NOTE: I am not a regular watcher of the TNA product due to scheduling and time. I follow what happens largely through this website. So, some of the people on the card tonight I've never seen live. Hopefully, that will lend a fresh perspective. Since the matches are already being reviewed on the site live, I'm giving some in person notes.

Pre-Show:

5:45 p.m. There is a fair crowd already here. There are two merchandise stands, each well organized and doing fairly decent business. What is somewhat odd is the placement of certain wrestlers' merchandise. Joe and Booker, your main event match, both had their shirts on the sides of the stand which werent' so easily seen. There is a booth where people could have their picture taken with Kevin Nash, and near there, an advertisement regarding TNA trading cards. Center stage on the poster are two former world champions....in WWE...Kurt Angle and Kevin Nash. At least Angle has been TNA champion before. Joe is on the ad, but in a lesser role.

The arena looks to be set up for a max capacity of 5500, with the hard camera side not being used much at all. Videos of the stars set to music are being played. In a funny observation, TNA is using many radio songs from the recent and not-so-recent past, and seems to have to pay royalties to do so....so why could they not use some of them for their wrestlers?

6:45 p.m. David Penzer comes to warm the crowd. He introduces the Spanish announce team, including Hector Guerrero. Hector gets a good cheer, and an "Eddy" chant breaks out. Don West enters to "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith, and Mike Tenay enters to "Back in Black" by AC/DC. The announcers get better music than the wrestlers.

ODB is introduced, and goes around signing autographs. I'm surprised by how big a pop she receives.

Penzer introduces Paula Nelson, Willie's daughter as she sings the national anthem. Penzer has to look at the CD to remember her name. Paula gets a "You Suck" during her singing time.

Jeremy Borash then begins to rile up the crowd with promises of being on television and getting backstage. He interviews Kevin Nash, who comes to the ring looking like he has a beer. When Booker T is mentioned, he gets booed. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly given what I've read about Impact), Joe's name gets booed also. Dixie Carter is spotted talking to fans on the floor. She later welcomes the fans to the ppv in the ring.

The crowd estimate by a Reliant Arena employee is around 3,500 fans. There are not that many in the building right now, but Houston is known for late arrivals. I'd guess that five minutes before the PPV begins, we are looking at 2,500 people.

Borash does a great job of riling up the crowd. This is a louder crowd than Smackdown was back in June.

PPV Show.

1. -Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin are over like true stars. I have never seen them as the Motor City Machine Guns. But the crowd reacted to them like genuine stars. This was the longest match of the night in at 23:45. 5 minutes into the match saw two interesting things: Don West wiping sweat off his brow, and a round of "This is Awesome" chants.

2. -Earl Hebner received "You Screwed Bret" chants....at a TNA PPV....in Houston....10.5 years after Montreal.

3. -Sonjay Dutt had good heat to the live crowd. He looks like he's put on 15 pounds of muscle since I last saw an edition of Impact. It seems as if So Cal Val will be turning sooner than later.

4. -The fans who were the lumberjacks seemed at least in part to be PWA students from Booker's school. Don't know for sure, but at least two seemed familiar to me from past shows. The "mark" comments got little to no reaction from the crowd.

5. -Awesome Kong is indeed awesome. This was my first time to see her, and I wish the match would have gone longer. When compared to her especially, Taylor Wilde looks really tiny. Abyss' entrance was loud, and the crowd popped for his black hole slam on Saaed. Looks like we have a Balls-Kelly storyline with Abyss and Wilde?

6. -Loudest crowd reaction to a move the entire night was for Kaz's spot near the end of the match on Daivari. When he did that, Mike Tenay turned around and looked at us ringsiders with a look of complete shock.

7. AJ Styles is seen as a legitimate superstar. Of the six men, he received the loudest reaction cheer or boo. Anytime he was featured, he was cheered. At one point, it looked like Kurt Angle may have hurt his knee, because he spent a while outside the ring fiddling with his knee brace. When Christian jumped off the Ultimate X scaffolding, Tenay did the same thing as when Kaz did his big move. In a lot of the matches, this one most acutely seen by me, wrestlers are spending copious amounts of time out of the ring looking for their spots to perform as opposed to feeing it out. I'm guessing that this is due to the nature (gimmicks) of the matches. It seemed as if Devon twisted his ankle. But his aim is great. When he threw a trash can outside the ring, he nailed a ringside photographer who was running away to escape it. The floor director had a time sheet that showed 10 minutes left in the match. 11 minutes later, the match was over.

8. -Sharmell is front row ringside with some PWA students. Booker got a huge face pop both in ring entrance and his introduction, and Joe received a huge round of boo's. Booker was cheered heavily during the match. The finish upset quite a few people, and there was a "Fire Russo" chant after the match was over. Joe received heel heat after getting up and leaving the ring. If TNA regularly toured Houston, they would have maybe killed the town with this finish, leaving both your challenger and champion weakened. {plug}