June wrestling reviews and thoughts on Impact Wrestling tapings

This past Saturday was the Impact Wrestling taping in Las Vegas' Orleans Arena. I'll be reviewing these shows the same as my normal reviews. June's Raw and Impact thoughts, as well as thoughts on TNA's roster purge, are in the podcast below.



Anyway, here are my brief thoughts on the taping:

NOT MY PHOTO.

- The arena was about 90 percent full on the televised side and about 70 percent on the end. The dark side was pretty much empty, so judging by the Orleans Arena's capacity, I'd guess between 4,000-4,500 people (though how many were paid attendees is another question).

- Jeremy Borash and Christy Hemme worked WAY too hard early on to get people to cheer on command. It didn't work at all during the Tara-ODB Xplosion match, and it backfired for probably the first half of the July 4 program.

- The show turned around toward the end of the first taping, when the main event match stole the show. It also may have been because the Vegas crowd mercifully got to refuse the Gut Check competitor. Holy crap was the last Gut Check terrible.

- I actually missed the Gut Check vote because I went to the concessions. I really like the Brown Bag Special as an option. It's a $75 option for $40, although not being able to pick the shirt is kind of annoying. Still, the clearance RVD shirt was pretty nice.

- The second show taping had a much more lively crowd. They popped for each match really well and the BFG Series Tag Team challenge/Battle Royal came across really well live.

- I thought the best match of the night was the ladder match between Taryn Terrell and Gail Kim. The crowd was supremely into it. They worked out some really fun spots with the ladder and the finish was actually pretty creative.

- The biggest pops were for Sting, Rampage and AJ Styles from what I could tell.

- The ability to win backstage passes for crowd noise was a nice touch and the TNA crew was really personable. They made sure the experience made people want to come back, and that's really all you can ask.

That's all I've got. If you get a chance to see an Impact taping, it's pretty inexpensive and definitely worth the investment.

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