TNA – Best of the X-Division Matches Disc Two
Released: 2003

Your hosts are Mike Tenay and Don West.

– Amazing Red vs. Jimmy Yang – (11/13/2002)

Not sure why Tenay and West call this Amazing Red’s debut match in the introductions. Their own commentary clearly mentions a title match between Styles and Red that they had just two weeks before this match. Yang represents the red and white colors of All-Japan after just wrapping up his eighth tour over there. Amazing Red – the Rey Mysterio of TNA at the time. Winner of this gets an X-title shot. They start off trading headlocks. Yang ranas out of a test of strength and a satellite headscissors puts Yang on the floor. Red follows up with a baseball slide into a headscissors to take Yang to the announce table. Red tries a fake dive from inside the ring, but Yang stays one step ahead as he scoots back in the ring and dropkicks Red to the floor. Yang delivers a nice Asai Moonsault on the floor, which gets two in the ring. Red comes back with a butterfly lock and a spin kick. He follows up with a beautiful spike tornado DDT for 1-2-NO! Red heads up top, but Yang trips him up. Red punches back and delivers the CODE RED from the top! 1-2-NO! Red tries a crossbody out of the corner, but he falls right into a gutbuster. YANG TIME? No! INFARED (corkscrew senton) connects for 1-2-3! (6:09) Nothing wrong with that. Nice little clinic for the Amazing Red. ***

– Amazing Red vs. AJ Styles (w/Mortimer Plumtree) – (12/11/2002)

Red starts off hot and heavy on AJ. He connects with the 718 (Mysterio’s 619 without all the fluff) and dropkicks Styles to the floor. Red wants to fly, but Plumtree brings AJ over to safety. Red pescados out anyway, but he’s caught and given a backbreaker. Back in, Styles gets two. Styles follows up with the backbreaker/gutbuster combo. Red gets up, but runs into a discus clothesline for two. Styles connects with a moonsault kick. Red kicks back and sunset flips Styles from the middle rope. Styles won’t go down. Red tries to climb up Styles to bring him down, but winds up being flipped over into the STYLES CLASH position. AJ goes for it, but Red struggles and grabs the ropes to avoid it. Red tries a tornado DDT, but Styles uses Jerry Lynn’s counter and Northern Lights him over. That gets two. Styles dumps Red out to Plumtree for some heel manager stomping. Back in, that gets two. Red gets some revenge with a baseball slide into a headscissors on Plumtree. That’s pretty cool. Styles follows him out and sets the steel steps on its side. AJ wants to guerrilla press him onto the steps. Red slips away and tries a tornado DDT, but he gets launched onto the steps instead. Back in again, AJ covers for two. West makes a mistake of calling AJ the best – causing Tenay to remind him of the current champion Jerry Lynn. AJ hits a running senton bomb for two. Then out of nowhere, Red snaps off a hurracanrana for 1-2-NO! Red stays one step ahead of the Quebrada DDT, but AJ gets the inverted DDT anyway for two. Styles grabs and crank on a Muta Lock for a bit. After yelling at the crowd for telling him that he sucks, AJ covers for two. CODE RED! 1-2-NO! Red fires back, but runs into a boot in the corner and gets nailed with a sit-out powerbomb for 1-2-NO! AJ wants the SPIRAL TAP, but Red crotches him and heads up top with him. Oh wait, STYLES CLASH from the middle rope? Nope! Red counters with a top-rope hurracanrana – causing AJ to do a 450 degree spin to the mat! Red covers, 1-2-3! (11:50) This reminded me of a Eddie/Rey style of match where the bigger heel ruthlessly controls pretty much the whole match and then the smaller face gets the better of him in the end. Good match. ***¾

– NWA-TNA X-Division Champion Kid Kash (w/Trinity) vs. Paul London – (2/19/2003)

Am I watching an old episode of WWE Velocity or TNA? This is one of the very few TNA matches for London. Its just sad we don’t get to see he and Kendrick take on the Motor City Machineguns. That match is so money. Also if you’re a male wrestling fan, you know who Trinity is. Nice chain sequence leads to a stalemate. London gets dumped and tries to skin-the-cat, but Kash dropkicks him during the attempt. Kash hits London with a crossbody on the floor and then goes for a baseball slide from back in the ring, but London avoids it and spins Kash around for a neckbreaker on the floor! London follows up with a standing shooting star press. They fight to the other side of the ring where London gets sent into the safety rail. Kash throws a chair at London, but he catches it and throws it back at Kash’s face! Back in the ring, they screw up a slingshot Oklahoma roll by London for two. Spinning heel kick gets two for London. Now London gets sent out to the apron, followed by a springboard dropkick to the floor. Kash flip dives out onto London and brings him back in for a flying clothesline for 1-2-NO! London comes back with a dropkick and an enziguri gets two! We go through a rollup sequence. That leads to Kash’s attempt at the MONEY MAKER (double underhook piledriver), but London escapes and snaps off a neckbreaker. Cover, 1-2-NO! Kash got his foot on the bottom rope. After some screwing around with an Irish whip, Kash tries a springboard hurracanrana that completely misses. London slingshot headscissors back in (kind of) from the apron, but then Kash comes off the top for the hurracanrana for 1-2-NO! Now a backslide sequence leads to a MONEY MAKER. (8:07) Some of it was pretty botchy and messy, but that’s Kid Kash sometimes. **½

– Jerry Lynn vs. Juventud Guerrera (w/Konnan) – (2/26/2003)

Tenay takes a stab at WCW for making Juvi his broadcast partner when he can only speak “three words in English”. I’m not really sure if that is actually worse than Don West or not. Quick opening lucha sequence to start, as you might imagine. Lynn applies the spinning Gory special and then delivers a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker for two. Lynn tries another, but this time Juvi spins out and spin kicks Lynn in the face. Juvi gets crotched on the top rope, but then comes back with a basement dropkick as he slips away from a sunset flip. He follows up with a tilt-a-whirl DDT that puts Lynn on the floor. Juvi fake dives and then springboard flip dives out onto Lynn. Back in, they fight on the apron until Lynn hits the apron legdrop. With Juvi draped in between the ropes, Lynn comes at him with a baseball slide for two. Juvi counters a tornado DDT into a Northern Lights suplex. He holds on and goes for the JUVI DRIVER, but Lynn flips out. Now Juvi flips out of a reverse suplex and connects with a sit-out suplex for 1-2-NO! Juvi delivers a spinning rack sit-out powerbomb for 1-2-NO! Lynn gets slapped around by Konnan, but then comes back with a Booker T scissors rollup out of the corner for 1-2-NO! Now we have a rollup sequence, which ends with Juvi leveling Lynn with a wheelbarrow facebuster for 1-2-NO! After a standing switch, Lynn jackknife rolls Juvi up for 1-2-3. (8:32) It had a few problems in the beginning, but this ironed out into quite a decent match. ***½

– NWA-TNA X-Division Champion Kid Kash (w/Trinity) vs. Amazing Red – (3/5/2003)

Lots of back-and-forth flip-flop stuff leads to a stalemate. I mean, they literally went with that for a whole minute. I know I didn’t mention it before but Trinity look-a like-a man at this point in her life. Since her TNA days, she got her pancake boobs pumped up a bit. After Red gets the best of Kash with a rana, Kash heads out to the floor. He takes his eyes off Red though and gets nailed with a flip dive over the ropes. They fight around over to the announce table where Kash delivers the Smash Mouth, which is Kash just throwing a chair into your face. Luckily it has nothing to do with the band. Back in, Kash hits a flying clothesline for two. Red immediately comes back with the CODE RED for 1-2-NO! I hate it when they show a replay during a believable nearfall. Anyways, Kash catches Red ducking low off a whip and levels Red with the Money Drop (brainbuster onto the knee), which is one sick-looking move. That gets two. Red then meets Kash on the top rope and brings him down with a top-rope superplex. Red hurts himself too though and takes too long to cover, so he only gets two. Geez, again with the replay during the important nearfall. Even Tenay mentions how dumb that was to do that. Red gets elevated into the corner off a charge. He tries to come off the top backwards, but Kash runs up the ropes and gives him an INSANE German Superplex to the mat! Red went from corner -to-corner off that move. He could have easily broken both legs the way he fell. Kash crawls over to Red and covers for 1-2-NO! After all that, Red snaps off a headscissors and hits the 718! Cover, 1-2-NO! Kash takes a backdrop to the apron and gets kicked down to the floor. Red wants to fly and dives out again, but Trinity shoves Kash out of the way and takes the blow instead. Kash brings Red back in the ring, but takes the Red Star Press (standing shooting star press) for 1-2-NO! Kash wants the MONEY MAKER. Red counters it once, but not the second time. That gets three. (8:58) Some pretty insane spots from Red, but not much else. **¾

– NWA World Tag Team Champions Triple X vs. Amazing Red & Jerry Lynn vs. Jason Cross & Shark Boy vs. Chris Sabin & Jonny Storm – non-title Elimination Match (4/9/2003)

The winners of the match have to face each other and then the winner of *that* match gets a shot at the X-Division title. Ridiculous rules, but Russo is lurking around TNA so there you go. This match is notable for being Chris Sabin’s TNA debut. He’s definitely my favorite outside of the more obvious favorites AJ Styles and Samoa Joe. If you weren’t a TNA fan back in the day, you still pretty much know who all these people are excluding possibly Jason Cross and Jonny Storm. Jason Cross was basically a glorified X-Division jobber, while Jonny Storm is better known for his work in his homeland of England. He’s also worked in some of the major indy promotions in America (ROH, PWG, CZW) as well as a handful of matches here in TNA. Just in case you care, NASCAR commentator Jeff Hammond joins Tenay and West at the announce table. I will always refuse to refer to Don West as DW because that is just stupid. Storm and Lynn start the match. They get into a really nice knucklelock sequence. I know – it sounds crazy, but it’s true. Meanwhile, Hammond reflects back to being a wrestling fan since the ‘70s and being at Ivan Koloff’s house to see Ric Flair drive up in his 1958 Cadillac back when he first showed up in Charlotte. What a story. Shark Boy and Red exchange armdrags for a bit. Red gets caught coming off the top with a dropkick that gets two. Daniels tags in and gets bit on the butt by Shark Boy before Shark tags in Cross. He armdrags Daniels right into his corner for a tag to Skipper. Sabin tags Cross. He blocks a headscissors from the apron and charges off the ropes at Skipper, but runs right into a slingshot clothesline. Daniels and Shark Boy tag back in to square off while Hammond talks about taking a suplex from Hardcore Holly in a Stacker commercial. He says it hurts! Shark Boy delivers Stratusfaction (yes, Trish Stratus’ finisher) for two. He then takes Daniels to the floor for a pescado. Cross wants to spring out, but Sabin runs up behind him with a release German suplex and then dives out onto Shark Boy. Now its Red’s turn to fly. Jonny Storm springboards out to Sabin and Red. Meanwhile in the ring, Cross nails Daniels with the Idolizer and covers but Skipper has the ref distracted. Cross calls for the CROSSFIRE (shooting star leg drop), but one of Konnan’s “luchadores” runs in and shoves Cross down to the mat. LAST RITES to Cross. Cover, 1-2-3. (8:06) Storm tries to sneak a pinfall rollup on Daniels, but that gets two. Storm charges at Daniels and gets launched onto the middle rope, so Storm blindly leaps backwards onto Daniels shoulders for a hurracanrana for 1-2-NO! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe he calls that the Rewind Hurracanrana. He tries the same thing on Lynn, but Lynn counters to a TKO. Daniels gets rid of Lynn with an STO, but turns around into a flying hurracanrana from Red! Skipper sneaks in and hits him with the PLAY OF THE DAY. Sabin rolls through a crossbody from Skipper and gives him the Bum Rush (Gunn Slinger across the knee)! Cover, 1-2-NO! Daniels pulls out the ref just in the nick of time. The masked luchadore runs back in to give Sabin a tornado DDT. Lynn delivers the CRADLE PILEDRIVER to Sabin! Cover, 1-2-3. (10:23) Now we’re down to Lynn/Red vs. Triple X. Daniels crotches Lynn for the ropewalk hurracanrana by Skipper. Awesome. Triple X double-teams Lynn and the inevitable heel miscommunication occurs. HOT TAG TO RED! He kicks the crap out of Triple X and gets a nearfall on Daniels. Skipper slows Red down with a satellite Uranage for 1-2-NO! Lynn makes the save and hits a sunset flip powerbomb out of the corner on Skipper for 1-2-NO! Daniels comes in and gives Lynn a Uranage to set up the BME! It connects! Cover, 1-2-NO! Triple X delivers the Rocker-Plex to Lynn for 1-2-NO! Red comes in, but gets placed in the corner for a superplex from Daniels. Lynn comes over to break that up and brings Daniels out of the corner on his shoulders. Red comes off the top with a spinning heel kick! He covers for 1-2-NO! Skipper tries to nail Lynn with the tag belt, but Lynn sees it coming and kicks him out to the floor. Meanwhile, Daniels hits a Flatliner on Red for 1-2-NO! Daniels goes for a Death Valley Driver, but Red avoids that and cradles Daniels up out of nowhere for 1-2-3! (15:33) What a match. It had a great flow to it – capped off by a fantastic finish. Jerry Lynn and Amazing Red would go on to win the NWA tag titles the next week. As for who won the #1 contenders match for the X-Division title on the following week, well I think the next match should tell you who won that one. ****

In the pre-match introductions, Tenay makes a faux pas by calling Kid Kash the #1 contender to the X-Division title. Apparently TNA doesn’t edit their own DVD releases. You can’t do much about a match unless you just completely cut problems out, but there was a very easy solution for that mistake. Not only that, but Don West mentions a certain intruder that factors into the match. Now that I know what to look for, I’m not going to be as surprised when I see it. You jerk. Sorry, but that was just dumb.

– NWA-TNA X-Division Champion Kid Kash vs. Amazing Red – (4/30/2003)

Kash and Trinity parted ways on last week’s PPV, which instantly gave Kash a personality by turning him heel. She’s barred from ringside so as to not give Red any advantage if she decides to interfere and do something horrible to Kash. They quickly go to the floor where Red gets shoved off into the guardrail. Red tries a flip dive out to the floor, but Kash moves out of the way and throws a chair in Red’s face. Back in, a flying clothesline from Kash gets two. Kash works an elevated Boston crab into a powerbomb for two. Red gets in a spin kick, but Kash puts him back down with an ocean cyclone suplex for two. Kash applies a camel clutch and fish hooks the nose to piss off the crowd. Once he releases the hold, he gives an awesome grimacing stare at the people cheering for Red. From that, we go to a rollup sequence. Red puts an exclamation point on *that* by nailing Kash with another spin kick. He hits the CODE RED for 1-2-NO! Red gives Kash a missile dropkick to set up the 718 followed by a springboard splash for 1-2-NO! Hmm, where have I seen *that* before? Kash catches Red with a boot in the corner and connects with a corkscrew moonsault on both Red AND the referee. Whoops. They trade backslide attempts and once Kash calls for the MONEY MAKER, Red flips him over and lands on top with both arms hooked. Think the finish to AJ/Joe/Daniels at Unbreakable ’05. The ref is still down though! Kash manages to power out back into the MONEY MAKER attempt as the Luchadore jumps the rail and gives Kash an inverted DDT. Red covers and the ref takes forever to get over to count. Finally – 1-2-3. Oh me. It looked like Kash was supposed to kick out, but they count it anyway and Amazing Red wins the X-Division belt after 109 title shots during the first ten months of TNA. (10:27) This was better than the first Kash/Red title match as it actually told a story with Kash trying to keep Red good and grounded. Of course, you have to have the run-in and the flub there at the end to make the finish and the title win somewhat lackluster. Afterwards, the “luchadore” who was actually Trinity gave Red an inverted DDT as well. ***¼

Tenay and West wrap up the presentation by giving us their favorite X-Division matches from the DVD set. Tenay mentions the Lynn/Styles/Low-Ki ladder match while West loved the Flying Elvises match because it was the first.

This last match is labeled as bonus footage. Why it’s called bonus footage I’ll never know. You didn’t have to go back to the menu screen and select it or anything – it just took you straight to it.

– Chris Sabin vs. Michael Shane vs. Frankie Kazarian – Ultimate-X Match for the vacant X-Division title (8/20/2003)

Ahh yes, the very first Ultimate X match. Now there are up to fourteen of these- one of which was because the Ultimate-X match at a PPV was botched so badly because the belt kept falling down that they had a rematch two weeks later on Impact to make up for it. Due to controversial endings in matches for all three of these guys throughout the summer, the X-Division title was made vacant and this was to crown a new champ. Shane gets thrown to the floor for Sabin vs. Kazarian. Sabin delivers a SICK enziguri on Kazarian and then starts the climb, but Shane yanks him down. All three guys give pop-up interviews basically saying the same thing – they felt honored to be in the first Ultimate X match because firsts are rare in wrestling anymore. How about that first-ever “reverse battle royal”? Anybody think the people involved are proud of that mess? Shane takes a neckbreaker to send him rolling out on the floor. Kazarian catches Sabin in an electric chair position as Shane starts to shimmy across one of the ropes. Kazarian brings Sabin over to Shane for a headscissors Sabin off Kazarian’s shoulders! Yakuza kick by Kazarian puts Shane down. Kazarian gets within a foot of the belt as he climbs across the cable, but Sabin pulls him down. Kazarian dumps him out as both he and Shane meet each other at the title. Just when you think Sabin doesn’t have a chance, he springboard dropkicks both guys down. Now Sabin brings a chair in the ring and nails both Shane and Kazarian. Shane manages to get the chair away from Sabin and wedges it in between the top and middle rope in the corner. He goes to slam Sabin’s face into it, but he eats the chair instead leading to an absolutely sick blade job. I’m talking his uncle Shawn at WrestleMania 20 sick. Not a Muta scale, but pretty bad. Kazarian kicks the chair back in Sabin’s face. He sets the chair up, but then takes a Gunn Slinger from Sabin onto the chair! OWW!! Sabin meets Shane on the floor and works the cut. Then Sabin starts to shimmy across the cable to grab his belt, but Shane gets back in the ring with a chair and blasts him in the back to bring him down. We fast-forward a bit. Sabin has Shane in a fireman’s carry like he might’ve been going for the CRADLE SHOCK. Kazarian comes off the middle rope for a sunset flip, but Sabin rolls through while still holding onto Shane and dropkicks Kazarian as he falls back on top of Shane. Neat! Sabin gets dropped on his head by Kazarian. That allows Kazarian and Shane to go up on the cable. Shane brings Kazarian down using his legs. Sabin starts to climb over to him, but Shane wraps his legs around Sabin’s neck to try and pull him down too. Instead, Sabin brings Shane down to give him a powerbomb. That’s one of the spots you might see on an Ultimate-X buildup video. We fast forward some more as Kazarian smashes Shane’s face into one of the metal structures that are in each corner to put him back down on the floor. Meanwhile, Sabin tries to shimmy across on the other side of the ring. Kazarian manages to meet him at the belt, but they both fall. They try it again and as Kazarian kicks Sabin down! Meanwhile, Shane gets a surge of energy and shimmies across to grab and win the X-Division title belt. (10:23 shown) Apparently from the commentary they had to keep restarting the match because the title belt kept falling, so I doubt we missed a whole lot considering the match only went around 14 minutes total. After thirteen more of these (as of March 2008), it still holds up pretty well. Just a fantastic effort from all three guys. ***¾

Final Thoughts: Disc one was awesome, but disc two starts to get a tad monotonous where the matches start to run together. While they all range from decent to great matches by themselves, you feel like you are watching the same match over and over again. Except for the tag match and Ultimate-X, disc two doesn’t really offer anything all that different considering they are mostly Amazing Red matches. This wouldn’t be a problem if you were watching these on the weekly PPVs instead of all bundled together like they were originally intended. At least with disc one, it was more diverse. I’ll go with an 8.0 for disc two. Overall though, this is an excellent retrospective look at the first year of TNA back when it’s main focus was to put over the X-Division as the future of wrestling. Thumbs up for TNA’s Best of the X-Division Matches.