TNA World Heavyweight Championship Triple Threat Match}
From the third Sacrifice. Angle still has the physical NWA title belt, which is kind of weird in hindsight. Given how flat the last couple title changes I watched in TNA were, I expected next to nothing from this. But it was actually pretty fun. String was really motivated and they panned a few interesting three way spots. The finish was hot garbage, as a second referee ran in even though the first referee was in the ring ready to count the pin, and Sting pinned Christian but also tapped out to Angle’s anklelock at 10:44. Angle was named the champion, but that doesn’t make sense because the first referee counted three before Sting tapped out and also the referee that did that was the actual referee for the match. Woof, they almost had me thinking they could put on a really good main event without hillbilly level stupid nonsense. A few days later, Angle was stripped of the title because of the silly finish. The fact that they didn’t change the booking to have angle win more strongly when it was decided he’d be the first guy to hold this new title is absolutely asinine. ***
June 17, 2007 – Nashville, Tennessee
Kurt Angle def. Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Christian Cage, and Chris Harris {TNA World Heavyweight Championship King of the Mountain Match}
From the third Slammaversary. Sting isn’t in this match because Christopher Daniels screwed him during his King of the Mountain qualifying match. Sting and Angle having to be in qualifying matches is super dumb. The Sting vs. Daniels feud would have been more compelling if Daniels was such a pest that Sting volunteered to bow out of the KotM to get his hands on Daniels. But when has TNA ever done anything cool? Speaking of uncool, Harris and James Storm fought to a double count out in their qualifying match, but Jim Cornette just decided to give the shot to Harris here. No real explanation is given. Why couldn’t Harris beat Storm? As for this match, it started in a way I liked, with Cage and Styles conspiring to lay down for each other so they could quickly be eligible to climb with the belt. Sadly, that fell apart way too quickly. There was a creative use of a ref bump, both in the way it let Cage steal Joe’s pin on Angle and how it kept Harris in the penalty box for longer. Joe and Styles climbing to the top of the box seemed pointless, even if Styles’s bump off of it was pretty cool. It just wasn’t at all clear why Styles climbed there in the first place. The rest of the match was pretty damn great. Everyone worked really hard and they generally felt like they were always trying to win. I don’t ask for much more than that. Harris chose to spear Cage off the ladder, which left Angle to hook the title at 19:21 for the win. ****
October 14, 2007 – Duluth, Georgia
Sting def. Kurt Angle {TNA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Bound for Glory III. The road from Sacrifice to this match was long and stupid. It was mostly Angle and Joe feuding over the tag titles and holding them individuals while Sting wrestled random feuds before finally getting this rematch for the title. I gotta hand it to Sting, he wasn’t afraid to bump around the ring at 48 years old. I guess the overbooking here kind of worked because Sting overcame it to win, but damn if it didn’t make the match go a lot longer than it needed to. Everyone worked hard though, so it was far from a disaster and was even kind of good. Sting won at 18:20 with the Scorpion Death Drop. At least Kevin Nash didn’t somehow find a way to make himself champion here. ***¼
October 25, 2007 – Orlando, Florida
Kurt Angle def. Sting {TNA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Impact. This was another solid match between the two, but the gaga in this one was irritating and lame. I don’t understand the point of doing a months-long build to Sting becoming champ only to take the title off of him a week later. Nash’s distraction was rote and dull, and it led directly to Angle hitting the Olympic Slam at 10:11 for the win. Nash is so much taller than Angle it’s comical looking. Angle flipped Nash off after the match and ran away. Nash is not more over than Sting and never has been, and TNA shouldn’t have acted as if the opposite was the case. **¾
April 13, 2008 – Lowell, Massachusetts
Samoa Joe def. Kurt Angle {TNA World Heavyweight Championship Cage Match}
From the fourth Lockdown. Holy crap, I just realized that Samoa Joe won his first NXT title and only TNA title in the same city. Angle is barefoot and wearing MMA shorts, sort of. They’re very long. This reminded me a lot of Angle’s WrestleMania match against Chris Benoit. They were able to make a very mat-based match entertaining for the whole whole run, but it was a little one-dimensional and I don’t think Joe made as many sustained comebacks and he could have if they wanted to make the match really engaging. I did appreciate them giving Joe the top prize with a super clean finish (he hit the Muscle Buster for the win at 17:39), though the finish had absolutely nothing to do with the style of the rest of the match, so good and bad there. ****
October 12, 2008 – Hoffman Estates, Illinois
Sting def. Samoa Joe {TNA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Bound for Glory IV. Well, at least Joe had a solid run with the title. I feel like since they botched it with Sting in the aftermath of the previous year’s BFG, this was a lesson in unnecessary redundancies. That and having Sting win three BFG main events in a row is a lot. I think Joe has the most consistent entrance theme from the indies to a second tier TV company to WWE. In contrast, Angle’s TNA music is insanely bad and out of step with his character. This match was going along pretty well before the final few minutes. The brawl on the floor, which I normally don’t like, was exciting thanks to Joe taking wild risks. The fight back in the ring was good. I especially liked Joe and Sting being so mad about the other stealing their finishers that they no-sold them. What I didn’t like was how much the match slowed down when Joe started looking for a KO victory, mostly because he’d interrupt the referee’s count and then wait back again. It didn’t really make sense. I also didn’t like Nash attacking Joe with a baseball bat leading directly to the Scorpion Death Drop winning for Sting at 16:54. They really mucked this up with the finish. I do think it’s important to point out that Sting was doing great work despite really bad booking, especially considering his age. ***¼
April 19, 2009 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Mick Foley def. Sting {TNA World Heavyweight Championship Cage Match}
From the fifth Lockdown. This would have been a major match had it happened ten years earlier. We’re getting dangerously close to Vince Russo going from just being on the writing team to being the head of creative. Foley said he was Cactus Jack going into this match and the commentators keep saying that, but he’s listed as Foley before and during his entrance. Probably because WWE owns the name, probably. Anyway, this sucked. It was a boring brawl in front of a crowd that gave it exactly as much volume as it deserved, which was none. I’m not sure there was a way this match could be better, Foley was so bad at this point. He won by escaping the cage at 15:54, which was meant to be seen as treacherous because Foley had said he’d never let Sting or himself escape. But he barely went for any pins so that story didn’t make sense. Skip this at all costs. ½*
June 21, 2009 – Auburn Hills, Michigan
Kurt Angle def. Mick Foley, AJ Styles, Jeff Jarrett, and Samoa Joe {TNA World Heavyweight Championship King of the Mountain Match}
From the fifth Slammiversary. “Live from the home of the NBA Pistons,” said Mike Tenay on commentary, because he didn’t want to point out that the arena isn’t actually in Detroit. Who cares?! It’s a good arena. The opening of this show had an embarrassing spoof (is it a spoof when it’s not meant to be funny?) of Lose Yourself, customized to TNA’s anniversary. Angle wears a Penguins jersey because the Penguins had just beaten the Red Wings for the Stanley Cup. Joe wore a Wings jersey, which made me more sexually aroused than I’d comfortable admitting. Joe assaulted Angle before the match, so Joe started the match in the penalty box and Angle was automatically eligible to climb the ladder. That’s a pretty cool twist. After that, things fell flat for quite a while. The match turned into a series of heatless, unconnected spots, only a few of which were exciting or interesting. The match ended with Joe turning heel and handing Angle the title, allowing Angle to win at 22:04. **½
September 20, 2009 – Orlando, Florida
AJ Styles def. Kurt Angle, Hernandez, Matt Morgan, and String {TNA World Heavyweight Championship Five Way Match}
From the fifth No Surrender. This was originally a four way, but Hernandez cashed in his Money in the Bank ripoff to be added to the match. How stupid is this guy? Why would you enter a match that already had so many other people in it? Was Hernandez meant to be an idiot? His tattoos have always made me think he was. And then he got taken out early on by Eric Young, so… okay then. The rest of the match was solid. Styles and Sting were very motivated and Morgan seemed stoked to be in this position. The finish was cool too, as Sting took out Angle and then left his carcass for Styles to pin while he stopped Morgan from getting in the way. Styles hit Angle with a springboard 450 splash at 15:10. Take out the Hernandez stuff and this would have been better. ***
From a match quality standpoint only, this was a decidedly solid era for TNA (Foley aside). The Main Event Mafia angle dominated the program for the latter half of this period, but TNA had the good sense to have Angle and Sting be the group’s representatives in the title picture. It could have been Scott Steiner or Nash! As of Styles’ title win, Russo had been promoted to head of creative and was joined by his old friend Ed Ferrera and his old enemies Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan. In the next part, I’ll look at how the tenure of this team, which had failed so spectacularly in WCW and was now being given another run in TNA.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
