TNA House Show Live Report From Murray, KY - November 6, 2009

TNA held a house show at the RSEC on Friday night. This was the first wrestling event for Murray after 10 years of rumblings about how wrestling was coming to Murray. The upper level of the arena and the seats on the sides of the building were not used at all. So, the seating was all at ringside and on the lower level in the middle of the building. Before the show, Hernandez and Abyss were signing autographs at a table just as you walked into the building. I liked how TNA did their countdown. They would play music and after every song, there would be an announcement of how much time was left before the show begins. Interesting that the song that played with 10 minutes to go was Enter Sandman. That brought back ECW memories hearing that. Last song to play at the five minute mark was Welcome To The Jungle. Good song to get the crowd pumped up. I have to say that this was a good crowd especially for the size of it. Jeremy Borash was introduced to open the show and he made his way to the ring to Motley Crue’s Wildside song. He encouraged everyone to take a ton of pics and then to send them to TNA showing your live event experience. He also teased about how the loudest fans would get backstage passes.

The show opened with Dinero making his way to the ring. I realized that it was Elijah Burke when he took the hood off. LOL. He ripped on the fans saying that we had set a record for the largest gathering of losers in one place. LOL. He took on Suicide who made his way out through the crowd and got a good reaction from the crowd. An all right opener which was won by Suicide. The next match had Rob Terry accompanied by Doug Williams taking on Kip James. Amazing to me how much that Kip still does all the DX stuff. During his entrance, he posed on the ropes and held up a quick DX sign. He did the DX chop during the match as well. The finish had Kip getting distracted by Williams. When Kip turned around, he caught a kick from Terry. Terry then got the win. Next was the Knockouts match of the night. This featured Alissa Flash taking on Sojo Bolt. This was easily the best match of the night to this point and I would say was probably the second best match of the night overall. Alissa is a really good heel and played off of the crowd really well. Her entrance had her teasing that she was going to unzip her top and then zipped it back up. That was funny. There were a lot of fans like ourselves that really enjoyed her as a heel and started cheering for her. Alissa did this awesome move where she hooked Bolt in a surfboard move. Then, she stomped her right in the back sending Bolt’s face into the mat. It looked nasty!! Move of the night at that point that got us all ooohhing at it. Alissa won the match following a move that combined a slam and piledriver together. Funny moment here when they played Man In The Box as the music break between matches. Where is Tommy Dreamer when we need him??!! Next was the former LAX partners going at it. Homicide vs. Hernandez. Hernandez is a big guy. Homicide got heel heat immediately from the fans when he told everyone to shut up or he’d burn the remainder of the backstage passes. It was really amazing just how easy it was for heels to get heat with some fans. Hernandez had some impressive moves to start the match including a big shouldertackle and then about a 15 second standing vertical suplex. Hernandez won the match after hitting a sit down powerbomb. Homicide went crazy after the match mad over the loss grabbing chairs and getting an alarmed look from Jeremy Borash from ringside that was pretty funny. This got us to intermission.

On to the second half of the show. Abyss taking on Rhino. Rhino got a good reaction coming out. He cut a heel promo ripping on the fans doing all he could to deflect the cheers that he was getting. Yeah, it didn’t work and never does work. However, it fired up the fans that were already against him. We had a battle going on in our section between Rhino and Abyss. Yeah, I was for Rhino. I am just not into this face character of Abyss. Not working for me at all. Turn him heel and go back to the original character. The finish had Rhino ducking Abyss and then hitting the gore for the pinfall. After the match, Rhino got on the mic saying that he was going to finish Abyss. He picked up a chair from ringside. As he got in the ring, Abyss kicked the chair back in to Rhino’s face. Abyss then posed for the fans. Next was Doug Williams making his way to the ring. He said that his tag team partner wasn’t there so that meant no tag team title defense against Beer Money. He added that his partner’s passport had been stolen so he was looking into who was behind it. He ripped the fans and then sang “God Save The Queen”. This brought out Cowboy James Storm who got a good pop from the fans. Fans were really into him. I can’t say that I was disappointed in not seeing Robert Roode. LOL. I wasn’t really crazy about Storm putting over beer drinking as much as he was really hyping up who in the crowd was beer drinkers. Anyway, he had two backstage passes. Williams attacked Storm and then tore up the passes which got quite a bit of heat. Storm made a comeback and threw Williams from the ring. Afterwards, Storm invited this little girl in the ring and he put her up on his shoulder. Then, it was main event time. This was a dream match for me to see live. AJ Styles defending the TNA championship against Samoa Joe. Cool lighting for the entrances as they cut most of the lights giving it more of a darker look. Joe made his way to the ring and then AJ made his entrance. Good reaction for both. I was surprised that there weren’t more fans behind Joe in this match. Yep, Joe’s moves look just as nasty in person. First though, AJ got the match going quick with his drop down as Joe ran from the ropes followed by the incredible dropkick. I always love that spot. Joe hit a splash in the corner followed by a nasty pele kick to AJ. I definitely gave a big reaction to Joe’s quick low to the mat powerslam. I love just about every move of Joe’s. LOL. I was definitely cheering spots in this one as I love both of these guys as performers. The finish had Joe going for the musclebuster. AJ countered out of it into the Styles Clash. However, Joe got out of it. They went at each other and AJ was able to hit the pele kick. AJ gets the win and retains the TNA title. After the match, there was the tease of the big surprise which had been talked about for a while from Borash. AJ teased about taking us all backstage but then the announcement was made that backstage was coming to us. Yep, an autograph session around ringside.

So, that gets us to the post show. Of course, I made my way to ringside. James Storm, Kip James, Hernandez, Abyss, Suicide, and Jeremy Borash were around the ring signing autographs. Everyone was having a great time meeting the stars. AJ was in the ring getting pictures taken with fans. Pay $20 and get to have your picture taken in the ring with him. Of course, I went for this one!! My nerd self wouldn’t have it any other way. LOL. I got my picture taken with AJ and he was very nice. I told him how seeing he and Joe in the main event working against each other was a dream match for me and he was very appreciative of the comments. Definitely have to give TNA a ton of credit here cause this photo taking was very well organized and they got the line through fast. That was it from there for the show.

Other notes from the show. It was funny just how many old ECW themes they were playing in between matches. Borash would get on the mic and talk to the fans with some music playing. Definitely a different feel from a WWE show as far as that goes. There was a guy in the crowd wearing a shirt that said “If Russo books, we riot”. I loved that shirt!! There was a guy in the front row dressed as Cobra Commander and was cheering the heels for the most part from what I could tell. My thought was if this guy was the Gene Simmons of Murray? Some of you will get that reference. There is a guy in Cape that always dresses as Gene and it would be funny if this guy kept the Cobra tradition going. Does Konnan get royalties every time that Homicide comes to the ring to the old LAX music?

Overall thoughts. Really fun show. I had a great time. Good crowd in Murray. Borash did say that they would be back in Murray especially after the great reactions from the crowd. Borash and TNA were posting live results and happenings from the show as it happened on Twitter. Like I said, the crowd was good for its size. AJ and Joe being the main event was great. You always want that match to go longer but I was very happy with the match. Lots of great spots and high impact moves. I’m a fan of both so seeing those two in the main event was great. Did I mention that the tickets were $20 including the extra fees? Yeah, talk about bargain for your dollar. Very nice. Great time. So, that’s it for this live report. Hope that I recapped it well for all of you. I’ll be back with the normal Wrestling List soon. Take care and God bless!!