TNA’s first pay per view of the year is all wrapped up, and like it’s title is offering some new beginnings. This is the first TNA PPV after the formal announcement of the partnership between them and NXT, and it even got a few days of publicity from WWE in the week leading up to it. That gave some extra motivation to check this one out, to see just who would show up from NXT to set the table for future cross promotional matches. A couple of TNA stalwarts look to be moving on and one who had been ahem, absent for a while is back. How did it go? Let’s see.
X-Division Title Match: Moose (c) vs Ace Austin
Good opener. Moose used his power moves, while Ace countered with speed and aerial tactics. Moose’s faction mates from the System – Brian Myers, Eddie Edwards, and Alisha Edwards – interfered early and often, and Moose finally was able to take advantage of their help to get the win. If you don’t like matches ending with outside interference then you’ll dock a few points but I for one am a believer in heel champs cheating to win, so I’m good with it here. This led us immediately into the next match.
Steve Maclin and Eric Young vs Brian Myers and Eddie Edwards
Maclin and Young attacked Myers and Edwards right after Moose’s win and got the match started with zero down time in between. That was actually a pretty deft move – Maclin is good but kinda boring when it comes to the other things than ring work so not giving anyone a chance to settle down and check out of it. (That applies to me too, to be honest) This was a good match with Maclin and Young winning.
Knockouts Tag Team Title Match: Spitfire – Jody Threat and Dani Luna (c) vs Ash and Heather by Elegance
Ash and Heather came out in full Dallas Cowboy cheerleader regalia. Another good match, Ash and Heather bumped and sold well for the champs and got enough offense in to make it interesting. Nine minutes was just long enough to get everything in that was needed.
Tessa Blanchard vs Jordynne Grace
Oh boy, where do I start? To call Blanchard a controversial figure would be a massive understatement, and no one who I interact with was particularly happy to see her show up at Final Destination in December. Do I understand why TNA brought her back? Yes. Grace is on her way out, and after losing Deonna Purazzo, Trinity, and Mickie James last year they are short on women who can work a main event level match and Tessa was the only one available who they could afford. Add in that she has some friends in high places at the company and here you go. Tessa is 29 and has been in exile of sorts since 2020; given how the wrestling business has forgiven and brought people back who behaved just as badly or worse, it was a bit delusional to think that she would be completely shut out for another 15 to 20 years. That of course does not mean you are resigned to accepting her being back, but I’m just giving you the reality of the wrestling business.
(The crowd did not exactly welcome Tessa back with open arms, a ‘F-U Tessa’ broke out early and there was a ‘she’s a racist’ chant later on. Comes with the territory, Tessa. The TNA audience is much more of an inside the bubble audience so they know about what went down; if she was expecting a warm welcome she was badly mistaken. She’s gonna have to eat those chants until she shows she can behave better.)
OK so how was the match? It was the best match of the show and a match of the year contender. They really unloaded on each other and landed a lot of big, high impact moves in the 20-plus minutes they got to work. The screwy finish where Tessa used the exposed turnbuckle would have been fine had she pulled the pad off right in front of the referee. Ref bumps are cliches and all but that was a time when one was needed. As for Grace you couldn’t ask for a better performance in a swan song than she gave here. See you on the other side in a few weeks, Jordynne, and congrats on a hell of a run in TNA. Jordynne is easily one of the five best to ever do it in the Knockouts division.
I Quit Match: Josh Alexander vs Mike Santana
This match also had the makings of a goodbye. Josh’s contract is up and he’s said he’s going to explore free agency while Santana returned to TNA last year and was poised for a big victory of some kind (in other words, he needed to win something or else it was gonna be time to stop taking him seriously. This match was brutal in all the good ways, and Santana got to level up here in a way that makes him a believable player for bigger things going forward. The only thing I didn’t like was when Josh hit him with his C4 Spike finisher and he hulked up, completely shrugging off the leg that Josh had demolished just minutes earlier. I thought that was a bit ridiculous but if this was a going out match for Josh then I guess I can allow it. And the finish was another ‘threaten your opponent with death by blunt force trauma to get him to quit’ moves that we saw last year in WWE and AEW. I’m not a fan of that for real; a weapon assisted submission hold is plenty good enough in my book.
TNA Tag Team Title Match: The Hardys (c) vs The Rascalz
Matt and Jeff can still play the hits, and the Rascalz were perfect dance partners for them in that they do a lot of the same stuff we came to know Matt and Jeff for. The real story of this match was Fraxiom from NXT coming down to watch, and then getting into it with the Rascalz to set up an NXT title match on the live episode of TNA coming this week.
Good match, the Hardys can still deliver in these kind of spots and hopefully this will lead to a Hardys/Fraxiom match down the road.
TNA Knockouts Title Match: Masha Slamavich (c) vs Rosemary
This was a Clockwork Orange Match, which meant that there were weapons involved that go about and beyond the usual chairs and kendo sticks and all. Man, this kind of stuff is just not for me; baseball bats with protruding nails and staple guns are two things I can pass on having in wrestling matches. If you’re into that kind of thing that you’d dig this match; it was a pure ‘either you’re in or you’re out’ situation. Masha won as expected and would immediately be met in the ring by Cora Jade from NXT, making it two cross promotional challenges in a row. Masha was at the NXT TV episode before this PPV and had some interaction with Jade so we’re definitely heading towards a match of some kind here.
TNA World Title Match: Nic Nemeth (c) vs Joe Hendry
I for one was very critical of the decision to not crown Joe at Bound for Glory; it was another LOLTNA moment to me at the time. Joe Hendry has been an all time great story in getting over without the WWE machine behind you, and Bound for Glory has always been their biggest show of the year so it only made sense to do it there. When the match wasn’t booked as the main event I got that sinking feeling because I knew what was coming, and it totally killed the vibe of the show. I thought that maybe he was leaving, but even if he was this was an opportunity to pay off a big movement with a big moment for your fans and he could have dropped it at this show on his way out the door. For a company like TNA with a long history of making the absolute worst booking decisions at the absolute worst times, I saw this as another example of things not changing.
I had no idea was what going to happen here. Once they announced it as the main event I thought that maybe they would do it here but I remained suspicious. Even though I’ve only watched TNA since 2020 I’ve already had the TNA fan experience where you tell people ‘hey guys, TNA is good now’ only for them to do the dumbest thing ever. I fully expected them to follow up what they did at Bound for Glory by doubling down here, and then we’d see Joe in the Royal Rumble and later on NXT. So I am glad to be wrong here. Joe is apparently sticking around, and they wanted to do it here at their New Beginning show instead. And you know what…..I’ll allow it.
The match was good, we all know what Nemeth can do and Hendry is no slouch either. They very smartly threw a couple of potential moment spoilers in there – Ryan Nemeth who had been banned from ringside but bought a front row ticket hopped the railing and Franke Kazarian came to the ring with the Money in the Bank briefcase Call Your Shot Trophy but both were taken out by JBL. At Bound for Glory JBL would take Hendry out right he did it to those two but this time he just left and we went to the finish. A couple of finisher kickouts which were perfectly fine here given the circumstances, Joe hit his finisher a second time and got the win.
A very well done main event with all the right callbacks and the right ending. Joe’s story is truly remarkable and it turned on a dime from returning to TNA in September 2022 to working his way to being a reliable midcarder through 2023 to becoming an international sensation in 2024 to the TNA World Champion in 2025. Joe isn’t some guy who got booked to hit 9 out of the 10 things on every wrestler’s vision board all while claiming the office didn’t want him; he had a one year stint in Impact Wrestling from 2018 to 2019 sandwiched in between working for Ring of Honor and the UK and then returned three years later to help fill out the midcard. The office may not have been against him but he damn sure wasn’t brought in to win the world title someday. That he was able to do this without fostering resentment towards anyone else or playing off of the IWC’s penchant for hating on anyone that the powers that be are clearly pushing is something he should get extra credit for. And this is just the beginning, it seems.
FINAL VERDICT
Matches: B, Finishes: B, Swerves/Surprises: B, Storylines: A, Pacing: A
I’ll give this one a B+. One match of the year candidate and no bad matches, really. A few things weren’t really my bag but there wasn’t anything that I would call objectively bad here other than a couple of finishes I wasn’t big on. They got 8 matches finished in just over 3 hours and there weren’t any long talking segments or anything to kill the mood. TNA usually does well with it’s first PPV of the year so it’s no surprise that they did it again here.
As for the promised new beginning there definitely is one, and one with some intriguing questions. The first wave of 2025 cross promotional matches are set to start; just how far will they go this time? Will there be some cross promotional title changes? How high up the roster will each company be willing to go when it’s time to put the other company over? Is there a joint PPV/PLE in the works? TNA is doing it’s first live episode of television in years on the back of this show; what all will go down there?
We don’t what the future holds but this was a good start for everything. It looks like we just might be able to retire LOLTNA for a little while longer.
Stroke of Genius 