By Michael Kingston

Kind of stupid to run this market since they were just in Albany at the beginning of last month...even WWE doesn't come here that often. They had a portion of the building tarped off. The ring looks much cooler in person if you are sitting elevated. One of the things that really stood out to me is that even ROH has a better ring entrance ramp than TNA...theirs looked pretty indy. Stuff like that hurts their presentation....
 
The one thing that I think is somewhat unfortunate is the lack of pushed guys on the show. It's like they sent a main event and then all the guys on the bottom of the pecking order. It felt like WCW because they push all these guys that don't do house shows. No Christian Cage, No Team 3-D, No Mick Foley, No Rhino, No Kurt Angle, No Sting, No Jeff Jarrett. No Daniels/Curry Man, No Jay Lethal, No LAX, No ODB, No Beautiful People.....and Eric Young wrestled twice. For a company that is trying to establish itself in a new market, I think they really need to be putting on killer house shows. There is too much filler and while the wrestlers worked hard in most cases, they're in a no-win situation because they aren't pushed on TV and expected to get over on house shows.
 
1.  Motor City Machine Guns over Rock and Rave Infection. The Machine Guns worked their asses off but there's only so much you can do with RRI. MCMG did all their cool double team moves and Shelley did a dive to the floor. Hemme interfered a few times but in the end the MCMG's prevailed.
 
2. Super Eric over Kip James - here is a match that felt like a total waste. Not that Kip James was ever much to begin with but he's lost what charisma he had. He wrestled in plain black trunks and just seemed in slow motion. Some ridiculous comedy with Super Eric winning a test of strength and such. I think Eric Young is a really good wrestler in his role but I hate this Super Eric stuff. Super Eric took the victory. I couldn't wait for this match to end.
 
3. Awesome Kong over Roxxi - Roxxi worked hard here but Kong just bounced her all over the place. Kong wins in a near squash. No Rasiha Saed.
 
4. X-Division Title Match- Shiek Adbul Basir over Consequences Creed- a pretty good match and both guys worked hard but the division has been buried so much. Basir always gets good heat on shows like this and got the crowd really behind Creed.
 
5. Shark Boy over Maple Leaf Muscle - this is where it became apparent the problems with TNA as you have the guy pretending to be Steve Austin against the guy pretending to be Scott Steiner and two matches ago we had a guy pretending to be Hurricane. All we need is Jay Lethal for the all imposter four way...Both guys are decent wrestlers but I can't get into their matches with these stupid gimmicks. Shark Boy won with the flipping stunner but Petey laid him out with the Canadian Destroyer after the match. This match dragged horribly to me.
 
Borash promised Mick Foley would be appearing at the next show. I know its been said before but he's excellent in his role as the MC for the show.
 
6. Tag Title Match- Beer Money (w/Jackie) over Abyss and Eric Young - This was the best match on the show. I wasn't thrilled when I saw the thrown together match up but they delivered in the ring. Beer Money worked the people into a frenzy...particularly James Storm...with some old school working of the crowd. They worked a bunch of cool old school comedy spots at the beginning and it turned into a nice little tag match. Beer Money pinned Eric Young with their finisher. Storm's antics were legendary in this match as he had some guys in the crowd ready to kill him.
 
7. World Title Three Way Elimination Match:  Samoa Joe vs. Booker T vs. AJ Styles. Another great match. Booker complained that AJ and Joe were going to team up against him...and they did. (which was kind of ass backwards since he was the heel) Joe pinned Booker first...Booker was way over with the crowd despite being a heel. After that AJ and Joe had an awesome 5-7 minutes which were worth the price of admission. Joe pinned AJ with the Muscle Buster. This match would've been so much better as a singles match.
 
After the match, they did the autograph thing that they do at every show with Joe and AJ. Most of the crew came out and signed autographs after the show. They do a really nice job with the fan friendly stuff but they need to have bigger stars and matches on the show if they're expecting to build a fan base in a particular market.