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Submitted by Boss Foxx on Monday, April 16, 2007 at 5:18 AM EST
 Bad news for Boss Report fans, as the satire is going on hiatus for a while. Trying to write a column like that can be a little draining in a creative sense, and my creative juices are being sapped by other projects these days. So, if I'm going to keep writing wrestling columns for the immediate future then I'm in need of a format that is no muss and no fuss. That's where the Boss Report Rants comes in handy. I can rant and rave all I want with little effort, while still being able to get my point across. Sure, it'll lack a lot of the humor and stylings that you more loyal readers are used to and no doubt prefer, but it's not like the Boss Report is gone for good ... it's just on the shelf for a while. The first Rants column dealt with previewing WrestleMania 23, but this time it'll be more of a review column, as I had the chance to watch TNA Lockdown this weekend. Talk to any faithful TNA fan for the past month or more and they were probably telling you to save your money, not bother ordering WrestleMania 23, and instead spend a portion of those savings on TNA Lockdown. And while I would agree that WrestleMania 23 was certainly not worth the price of admission, I can pretty much say double for Lockdown. I missed the pre-game show, but from what I read it was a bunch of hype interviews and vignettes, and then a match between Voodoo Kin Mafia and Christy Hemme's latest mystery team. This month it was Seretonin. Yikes. This feud between Christy and VKM has been a train wreck thus far, so I can't see how adding TNA's job squad helped matters. VKM had a match against these jobbers about six months ago on PPV and it was one of the absolute worst matches that TNA produced in 2006. I'm willing to bet that this was bad too ... though it couldn't have been as awful as VKM's match last month with the Heartbreakers. Now that was a horrendous match. At least TNA had the good sense to move this match off the PPV card and relegate it to TNA's version of Heat. So, I tune into the PPV and see their intro with the pyro display and all the noise. Then it occurs to me; they're in St. Louis, but aside from missing one entrance tunnel it looks exactly like the Impact Zone in Orlando. Are you telling me that they hype the bejesus out of holding an event from somewhere other than that theme park, yet they end up bringing the damned set with them? As ridiculous as that might be, it wasn't nearly as lame as that cage they constructed for the event. Instead of the wire-mesh fences that we've grown accustomed to for the past ten to fifteen years, we get a cage that looks about as menacing as a “Bob The Builder” play set. I've seen steel cages at backwater Indy shows that looked more imposing than that “Baby's First Steel Cage” TNA brought to Lockdown. It looked like an anorexic version of WWE's old Big Blue from the 80s ... except Big Blue looked like an actual steel cage rather than that chicken-wire you see in roadhouses. The opening match was for the X-Division Title, which only reiterates to me how that title has been diminished to curtain jerking duty. Four wrestlers, and Sharkboy, wrestled in one of TNA's famously convoluted gimmick matches. Pinfalls count in an elimination match until it's down to the final two. From there, it becomes like a traditional cage match where the winner must escape the cage to be declared the victor. Sabin retained in a spotfest that was about as memorable as a Bullet Bob promo. The only thing that stood out in the match for me was Jay Lethal's dead-on impersonation of “Macho Man” Randy Savage. TNA has managed to successfully remove anything remotely unique about the guy and turned him into a midget version of the Macho Man. Actually with Lethal's physique, he'd need only to dye his hair gray and you'd have trouble telling him apart from the present day Macho Man, as both are like malnourished versions of the famed wrestler. Now, I think it's nice of TNA to actually give the time of day to Jay Lethal. He's a talented young man, but this Black Machismo gimmick isn't going to elevate him. Nick Dinsmore has a better chance of breaking out of the Eugene character's shadow than Lethal has of outliving this Macho Clone schtick. Next up was Petey Williams taking on Bobby Roode, and I was optimistic for this one. Their familiarity with one another from the Team Canada days had potential to give a sleeper match of sorts. And it was a good match for the most part, but I kind of forgot that the story revolved around Eric Young and not Petey Williams. That meant a lot of pandering to the interactions with Tracy Brooks and Eric Young on the outside. Fortunately, that stuff didn't overshadow the in-ring action too badly. It might be nice if they showed a hint of taking that storyline some place though, because I had more emotional investment in Nikolai Volkoff back in the day when he got bought by Ted DiBiasie. Gail Kim and Jackie “The Village Bicycle” Moore had their moment in the sun after that. First ever women's match inside a steel cage, eh? Now that I think of it, I can't remember WWE ever letting the Divas have a match inside the steel cage. This would be groundbreaking territory here, but as much as I like Gail Kim, she's not exactly a ring general and Jacqueline has never been a woman that I considered more than a “good hand” in the ring ... and I'm sure there's a lot of boys in the back who thought she gave a “good hand” as well. Within the first few minutes of the match, I remembered that Gail was pretty, but not much else. She really needs someone of remarkable talent to carry her through a good match. Gail's offense was sloppy most of the time and seemed more reminiscent of her early WWE work. I suppose it could have been worse and I could have been watching a rematch between Gail Kim and that Eastern European lookin' chick she feuded with last year. The finish saw Gail leap off the “top” of the cage with a crappy looking cross-body on Jackie. Well, “on Jackie” is a loose term because I think she completely missed her, over shot the spot, and Jackie ended up selling a phantom punch of sorts. Sufficed to say, Gail's best work remains to be those topless photos she posed for in Korea. To go off on a tangent for a bit, who the fuck had the bright idea of giving Bob Backlund a recurring role in TNA? Honestly, is he supposed to be TNA's answer to having a retired wrestler roaming around backstage like Ron Simmons does for WWE? At least Ron Simmons sticks to saying, “Damn,” and making brief and usually humorous appearances. Backlund, meanwhile, is rambling incoherently during other wrestlers' promos that he's not even associated with. It should be funny, but it's distracting and annoying more often than not. Add in the mind boggling interaction he has with the Senshi/Austin Starr feud, and I can only shake my head in disbelief at what the TNA booking team is thinking in the back. The match between Starr and Senshi would have been entertaining probably, but Bob Backlund stuck out like a sore thumb as the guest referee. Every time I found myself getting into the match thanks to the athleticism and timing of the two wrestlers, Backlund would suck the wind out of the match by interjecting and carrying on his useless rivalry with Starr. It was kind of funny too how after losing, Starr jacked his jaw on Backlund by talking into the camera even though Backlund was four feet away in the ring. I suppose it could have been worse and we could have gotten a redux of their Crossface Chickenwing match from last month. Still, this Bob Backlund Bullshit Brigade needs to be stopped. Something else I noticed is that Austin Starr appears to have beaten Jay Lethal to the Randy Savage rip-off gimmick. I suppose Lethal's vocal impersonation was better than Starr's. I first caught a glimpse of Austin Starr a couple years back when he was starting out in RoH as Austin Aries. Back then I thought, this guy is small but he could go places. I would have never guessed that the place would be TNA as a cheesy Macho Man meets the Village People amalgamation. Then Lockdown presents a Blindfold Match. Maybe my memory is rusty, but I could have sworn the Blindfold gimmick was a death sentence. I have a hard time thinking of a single time in history when this kind of match has been anything but horrible. Months and months of anticipation for Chris Harris and James Storm to fight one another, and their first PPV meeting is a damned Blindfold Match. Was this TNA's plan all along? If so, someone on the booking team deserves a kick in the nuts. Hell, bookers need to stop rehashing this blind gimmick because no one is ever going to do as good a job as Sandman and Tommy Dreamer did back in the mid 90s. One of the things that made that part of their feud so great back then was that they never had a Blindfold Match ... at least they never had one that they'll admit to. If precedent wasn't enough to prove that this match was destined to be horseshit, then the first thirty seconds after the opening bell rang should have sealed the deal. The crap couldn't wait to crap all over this match, and rightly so. “We Want Wrestling” rang out from the crowd as the stalling in the match was absolutely unbearable. But hey, at least Chris Harris got to show off his fancy new coat and tights before he and James sucked the life out of the arena. I just thank God that the PPV was in St. Louis where the fans seemed to have a couple of brain cells to rub together, since they had the good sense to chant “Boring” and other unsavory remarks for this match. That's unlike the Orlando crowd that will chant ecstatically for damned near anything. Shit, Orlando pops for Lance Hoyt. That alone should raise concern for an epidemic of mass retardation. Another backstage segment with Kurt Angle consoling his teammates about Jarrett being their surprise partner in the main event, with Sting this time. Fuck, Sting looks even worse with a t-shirt on than without. How is that even possible? Flair wears a shirt and I'm relieved that I don't have to look at his floppy man titties, yet Sting wears a shirt and I'm waiting for him to whip out his dentures and start begging for a Werther's Original. Sting has been stung, ladies and gentlemen. Speaking of the Stinger, his next rumored opponent in the months to come, Chris Daniels, was next on the card. He and Jerry Lynn squared off in a match that the crowd should have loved to death. The problem was that everyone's voices were sore from berating Storm and Harris for that terrible, terrible match just minutes ago. It's sad because these guys probably had the match of the night. Jerry is as good as he's ever been, in my opinion, and Chris Daniels is finally working the Fallen Angel gimmick. The crowd was silent though, and not even these guys were able to fully revive them. As for Daniels finally showing some fucking attitude in the ring, all I can say is that it's about fucking time. This guy has been meandering for too damned long with conflicting persona's from one minute to the next. His entrance would show a man who was brooding, cocky, and borderline maniacal. Then the bell would sound and he'd be a kind of fun loving, technical marvel that pandered to the fans. Then in interviews he'd wear polo shirts from the Gap and talk like an insurance salesmen. Now he actually seems to be a Fallen Angel. I don't know if it was a matter of TNA cluing in and letting this guy become something, or if they finally pulled him aside and told him to get his shit together and figure out what his character actually was. Either way, it look long enough. Then it all went to Hell. Just when Lynn and Daniels had managed to salvage a little bit of the electricity of the crowd (pun so intended), LAX and Team 3-D decimated the atmosphere for the rest of the night. What the Blindfold Match couldn't shoot in the face, the Electrified Cage Match finished the job. One more hot LAX promo upstaged a Team 3-D promo, giving a false sense of hope that this cheesy gimmick of a match might actually work. If there was a single fan anywhere in the world, however, that thought this match would do anything but find a way to suck and blow at the same time, that fan needs to get their head examined. This was easily the worst match of the year ... and we're not even a third of the way through yet. When this match was first rumored, I thought it was a joke. No way would they try something this corny. And if they did do it, there was no way that they'd do it the way the Japanese have done it. FMW has done their fair share of these and some of been downright watchable. TNA decided to avoid doing anything even close to respectable though. I thought the Last Rites Match between Sting and Abyss last month was bad from concept to execution, but this abortion of a match made the Last Rites Match look like a Flair/Steamboat marathon. First thing I noticed about the match was the fact that they dimmed the lights in the arena to give the match a more ominous appeal. To me, it was more like when the night clubs keep the lights down so the folks dancing can't really tell how unattractive the people are that they're trying to pick up for the night. This match was the chick in dark clothes who only looks good when the lights are dim and you've got about four shots of tequila in you already. The only difference being that there isn't enough alcohol in the world to make this match look pretty. Most of the psychology of the match was just laughable too, what little there was. At one point, Homicide tries to get Bubba Ray's hand to touch the cage. The thing is that electricity flows through the body, and when you're touching a guy who is touching an electric fence, you're going to feel it too. So when Bubba reversed it and put Homicide's hand on the cage for a second, and Homicide sold it like battery acid, Bubba didn't feel a thing. It reminded me of the times when someone would use a tazer in wrestling and the guy holding the victim wouldn't feel the shock while the the victim is shaking like an epileptic. Another thing is that for some reason the cage door was not electrified, as everyone and their mother was pawing the cage door, the chain around the door, and even the metal bracing above the door. Metal is metal, fuckers. If there's a current going through it, you're gonna get shocked. Hector Guerrero grabbing the door and slamming it into Hernandez's ample skull destroys the illusion of there being an electrified cage ... unless there was an asterisk somewhere that noted “except the cage door.” Then the crowd let them have it when they did the ill-fated Border Toss spot. Hernandez chucks D-Von into the cage and then we're subjected to the most hokey light and sound effects display, accentuated by D-Von flopping on the mat like he shot in the ass by a electrified lawn dart. Shit, I swear they stole the sound effects for the electric current from a Halloween spooky sounds album. They weren't done there, as Hernandez would put on a pair of rubber gloves to go with his rubber soled boots (Don West wouldn't let us forget that he was wearing those fucking boots) and climbed to the top of the cage. That's fine, rubber doesn't conduct electricity, so it's a smart move. But when he gets up there, he sits on the top of the cage. Was he wearing rubber underpants too? Idiots. After one more terrible spot with Homicide getting thrown into the side of the cage for an encore of that crap special effects display, we get a 3-D on him and the match is mercifully over. With that, Team 3-D's legacy is successfully defended and destroyed all in one breath. Congratulations, boys. You just won the TNA tag titles in one of the more ridiculously embarrassing displays in wrestling that I have ever witnessed ... Katie Vick included. Team 3-D, LAX, Hector Guerrero, the referees, Mikey Tenay, Don West, and everyone else even remotely associated with trying to get that match over should be ashamed of themselves. That was a bigger slap to the face of professional wrestling than anything Judy Bagwell on a pole could ever accomplish. It's main event time after that shit stain of a match, but before the wrestlers come out we're treated to Zombie Harley Race being introduced as the “gate keeper” for the match. Harley Race is a legend, but he was looking about as agile as Iron Sheik at last call when he came down that ramp. Angle and Styles started things off, so at least I was assured of seeing Styles play tackling dummy for a few minutes to sell Angle's offense. Remember when AJ was a main eventer instead of a whipping boy? Neither do I. Then Abyss and Rhino join the match and we start inching closer and closer to clusterfuck territory. It seems readily apparent that this match is designed to give fans as many finishers as possible in a twenty minute period. There were some glimpses at team work and story telling here and there, but as people started filling the ring, that kind of faded away in favor of spot-after-spot and teasing the Jarrett turn that would never come. Although seeing Big Poppa Pump break out the Frankensteiner was pretty cool for a nostalgia moment. Chances are we'll never see one of those again from him. I like the rumor of WWE being interested in Tyson Tomko now that he doesn't stink up a ring. That time in Japan must have paid off because he looks like a force in TNA. Maybe it's just a deviation from the norm for TNA by executing some solid booking for the guy, who knows. As the match wore on, I think it was when Samoa Joe hit the ring that I was convinced that five-on-five was too much talent for one match. Four-on-four would have been better, saving two of these guys to have one more match on the card that wouldn't be an eye sore. I bet the boys in the back were thinking something similar after having to sit through that terrible undercard. With all their big name talent invested in this match, leaving a weak roster to fill the rest of the show, I think I can safely say that this event was TNA's December 2 Dismember. Grampa Stinger was thankfully given one of the late spots in the match. If he started an earlier, he'd be so dehydrated after fifteen minutes that he'd look like a green grape left out in the sun all day. Give Christian credit for bumping his ass off for Sting to make him look like a somebody, since they're facing eachother at the next TNA PPV. They've never had a one-on-one match on PPV that I can recall, but I could care less that they are the next main event. It feels like such a throw away match that they need to do some miracle work to make me care. When Jarrett shows up, they drop the roof of the cage down and we've officially got a Lethal Lockdown. Great. I forgot weapons were attached to that thing. Not only are we getting a bunch of finisher spots, but the plunder is being thrown in like it was a hardcore battle royal ... and Crash Holly was back on 24/7 duty. I'm sorry, but with ten guys in the ring and weapons all over the place, I should be witnessing a friggin' war of biblical proportions. Instead, I saw a match that could have been on the midcard of Fully Loaded 2000. They did manage to have certain spots save it from mediocrity though, like Tomko getting gored through the cage door and Styles hitting his spot on top of the cage. This was their Money In The Bank match, I guess. As average as MITB 3 was though, I think I'd take it over this match. And I don't care how many thumbtacks were in that guitar, Jeff Jarrett was not a selling point for this show. This presence is nothing more than an unsettling reminder that he has hogged the spotlight in TNA since day fucking one. Does anyone think he's turned over a new leaf? He's done the right thing by getting out of the way for the past six months or so, but then I realized he was gone because his wife is sick and not because the fans were sick of him. I will honestly be shocked to the core of my being if he goes the rest of the year without the NWA Title around his waist. At the end of the night, TNA Lockdown was a TNA letdown. Oh, how droll. How many people have used that one this week? I remember the TNA fans saying how Lockdown was going to own WrestleMania 23. Sorry, boys and girls. TNA dropped the ball. Even at a lower pricetag than Mania, I can't say that this event would have been worth the money spent to see it. Maybe it's too fresh in my mind to say with complete certainty, but I think TNA is on par right here to have the worst PPV of the year. God forbid they put out one worse than this. And that's it for me ranting about this heap. Comments, questions, or rebuttals? Send them to bossfoxx@gmail.com or drop some feedback on the LoP Forums. If someone can find a way to put this PPV over as anything other than horrible, I'd love to be proven wrong and display the evidence in my next column. But until then, I'll leave you with what you all love see. So, here it is ... your moment of Zen.  As ugly as Abyss might be without his mask, Lockdown was uglier. *NEW GALLERY* Candice Michelle's Head Up Maria's Dress! WOW!
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