My Thoughts on the TNA Show in Spencer, IA

I got the chance to attend the TNA house show that took place last night in Spencer, IA. The Clay County Regional Events Center hosted the event, which was about the right size for the show. There were some empty seats in the elevated sections, but overall I’d say there were about 1,000 people in attendance, if not a little more than that.

A poster in the lobby of the event center showed there were six matches scheduled for the night, with Samoa Joe & Jay Lethal against AJ Styles & Tomko and Booker T vs. Robert Roode being the main attractions. Jeremy Borash hosted the show throughout the night and kept on saying that there were tons of surprises and huge announcements in store for the fans in attendance. Backstage passes were even handed out to some of the more vocal TNA fans in the crowd.

The show kicked off with Curry Man going up against Sonjay Dutt. Curry Man played to the crowd a lot during the introductions as well as the match. At one point, Dutt tried to bite Curry Man’s forehead and went out of the ring to get a drink of water since he was too spicy. The match was a fun way to open up the show and Curry Man defeated Dutt with the spice rack.

The second match of the night was Gail Kim facing ODB in a #1 contenders match for the Women’s Championship. Jacqueline Moore came out and said that she had called Jim Cornette, or “Jimmy” as she knows him by, and he added her into the mix to make it a triple threat match.

At different points during the match, a knockout was eventually sent out to the floor, thus only having any two women in the match at a time. In the end, ODB rolled up Moore for the pin fall. After the match, ODB and Kim looked like they were going to go at it some more, but quickly reconciled and shared ODB’s flask.

The next match was supposed to be Rhino going up against James Storm, however, Storm wasn’t medically cleared to wrestle since his fall from the Elevation X platform at Destination X. If memory serves me correctly, he just wrestled against Sting on Impact that was aired one day prior to the event. I know I wasn’t the only one who voiced that fact.

The next match of the night pitted Kip James against his former friend and partner, BG James. BG James came out to the ring with a fan who earned a backstage pass from earlier in the night. BG also did a lot of his DX shtick on the microphone before the match started. Kip dominated most of the match but BG got to throw in some of his classic moves, like the shaky knee drop, before winning the match with a roll up pin fall.

Rhino came out to the ring and called out James Storm. Storm came back to the ring with a note from the doctor that said he couldn’t wrestle tonight. Storm read the note to Rhino, who crumpled it up and the next match started. Storm wrestled in street clothes during the match and ended up on the losing end after taking a huge gore from Rhino.

A fifteen minute intermission took place and Borash told the crowd that the Spike TV cameras are here and they would be filming footage to be shown on Impact at a later date. A few fans were selected to be in the ring and got to state which wrestlers they were there to see while the cameras recorded the ringside fans reactions and Borash did his usual TNA Today bit.

The tag team titles were on the line in the next contest as AJ Styles & Tomko defended them against the team of Samoa Joe & Jay Lethal. There was a lot of back and forth action in this one as we saw a few near falls, once after Styles landed a Pele kick on Lethal and another time when Lethal delivered the lethal combination to Styles. The ending saw Samoa Joe tossed out to the floor which led to the tag team champs landing their double team tornado-plex on Lethal to pick up the win and retain the titles. After the match, however, Joe would get even and land a muscle buster on Styles and Lethal would follow with a top rope elbow drop.

Borash came out once again and stated that he got his big break in the broadcasting business in Fort Dodge, Iowa, several years ago and promised the fans that TNA would be returning to Spencer.

The main event of the night was Robert Roode against Booker T and a stipulation was added that the match would be no disqualification. The match went out to the floor a couple of times where both Roode and Booker took turns tossing each other into the guard railing. Roode made a ringside fan get out of her chair and brought it into the ring, but Booker blocked him from getting a chance to use it. Booker was able to eventually kick the chair into Roode’s face and landed an ax kick to pick up the victory.

After the main event, fans could pay $20 to come into the ring and have their picture taken with Booker T. Others, such as Rhino, Curry Man, ODB, Gail Kim and Jay Lethal came out to sign autographs for the fans. There were two girls taking photos with Polaroid cameras and Scott D’Amore was there handing the photos out to the fans as they exited the ring.

I was one of the many in line to have a photo taken with Booker T, however, by the time I made it through many of the other stars that were out signing autographs had already returned to the backstage area. Both Rhino and Curry Man walked past me without signing anything, but I was at least able to get referee Rudy Charles, as well as Booker T, to sign an autograph for me.

From top to bottom, the entire show was a lot of fun to watch. My only complaints with it were the fact that the matches seemed to run a little short and that six matches didn’t seem like a lot. The entire show only took about two hours, but I wouldn’t have mind seeing another match or two on the card or at least give the six scheduled matches a little more time to develop.

With that being said, all of the wrestlers worked the audience and did their best to entertain and the fans ate it up. With the exception of the one fan that was determined to shout out racial slurs to Booker T during the main event, it seemed that everyone in attendance had a good time – a why shouldn’t they when all of the fan favorites either won their matches or at least walked out on top?

Overall, even though the show took place inside of a small venue in a small city, TNA delivered big time entertainment. I would recommend anyone to see a TNA house show if an opportunity arises.

One final side note, one big damper on the night was that both the battery in my camera and the backup that I brought were either dead or close to it. During the intermission, I was able to scrounge up some extra AA batteries, which don’t last very long in my camera, so I wasn’t able to take nearly as many photos as I would have liked. I do plan on posting some of the better ones on this site later today.