Hogan's promo droned on for ages, and was only four minutes long until Angle came out...and talked about how smart Hogan is. Holy

. Hogan said the network announced Flair-Sting four days after a PPV, so yeah, they definitely view TV as a bigger deal than PPV. Sting came out in sweet-looking black and blue gear - freshened his look up instantly, and cut a decent promo accepting Angle's challenge for a world title match. Not sure why though - they already announced the match before he came out. They showed some awesome crowd shots - and seeing TNA in an arena setting with passionate fans really did help them look like a big deal. An ad for the TNA CRUISE SPONSORED BY AN AUTO INSURANCE COMPANY aired, focusing on Velvet's ass in close-ups, so this ruled. LOLed at Taz casually bringing up that Crimson, THE POINTS LEADER IN THE SERIES, was out of it. They aired a good promo with three of the final BFG Series guys...and then cut it off and told you to watch the rest on their site.

that - I'M WATCHING THE SHOW NOW, SHOW THE WHOLE THING NOW. Gunner's sig-level tron in triplicate didn't make him look any more major league. Joe came out to attack guys, Matt Morgan tried to stop him, didn't, but two generic dudes in suits did. Odd. Gunner and RVD had an okay match until Jerry Lynn came out to cost RVD a gajillion points again. Then RVD told him to leave and he did. Two bouts of interference, three counting Morgan, in an RVD-Gunner match. Jerry Lynn succeeded in costing RVD points by shoving him off the top into...a running knee strike from Gunner. Gunner's no Regal in making this look like a legit finish.
Tenay announced that the knockout law deal that no one cares about will be settled, which required the TNA sluts, bitches, and whores division to stand on the apron together like they're all buddy-buddy. Loved Eric announcing Karen as the KO Law leading to Karen coming out to a mix of Jeff's theme and Traci's Aurosmith knock-off. Karen was AWESOME here. Holy shit she cut a great promo. She declared herself as the QUEEN and was such a star. God, I loved this promo. They set up EVERYONE hating her because she views herself as better than them, so they've got some real legs with this angle if they do it right. Karen appeared after Hogan, Sting, Kurt, and Bischoff and cut a better promo than any of them. Kudos to her for that.
Mickie and Winter brawled during the break...and then they just moved on so Kendrick could come out to new porno music with a wacky mask with the Al Bundy lookalike. Then Tenay plugged a BEER PONG CHAMPIONSHIP show after Impact. Well, so much for them looking major league. I don't care who beats Kendrick, I just want him to not be champion, or in TNA anymore if he's just going to not give a shit. Kendrick almost became worth his paycheck just by saying "C'MON JESSE BABY!". They did the obligatory tower of doom spot to make it seem like this match was special. Aries taking a victory lap after a dive was glorious. Sorenson won to I guess give him a "big win", which would be good if he was over, or particularly memorable beyond the football gimmick. This had better be leading to Jesse-Kash at the PPV, since the show has like nothing on it and that could be pretty good.
Loved the Winter video recapping her from being a ghost to being a wacky lesbian who has lived throughout many lifetimes, in many forms (including a vibrator, I'd suppose)and is apparently now also a cannibal who wants to eat Mickie's rotting flesh. Then Mickie said she was tired of Winter's bullshit, so she'd WRESTLE her. This was amusing in a B-movie kinda way. Then they aired a video vaguely dealing with Jeff Hardy's issues hyping up his return next week via a terrible Tenay VO. Then Hogan told Angle that now they have to destroy the network...and then Tenay talked more about Jeff's return. This was sorta weird - good to hype it up than just give it away with no build, but every part of this just came out of nowhere with no real explanation. Hell, it wasn't until the Hogan deal that they ever even said that Jeff was out of Immortal. Mickie-Winter started, Tenay brought up how the first TNA show ever happened here...which really made the company look bad in a way because it's like "okay, NINE YEARS and where are you? Literally back where you started." Really fun match here. Loved Mickie falling like a tree for an enzuguri. Mickie's title win was treated like a big deal - especially by the guy they cut to a close-up of in a Sheamus shirt.
Morgan came out and yelled stuff far too quickly. Then he brawled with Joe despite apparently being too injured in the series to compete, but he grabbed the pec, so...I guess that's why it's okay for him to basically have a match without having one. Nah, it doesn't - he kicked Joe's ass a lot since Joe's supposed to be an ass kicker and yet he can't even beat up an injured guy. Loved Morgan throwing the ref aside casually, leading to another low blow and a chairshot to set up Joe-Morgan, I guess for the PPV. Loved Joe leaving because he did the damage he wanted to do and NOT because the refs told him to. Robbie E was AWESOME with EY backstage. Hilarious skit. Then Daniels and AJ had a homoerotic exchange. Immortal had a pow-how that Abyss wasn't invited to, so he was sad. Maybe he'll join Daniels in a stable of emos. Daniels came out looking like a dude, AJ came out with the rising tron and looked like a megastar - even without his usual pyro. AJ-Daniels was really good. Loved AJ busting out the bridging Muta-esque Indian Deathlock. Tenay's announcing shorthand bugged me here, especially "BREAKER ACROSS THE KNEE". He's cutting out ONE WORD, so it doesn't really shorten anything, and the word DESCRIBES THE BODY PART THE MOVE IS SUPPOSED TO HURT. Kind of an important word. This had a really good fast-paced finishing sequence that set up the finish well since everything was hit perfectly until the finish, where AJ slipped, giving Daniels the win via AJ's mistake, but the win nonetheless. I enjoyed this more than their PPV match.
The World title match felt like a big deal, and I'll give at least some credit for that to them using Angle's full theme intro, which has an epic sound to it, and JB doing an awesome job at announcing. For once, Taz saying a match had a big-time feel was true. Sting worked his ass off here - he took the triple Germans, and then had some real speed to him with everything he did, including hitting the death drop after countering the Angle slam. I enjoyed their PPV match, but this was better. Sting was better here than he's been at any point in the past few years. Then Gunner came down, got beaten up while Sting had Angle in the deathlock, which revealed "TNA" in goofy-looking Lite Brite text on the entrance area, then Angle tapped WITH THE REF IN THE RING. He could clearly hear this - he was just dealing with Gunner. Angle hit him with the Angle slam on the chair and then Immortal beat up Sting more until Anderson came back.

. At least he didn't cut a promo. Could've done without all the bullshit at the end, but I still loved a lot of the in-ring stuff on this show.
Screens -
Major league intro-
Gunner -
And a goof -
Perfect timing
