The DVD Ray-View: Cover of new Jeff Hardy TNA DVD Revealed

TNA Home Video have released the cover image of the upcoming DVD release "Enigma: The Best of Jeff Hardy Volume 2". The DVD is a follow up to the 2005 "Enigma: The Best of Jeff Hardy" and follows Jeff's career since his return to TNA in January 2010 to present.

The cover is very impressive and easily one of the best looking DVD covers I've personally ever seen. Jeff recently filmed commentary for the DVD with TNA producers and interestingly it is slated for an October 18th release date. This is just two days after Bound For Glory 2011, so whether this is simply a case of cashing in on the archive footage before his contract expires (like Mick Foley earlier this year.) or indeed indicates an impending return, remains to be seen.

I'll have more on the DVD including match lists in due course.

The DVD Ray-View: TNA Genesis 2011

I must say i was surprised to receive this DVD for review from the powers that be so quickly but was chomping at the bit to watch it again as my memories of TNA’s initial PPV offering of 2011 were very positive, and upon rewatching i know this wasn’t simply a post-Maximum iMPACT! tour high but was down to Genesis being one fantastic pay-per view!

Kicking things off Kazarian (representing Immortal & Fortune) took on fellow high flyer and risk-taker Jay Lethal in an entertaining and dangerous X Division Title scrap.

Next up the two best Knockouts in the Division (in my opinion anyway!) do battle for the prestigious Knockouts title and Mickie James and Madison Rayne didn’t disappoint with a great bout.

And speaking of the two best in division….are the two better tag-teams right now than Beer Money incorporated and the Motor City Machine Guns? I think not.

Anytime these two meet in the ring it is a special thing, throwing the TNA World Tag Team belts into the mix make that even more special, and having re-watched this, the DVD is worth it for this match alone folks!

From the two best tag-teams, up next its the most decorated tag team in wrestling (Team 3D). However they aren’t teaming folks, oh no, they continue their implosion as Brothers Ray and Devon battle throughout the arena and ringside area.

AJ Styles being genuinely injured at this point, led to Abyss taking his place against Television Champion Douglas Williams, and a surprisingly good match-up ensued!

The following encounter was shaded in secrecy and suspense from the get go, former TNA Heavyweight Champion Rob Van Dam was about to face a handpicked opponent by Immortal’s Eric Bischoff.

When it was stated that RVD was going to get Hardy, (of course TNA World Champ Jeff Hardy was off the card) we thought we knew what was coming, but what we got was his brother and former WWE superstar Matt Hardy complete with new dreads and new threads.

Whilst both men have faced each other before i felt the build to this match, not to mention the backdrop with RVD at odds with Immortal and seeking revenge on Matt’s brother Jeff took this match to a whole new level and it just had a big time feel about it.

Jeff Jarrett and the returning Kurt Angle put forth a vicious at times MMA challenge brawl next, the pair exchanging holds, moves, offensive and defensive holds. Angle even bladed to pump up the adrenaline.

The main event was designed to determine the number one contender for Jeff Hardy’s World Heavyweight Championship with Mr. Anderson (freshly recovered from his concussion thanks to an errant chairshot from Hardy) taking on Matt Morgan. These two had a fabulous match but it was probably the ending that will be of interest to most viewers, with an impromptu title match ensuing and Mr. Anderson seeing his World Title dreams come true, a very surprising and special moment in TNA history.

Overall the DVD is a superb watch and well worth the money, there’s even a few extras in there with a Before the Bell special, music video and photos from the event.

TNA Genesis 2011 is available from ShopTNA, aMerchandise and all good retailers.

The DVD Ray-View: TNA Bound For Glory 2010

TNA’s flagship pay-per-view Bound For Glory promised a lot—a new world champion, RVD’s revenge on Abyss, the culmination of the EV2 and Fortune battle in Lethal Lockdown, Mickie James’ first PPV appearance and, of course, Abyss would finally reveal who “They” were.

I must admit i was quite excited to review this double-disc set from the moment it arrived. This was certainly TNA’s best PPV offering of 2010.

The event itself opens with a bang as Generation Me take on Motor City Machineguns for the Guns in a fast paced, high-flying bout for the World Tag Team Belts.

Up next, a four-way battle between Knockouts champion Angelina Love, her Beautiful People partner Velvet Sky, Tara and Madison Rayne. TNA’s newest, Knockout Mickie James, is also featured prominently and does well in the guest referee role.

A comedy Tag-Match follows next as the Oddball team of Orlando Jordan and Eric Young took on Ink Inc. Not the best of matches to be honest, but it is what it is, both teams did their jobs well in a fun bout.

Douglas Williams then represented Fortune in his quest to recapture the X Division Title; current champion Jay Lethal had other ideas, of course. Both men used their particular talents to their own ends—Williams utilising his mat based style while Lethal tried his best to fly and use his speed.

Up next, the match many were waiting on—Rob Van Dam finally got his hands on Abyss, seeking revenge for the brutal and bloody beat down that forced him to vacate TNA World Heavyweight Title. Their monsters ball match was a weapons filled brawl that was a great watch.

Handicap rules were to the force as Samoa Joe and Jeff Jarrett faced off against the trio of Kevin Nash, Sting and The Pope, a decent match with a shock ending that saw Jarrett turn his back on Joe. The match left many fans asking, why?

Team 3D then made a special appearance to announce its retirement. The 23-time former tag team champs asked for one more match with the Motor City Machineguns before hanging up their boots. This was a fantastically well done angle that had many (myself included) truly believing this was the end of Team 3D.

Lethal Lockdown was everything it should be—a full throttle cage match where all hell breaks loose and the opposing teams finally get the chance to work through their differences with the cage and weapons as added extras. Whilst i did feel then (and still do) that Fortune should have went over convincingly, nonetheless this match was impressive.

Mick Foley and Ric Flair had a brief ringside brawl before the EV 2/Fortune team stepped inside, Fortune having the man advantage throughout the first portion of the 10-man event.

Fortune took control from the outset. Having a fired up Foley, Flair and the remaining team members at ringside helped keep the crowd pumped up as well. EV 2, however, quickly clawed back some leverage of its own with each fresh man who entered, the extreme team proving to be better at handling the brutal setting, with thanks to a little help from Brian Kendrick.

The main event promised a new TNA World Heavyweight Champion and the trio participating all seemed equally likely candidates. Added to the mix, Kurt Angle promised he would quit if he was beaten. Mr Anderson was the star on the rise, out to prove a point, and Jeff Hardy was atop a short list of men who deserve a long world title run—if they can keep their noses clean.

The finish was a shock for many reasons. After the many near falls, moonsaults, Angle Slams, swanton bomb’s, mic check’s and of course the usual ref bump, the title went to the unpredictable Hardy—but he had a bit of help.

Prior to his win, Eric Bischoff and an on-crutches Hulk Hogan appeared, and in a major swerve ala Bash at the Beach 1996 (which happened in the very same building interestingly enough!). Jeff turned heel to join them, blasting both opponents with the walking aids to gain an easy pin.

The crowd was obviously stunned, as we saw a newly heel Hardy deck best friend RVD, who had rushed to ask Jeff just what he thought he was doing. Hardy, Hogan & Bischoff were soon joined by Abyss and Jeff Jarrett, subsequently revealing them to be the mysterious “THEY” as the PPV went off the air.

A stellar PPV but there’s also more as a superb second disc adds to the value of the package greatly, with a full episode of the special “Before the Glory” TNA iMPACT! (featuring a superb Mick Foley vs Ric Flair clash), a nice documentary style feature on the event, interviews, fan interaction footage and photo galleries to peruse at your leisure.

All in all, this is one DVD you MUST purchase.Thanks for reading.

The Bound For Glory 2010 DVD is available from ShopTNA.com, AMerchandise and all good retailers.

The DVD Ray-View: TNA Victory Road/No Surrender 2010 Twin Pack

This is the first of hopefully many TNA Home Video reviews that i’ll be bringing you. Kind of ironic that this double pack arrived to me last week. I couldn’t help but compare the Victory Road of just a few months back to the debacle of two weeks ago, but i digress.

This is a novel idea by TNA, teaming up two very popular and heavily linked Pay-Per-View events from 2010 and packaging them in one nice little two disc set. Granted, most of us will have already sat and watched both events on Pay-Per View or if your in the UK like myself, completely free on television but it’s always nice to look back, especially here at such a crucial point in the TNA’s overall story-arc of 2010.

Both events feature the lead-up and build towards the culmination of the “THEY” storyline at Bound For Glory last October, and both provide an interesting insight into the TNA World Heavyweight Championship picture at the time.

Firstly there’s an extremely heated four-way title scrap between Rob Van Dam, Abyss, Jeff Hardy and Mr Anderson on the Victory Road PPV and then further as the duo’s of Kurt Angle/Jeff Hardy and Mr Anderson/The Pope in the final of the tournament to crown a new World Champ (after Abyss “Janice’d” RVD, who was forced to vacate the title). Both sets of main events are great to view again and have some fine action too.

Elsewhere on the cards there are some great match-ups, Ric Flair’s heated comedy brawl with Jay Lethal is amusing, exciting and surprising all at once and the Motor City Machineguns versus Beer Money for the vacant Tag Team belts is an awe inspiring bout with an ending that can’t help but make any wrestling fan smile.

For the Hardcore fan, the No Surrender disc offers up a decent and bloody “I Quit” bout between AJ Styles and Tommy Dreamer as well as an ECW style Falls Count Anywhere bout between Abyss and Rhino which is highly entertaining. As well as that, the hardcore TNA fan will be kept happy as both discs feature plenty of Knockout and X-Division action to keep you entertained.

Overall both events, whilst certainly not the best offerings of 2010, have more than enough to keep any wrestling fan entertained and being two pay-per views in one, is certainly good value.

The TNA 2010 Twin Pack DVD is available in the UK at HMV and all good DVD retailers from the 4th April. If you want to grab a copy sooner, ShopTNA have the DVD available now.

The DVD Ray-View: TNA Turning Point/Final Resolution 2010 Twin Pack

A new TNA DVD Twin Pack featuring “Turning Point” and “Final Resolution” 2010 PPVs is released today at ShopTNA and aMerchandise. No price point has been released as yet. Speaking of aMerchandise, be sure to checkout their latest “Mag Daddy Deal” which sees ANY TNA DVD available for just £9.50 and Multipack DVD’s with 20% off, well worth stocking up on your collection now.

Getting back to the Turning Point/Final Resolution double pack, both PPVs are incredibly similar in that Final Resolution was pretty much Turning Point with a few extra gimmick matches. I enjoyed both shows but felt Final Resolution was the stronger of the two. Under any account, this seems to be a good deal as their was some strong wrestling on both shows.

The match-ups for the double pack DVD set are as follows:

TNA Turning Point 2010
1. TNA X-Division Title: Jay Lethal vs. Robbie E.
2. Tara vs. Mickie James
3. TNA Tag Team Title Match: The Motor City Machine Guns vs. Team 3-D
4. Rob Van Dam vs. Tommy Dreamer
5. Loser of the Fall Is Fired From TNA: Fortune vs. EV 2.0
6. Lumberjack Match: Abyss vs. The Pope
7. Samoa Joe vs. Jeff Jarrett
8. TNA World Title Match: Jeff Hardy vs. Matt Morgan

TNA Final Resolution 2010
1. Beer Money vs. Ink Inc.
2. Falls Count Anywhere: Tara vs. Mickie James
3. X-Division Title: Jay Lethal vs. Robbie E.
4. First Blood Match: Rob Van Dam vs. Rhino
5. TNA TV Title Match: AJ Styles vs. Douglas Williams
6. TNA Tag Title Full Metal Mayhem: The Motor City Machine Guns vs. GenerationMe
7. Casket Match: Abyss vs. The Pope
8. Submission MMA Style Match: Samoa Joe vs. Jeff Jarrett
9. TNA World Title No DQ Match: Jeff Hardy vs. Matt Morgan
*Mr. Anderson is the special referee

The DVD Ray-View: TNA Hardcore Justice 2010

The special double disc HardCORE Justice DVD is out now featuring the full 3hr ppv plus interviews, Q&A’s and other bonus extras. The match list is as follows:

1. The FBI (Little Guido, Tony Mamaluke, & Tracy Smothers with Sal E. Graziano) vs. Kid Kash, Simon Diamond, & Johnny Swinger
2. CW Anderson vs, 2 Cold Scorpio
3. PJ Polaco (Justin Credible) vs. Stevie Richards
4. Rhino vs. Al Snow vs. Brother Runt
5. Team 3D vs. Kahoneys (Balls Mahoney) & Axl Rotten
6. Tommy Dreamer vs. Raven with Mick Foley as the guest referee
7. Rob Van Dam vs. Sabu

Definately a dvd for the collection if ever there was one. If your looking a copy, it is available at ShopTNA, HMV and all good retailers. I would personally recommend you head on over to A-Merchandise who currently have it in stock at just £13.50, certainly the cheapest i can see it in the UK currently, also know from past experience that these guys are quick with delivery and provide great service.

The DVD Ray-View: TNA Best of 2009

Time for another DVD review. This time its my most recent acquisition – TNA: The Best of 2009. This is a compilation of the best matches of 2009. For the most part the match selection is bang on, there is truly some amazing matches on here. The match list is as follows:

• Sarita vs. Alissa Flash – TNA Impact 7.16.09
• AJ Styles vs. Kurt Angle – TNA Impact (Tables Match) 1.22.09
• Sting vs. Kurt Angle – TNA Impact (Empty Arena Match) 2.19.09
• Kurt Angle vs. Jeff Jarrett – TNA Genesis 1.11.09
• Homicide vs. Amazing Red vs. Suicide vs. Motor City Machine Guns vs. Daniels -TNA Bound For Glory (Ultimate X) 10.18.09
• Sting vs. AJ Styles – TNA Bound For Glory 10.18.09
• Desmond Wolfe vs. Kurt Angle – TNA Turning Point 11.15.09
• AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe vs. Daniels – TNA Turning Point 11.15.09

I’m sure you’ll agree thats a hell of a lineup, even if it is a somewhat limited amount of matches. The DVD also features some bonus material – namely the sit-down interview with Dixie Carter and the press conference from October where the partnership with Hulk Hogan was announced.

All in all though this is definitely not one of TNA’s finest DVDs, which is rare, because TNA generally produces some top-notch stuff. I’m can’t complain about the matches themselves their fantastic but for those of us who follow TNA closely, ALL of the content – even the bonus material has aired on Bravo either on Impact or a PPV so theres absolutely nothing here that we haven’t see before.

Would definitely recommend this DVD for those who wish to relive some of the great action from last year or those sampling TNA for the first time but bottom line is all the content has likely been seen before by those following TNA closely.

The DVD Ray-View: History of TNA - Year 1

Thought i’d add another neat little feature to the site and start reviewing some of my TNA dvd collection. I’ll start first with one of my favourites which i happened to watch last night – its the History of TNA: Year 1, the story of the Genesis of TNA and its initial struggles.

Now i know promotional history DVD’s have been done to death as of late (Rise and Fall Series) but there’s a distinct difference with this one – it is not often these days that any company, not to mention a wrestling company in a titanic struggle in a two company marketplace, will admit mistakes to the public that nearly led to its demise let alone produce and market a DVD that details the experience; however, The History of TNA: Year 1 does just that and its a refreshing experience. Its open and its honest unlike its WWE counterparts which tend to have a lot of revisionist history and personal bashings.

So what would you get for your hard earned cash with this offering? Well the main menu, which is emblazoned with the awesome looking original TNA logo, consists of three categories: The Story, The Matches and Bonus materials.

The story is obviously the centrepeice item of the DVD and charts the inception of TNA and its first full year. The Story begins with the final audio check by Mike Tenay and Don West from TNA’s first pay-per-view held on June 19, 2002 in Huntsville, Alabama. Captions also explain to viewers the nature of the dialogue between Tenay and Don West in regards to last-minute format changes as the ring crew scrambled to repair a cable underneath the ring, which was broken in a dark match by gargantuan wrestler “Cheekz”just prior to airtime. Essentially, this sets the tone for the documentary by foreshadowing the obstacles TNA would face.

Jeff Jarrett, Jeremy Borash and Bob Ryder start off by describing life after the fall of WCW, their “summer of no worries” as they refer to it whereby they sat out the remainder of their WCW/Time Warner contracts. They also mention touring with World Wrestling Allstars which let to Jeff getting a greater understanding of the business side of wrestling and implanting the seed of creating his own promotion. The guys then go into detail about the infamous boat trip, whereby Bob Ryder outlined his idea for a weekly Pay-Per View wrestling show at a lower price thereby by-passing the impossible mission of getting a cable tv deal. Many thought of it as fishing talk but not Jarrett

Many talk about their lack of optimism for the company initially, especially the weekly PPV format. I remember following TNA in their early days, wishing they would succeed but to be honest i, like most people, including as we find out people WITHIN TNA didn’t think it would work.

Many TNA employess on the DVD explain their initial doubts in the success of the company, which is what makes this DVD so intriguing. Instead of glossing over both the external and internal doubts regarding TNA’s success ratio during their first year, the documentary goes to great lengths to tackle the subject head on which is very refreshing.

What really caught my attention was Jeff Jarrett’s analysis – “Outside of my wife, everyone to a ‘T’ doubted me,” recalled Jeff Jarrett in the DVD. “They didn’t tell me, but they didn’t have to tell me. I can look somebody in the eye — anybody can look somebody in the eye — and you know whether you got confidence or not.”

TNA’s initial financial woes are also addressed briefly although the HealthSouth Corporation (TNA’s financial backer at the time) is never mentioned by name. The same applies to the erroneous information being supplied to TNA by their former pay-per-view consultant, Jay Hassman, although Hassman is also never mentioned by name

One nice little feature is that interwoven into the documentary are TNA year 1 pay-per view moments which show some of the cool happenings in TNA’s first year such as the first Gauntley for the gold, the first x title match, Ron Killings winning the Title, Vince Russo unmasking as Mr.Wrestling III and Raven debuting and stealing the belt from Jarrett.

All in all i really can’t knock this documentary, its great. The only thing i could see that could have been better would be some of the important faces from year one that WEREN’T interviewed. For Example Jerry Jarrett, Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara would be some of those i’d like to have heard from, but all in all its a solid DVD and a must for any TNA fan or anyone wanting to know a little more about TNA ‘s history.

The four featured matches are all crackers and they are:

• June 26, 2002: X Title Elimination match featuring AJ Styles vs. Psicosis vs. Low-Ki vs. Jerry Lynn
• August 28, 2002: X-Division Triple Ladder match featuring Jerry Lynn vs. AJ Styles vs. Low-Ki
• January 8, 2003: NWA World Tag Team Championship match featuring AMW vs. Disciples of the New Church
• April 30, 2003: NWA World Heavyweight Championship match featuring Raven vs. Jeff Jarrett

The bonus section also contains some good stuff including -

• Video of the various cameo appearances during the first year
• Original TV commercial that aired in the Nashville market for the weekly pay-per view
• Chris Harris and James Storm’s TNA tryout match during a USA Championship Wrestling show
• Curt Hennig tribute piece, which is superbly done.