My Thoughts on Sacrifice

The main feature of Sacrifice was the 8-team Deuces Wild Tag Team Tournament.  After seeing the entire tournament unfold during the pay-per-view event, I had about as much tag team wrestling as I could stomach for one night.

Normally, I love tag team wrestling and feel that it doesn’t get the credit or attention that it deserves in today’s wrestling.  Furthermore, a tag team tournament for the vacated tag team gold is a great way to feature the division and give the titles some sort of meaning.  With that said, the Deuces Wild concept really took away from that by having half of the teams being drawn at random from a pool of eight wrestlers.

Instead of seeing established, and at times deserving, tag teams participate in the tournament, such as the Motorcity Machine Guns, the Rock n’ Rave Infection, or even Black Reign & Rellik or Curry Man & Shark Boy, we got to see the odd couple pairings of Booker T & Robert Roode and BG James & Awesome Kong.

Surprisingly, none of the randomly selected tag teams made it past the quarterfinal round, which in essence made the whole Deuces Wild aspect pointless.  It might as well have been a four team tournament and there could have been four less tag team matches in the process.  Better yet, remove the Deuces Wild part of it and just have eight established teams take part in the tournament.  Why does everything need to cross the line, so to speak?

I will give TNA credit, though, by giving the two most deserving tag teams in the tournament a shot at the titles in the final round.  It was also a refreshing sight to see the LAX holding the gold once again.  However, by the time the tournament finals came around, I was too burned out on tag team wrestling that I don’t think I enjoyed their victory as much as I should have.

Aside from the Deuces Wild Tournament, we also got to witness a new match concept called the TerrorDome.  After seeing this match for the first time, I sincerely hope that this match either goes back to the drawing board or is forgotten about altogether.

For starters, 10 wrestlers in a caged space is too crowded, not to mention that the way the bars were put together on the structure made it hard to see what was going on in any wide shots of the ring.  I couldn’t imagine being in the crowd during that match.  After not being able to see much of the action, I’m not sure if I would be applauding Kaz’s victory or the fact that the match was finally over.

The disclaimer “card subject to change,” is appended to each and every pay-per-view and it came true at Sacrifice.  Due to Kurt Angle’s neck injury in South Korea, he wasn’t able to take part in the triple threat main event.  Seeing as a main event of Samoa Joe against Scott Steiner would be a huge disappointment, Kaz, the winner of the TerrorDome match, won the vacant spot in the main event.

Kaz isn’t quite ready to be in the main event picture in my mind, but after seeing him in this match, he might very well be getting to that point.  Kaz may have single handedly saved this match from being a real stinker had it only been a singles match pitting Joe against Steiner.  Even though Joe walked away with the title, Kaz was given some time to shine and hopefully this is the start of something big for him.

All in all, Sacrifice just wasn’t up to par on a pay-per-view level.  Most of the tag team tournament matches were forgettable and the gimmick matches didn’t help matters much either.  The main event was solid and ended up exceeding my expectations, but the only thing you will see sacrificed is the three hours you spent watching this pay-per-view.