Csonka’s TNA One Night Only: Knockouts Knockdown II Review

Introduction
As a reminder, this will not be another traditional recap, but instead it will be a mash up of the Rs, Instant Analysis and my usual Twitter ramblings I would do during the shows; completely uncensored and as the ideas flow unfiltered to the old keyboard. Remember, this is a review; and I am here to review the show. As always, I encourage discussion and even disagreement, just do so in a respectful manner. I will be doing the review for Raw and most PPVs and iPPVs going forward.

TNA One Night Only: Knockouts Knockdown II

OFFICIAL RESULTS
~ Gail Kim defeated Veda Scott @ 7:00 via pin [**¾]
~ Angelina Love defeated Scarlett Bordeaux @ 5:00 via pin [DUD]
~ Reby Sky defeated Velvet Sky @ 8:00 via pin [*]
~ Madison Rayne defeated Jessicka Havok @ 9:00 via [**½]
~ Taryn Terrell defeated Karlee Perez @ 5:00 via pin [**]
~ Mia Yim defeated Brittany @ 8:00 via pin [**¾]
~ Brooke Tessmacher defeated Deonna @ 7:00 via pin [DUD]
~ Marti Belle defeated ODB @ 5:00 via [**]
~ ODB defeated Rockstar Spud @ 4:00 via [The Dirt Worst]
~ Madison Rayne won the Queen of the Knockouts Gauntlet Match @ 21:00 [**]

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* The PPV was taped on May 10th, 2014.

* Long video intro, leading to Hemme and Borash setting up the PPV. Rockstar Spud then makes his way out and says that Borash and Hemme won’t be needed because there will be special guest hosts tonight. He announces EC3 as the special master of ceremonies for tonight. They then bring out the aspiring Knockouts, which are Veda Scott, Scarlett Bordeaux, Havok, Reby Sky, Karlee Perez, Mia Yim, Deonna and Marti Belle. They take time to introduce themselves. Karlee and EC3 discuss meeting at his condo and that the only position she likes is on top. Spud is infatuated with Marti Belle. They announce the match ups for tonight.

* We then get highlights of Gail Kim winning the first version of this PPV, finishing off Mickie James.

* The entire intro took approximately 28-minutes.

Gail Kim vs. Veda Scott: Veda Scott works regularly with ROH, and was trained by Delirious and Daizee Haze. They had a nice opening match here. They gave Scott a lot and she made a good first impression with TNA. Kim sold very well for her and was very giving as the established veteran. Kim made her comeback and scored the win with eat defeat. Judging by the lay out of the match, one would think that they had an eye on Scott and potentially wanted to use her more. Again, some nice and clean work in the time they were given.

* Pre-match Love mocks Scarlett a bit, noting that she dresses like them, and teases making her a third member of the Beautiful People. This led to Love attacking her from behind.

Angelina Love vs. Scarlett: Scarlett Bordeaux has been in wrestling since 2011, was trained by Al Snow and Nick Dinsmore and is regularly featured in ROH as one of the Hoopla Hotties. Scarlett is playing up her party girl persona. Love talked shit to Scarlett on the mic as she beat her down. On boy, this was too long. Scarlett is not a very good wrestler, in anyway. She spent too much time fixing her outfit so she wouldn’t fall out or taking very awkward, painful looking bumps. Her offense, if we want to call it that, was the opposite of clean or good. There were two very obvious edits during the match to cover up what I can only image to be horrendous spots because what they aired was bad. This was a match which should have been ended about four-minutes earlier than it did. This was not good in any way.

* Borash interviews Reby Sky, who says she’s here to win and did her homework on Velvet. She then got fired up and spoke in Spanish, and EC3 arrived and was impressed and hit on her and offered to take her for “a siesta”.

Velvet Sky vs. Reby Sky: Reby Sky has been wrestling since 2010 and is married to Matt Hardy, who also had a hand in training her. She was more of an on screen personality early on in Lucha Libre USA and has been working the independent scene regularly since 2011. Lots of stalling early, Reby got some solid looking offense in, but Love of course got involved while Velvet molested the referee. Both ladies had issues with their offense looking effective, both obviously missing by a mile on forearms and or kicks, but the other sold it anyway. Reby did better down the stretch, but more bullshit distractions from Love, which just killed any momentum that they had. Love accidentally sprayed Velvet with the hairspray, allowing Reby to score the upset. At least the interference was paid off on with the finish. They unfortunately had issues working cleanly together, Reby looked better than Velvet most of the time but it simply didn’t click.

* Havok cut a good promo, old school Samoa Joe like in some ways (“I am women’s wrestling”) and sounding maniacal yet intelligent at the same time. I wish they would have the current Havok do that.

Madison Rayne vs. Havok: Havok is the current Knockouts Champion, which has to confuse the hell out of someone ordering this and hearing them refer to her as an “aspiring Knockout”. They did a really good job early setting the basis of the match, which is simple, the size of Havok vs. the speed and “TNA experience” of Rayne. Slower middle portion while Havok was on offense, Rayne made the big comeback, hitting a high cross to the floor to try and score a countout victory. Rayne fought back to hit a spear off of the second rope for the victory. The quality was much better overall than the last two matches, but nothing’s been close to great so far.

Karlee Perez vs. Taryn Terrell: Karlee Perez is former WWE Diva Maxine. She currently works for Lucha Underground as Catrina. Karlee cuts a promo, calling all of Terrell fake. A slap from Terrell later and we’re off to action. I don’t remember a lot of Karlee from her time in WWE Developmental, but she worked hard and did well for herself. They worked well together, and Terrell won clean with the cutter. This was short but perfectly fine.

* We got a five-minute preview of the 2015 Knockouts Calendar.

Brittany vs. Mia Yim: Mia Yim is a favorite of mine, working a lot in SHIMMER and SHINE. She’s been wrestling since 2009 and I continue to be surprised that someone hasn’t picked her up. She has a great look and great in ring style. She recently worked the NXT tapings, so maybe she will get a look. Brittany almost had a bad spill as she went for a suicide dive, but got a bit caught up. Thankfully Yim caught her, but they had a very awkward landing on the floor due to that. It was like, dive, almost botch, catch and hug, then fall down. Brittany came off as more impressive than anything she’s done in TNA thus far, likely because they have worked together before, Yim is very good and because Brittany has been very limited in what she’s done so far in TNA. A lot of character work, not a lot of time in the ring. They worked a hard hitting and fun pace down the stretch, but then had Yim win with a shitty leg scissors rollup, which was totally anticlimactic. This was an overall fun outing, and on par with the opening match in terms of quality. I also loved that Yim got the win, it mixes things up and she could be really fun in the main event.

Brooke Tessmacher vs. Deonna: Deonna is Deonna Purrazzo, who has been wrestling for the past year in the New York and New Jersey area. She trained at the D2W Professional Wrestling Academy under Robbie E. The bell rang and Brooke cut a heel promo about her opponent being a loser and having to wrestle in front of the loser fans. Well since Brooke hadn’t been on TV in forever and since no one knows who the hell Deonna is, it wasn’t the worst move for them to make. Deonna did trademark, year one “babyface spots” like fired up body slams and lots of enthusiastic rollups. Brooke then used the mic and beat down on Deonna, which would have been fine if we didn’t already see that earlier in the night. This match was too long, and was not good at all. Pretty much on the level of Love vs. Scarlett. I appreciate them wanting to give Deonna a chance but she was not ready for this stage, and while she has certainly improved, Tessmacher was not the one to lead her through an acceptable, let alone good match.

Marti Belle vs. ODB: Marti Belle has been wrestling since 2009 and was trained by Johnny Rodz. She’s worked with SHIMMER, SHINE and WSU in the past. Taz and Tenay are having fun discussing Spud being a virgin and wanting to sleep with Belle instead of calling this match; we got some true professionals here folks. Listen, I get that this match was perfectly average and worked at a conservative pace, but for the love of God do your job and provide commentary instead of amusing yourselves. They worked the usual wacky/fun ODB match, Spud tripped up ODB into a sloppy rollup by Belle for the win.

* Spud got blown off post match, because Belle was using him to get to the finals. She informed him that, “you have to be ‘this’ tall to ride this ride.” Spud cried in the ring as ODB and Brian Hebner laughed at him. Spud then yelled on the mic that he loved Belle and that they had a serious relationship on Facebook. Spud called ODB useless trash, and challenged ODB to a match because she mocked him. Sure, why not.

Rockstar Spud vs. ODB: They did next to nothing for a few minutes, Spud tried to use his belt but the ref stopped that. ODB lit him up with chops, and then ODB got the broncobuster on Spud. She then ripped his pants off, which revealed “yellow and brown” stains on his underwear. ODB hit the TKO to win; this was the dirt fucking worst. There’s a point where you’re doing comedy, and then there’s a point to where it is just stupid. This crossed that line and lapped it.

Queen of the Knockouts Gauntlet Match: The competitors are: Angelina Love, Gail Kim, Brooke Tessmacher, Marti Belle, Taryn Terrell, Reby Sky, Mia Yim and Madison Rayne. We’re doing the TNA gauntlet rules, similar to the rumble, but when we get to the final two, it is pin or submission to earn the win.

* The order of entry: Gail Kim, Brooke Tessmacher, Mia Yim, Reby Sky, Angelina Love, Madison Rayne, Marti Belle, Taryn Terrell.

* The order of elimination: Reby Sky, Brooke Tessmacher, Taryn Terrell, Mia Yim, Gail Kim, Marti Belle, Angelina Love.

This was every gauntlet style match you’ve ever seen. The action was generally fine, it got slow when Love got in as she did the walk slow to the ring and walk around as the others laid out on the match to catch a breather. More bullshit with referee Stiffler saving Love, which was annoying. Love and Belle were left with Rayne, and agreed to work together. As always, the heels failed, leaving Love and Rayne as the final two. Of course it’s Stiffler. Love ran away to the back, which led to Rayne beating down Love and Sky when they came back through the curtain. Taz and Tenay spent the majority of the time amusing themselves and making jokes about the ref. This match felt as if it lasted an eternity once it got down to Love and Rayne, it just went on and on and on and worse than that it FELT way longer than it was. Sky accidentally hair sprayed Love, and Rayne scored the win. More bullshit, sure it played off of the finish that cost Sky earlier in the night, but I hate the non-clean finishes.

* Gail Kim, last year’s winner, came out and crowned Rayne and they shared a hug.

* End scene at 10:41PM ET.

* Thanks for reading.

“Byyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye Felicia!”

3.0

The final score: review Bad

The 411

I really dislike the format of these shows, because it seems as if every One Night Only PPV ends in some form of gauntlet match. I wish they’d mix up the format, run three tag matches, winning teams move onto two triple threat matches, and those winners head to the finals. Maybe toss in a four way match with past champions with the winner getting the automatic ride to the finals. Give me something or anything to make the shows feel different, because they all feel the same.

Taz and Tenay were once again horrible on commentary, making jokes and or focusing on the attire of the women, which does nothing to make them come off as serious competitors. Also, Taz calling Spud a virgin, expounding on it for several minutes and singing “Like a Virgin” during the ODB vs. Belle match may have been a new low, even for him. Good work, you guys continue to suck on a consistent basis. If you two clowns actually put half the effort into putting over the product that you do to your little jokes you may actually come off as if you gave a shit.

Overall the wrestling wasn’t very good. We had some truly horrible matches, and everything else was solid to good. When there is so much dead time and filler on the show, the matches are all short, some of the ladies aren’t ready for the spot and some of the ladies you employ aren’t actually that good working with people from outside the company, you get a poor event.

I truly appreciate TNA putting on an all women’s PPV, but this was not a good show in any way. In fact, it was flat out bad and the worst PPV/iPPV I’ve watched this year. If you want to invest in women’s wrestling, you’re better off spending your money on SHIMMER or SHINE.