I went to the TNA house show in Woodstock, VA last night, and thought I would share the experience with you guys, along with what I thought about it. I've been to WWE house shows, and WWE Raw before, but nothing TNA related.

So just to let you know, if you have a chance to go to a TNA house show, DO IT!!! Great show, these guys put on a TV type show for us, and the little crowd that it was, was super hot for them all night long, partly because it's the first time that anything like this has been in our town. The crowd size resembled that of a small indy promotion, but TNA did it like it was a TV taping in my opinion.

So to start the night out, when we get there, to the fairgrounds the first voice you hear (2hrs before the show even starts) is Don West. This guy is a selling machine. All night long, in between matches, before, after, and at intermission, Don was selling his arse off. Promoting backstage passes(more on those later).

Finally, 7:30 comes around, showtime. JB is introduced, and says to the crowd that during the show they will be picking out the loudest and biggest TNA fans to get backstage passes, other than the ones who bought the $50 tickets to get access to the talent. So about this time, some backstage goon comes out and is pissed. Tells JB that AJ Styles says no more backstage passes are to be given out. Now a little insight into how big of marks some of these people were, they bought into this big time. JB says screw Styles, promting AJ out to the ring. Jarrett comes out and basically says we have a match I win backstage passes, AJ wins, no backstage passes. Wonder who wins??? Jarrett wins, duh. After the match JJ picks a guy from WAY in the back of the grandstands.

Little Don West, selling action. Next out is Orlando Jordan and EY vs. Ink Inc. First off about this match, we had 2 guys behind us all night who were major arseholes. So, given the common wrestling knowledge that Orlando is openly bisexual, these two hillbillies, decided they were gonna call him Queer. FUNNY STUFF. Reason being, when they said it, you could tell they really didn't think he would hear them, well the crowd got akwardly silent when they yelled,and OJ turned and look directly at them, with the look of "i'm gonna kick your ass" then does the telephone hand gester and says "Call Me". Everyone in our section gave those two a hard time the rest of the night. Didn't see them after intermission. Anyways, EY does his comedy bit (sad to see the way they use his talents as he wasn't really involved in the match itself. It's really hard to describe this match, it was more comedic relief than anything. High point I think, somehow EY get the Refs (Brian Hepner) shirt off and puts it on and the ref does a little exchange number with OJ, while Shannan Moore and Jesse Neal rests in the corner and watch. Finally, Ink Inc. get the 1,2,3.

Next was a match I was looking forward to. The Pope vs. Kaz. GREAT MATCH!!! Pope walked up about 30 rows into the bleachers to give a little boy his glasses. Pope also seemed to be the most personable of all the talents, he came out to sign autographs for anyone, and didn't use the "policy" that West and JB had stated that it had to be TNA merchandise. Pope takes the win after a great back and forth matchup. TV worthy to say the least.

Next is the women, Taylor Wilde vs Madison Rayne. Madison HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT, hotter in person than on TV, by far. So before this match got started, we have Earl Hebner out to ref, and JB makes a big deal out of it. Well, obviously TNA gets a local guy to start a "you screwed Bret" chant, it worked. So Earl grabs the mic and starts to talk trash back to the guy, then finally just stops talking and takes his ref shirt off to reveal a shirt that says "damn right I did", Earl was very personable as well, he sit there and signed autos all night during the show, unless he was involved in a match. Earl also got a bigtime smooch with Madison during this match, and it really looked like this was his favorite part of the show (i know it would've been mine!!!). So Madison gets the W with a handfull of trunks. Decent match, other than the fact the two hicks behind me screaming "show me your tits the whole match".

Intermission.

Kurt Angle comes out, says he's too injured to compete tonight, but will compete at the PPV and beat Jeff Hardy. Abyss inturrupts the promo, and does his "they" promo saying "THEY" told Abyss to take Angle out tonight, not to let him leave Woodstock alive (seriously, he said that. HAHA). Then does his 10-10-10 spiel. Rhyno comes out and the next match is underway. Rhyno is freaking HUGE, short but stocky as hell. Good match, was hoping for it to be hardcore but it wasn't Rhyno got the gore in, but eventually fell short into the Black Hole Slam. Abyss wins.

Last and not least Jeff Hardy vs. ?????. Advertised was Kurt vs. Jeff, but i'm guessing they didn't wanna do that match and have them go on the PPV as well, so who took Kurts place in the match??? Suprise, suprise suprise. SOMOA JOE comes out first, this was a shocker to everyone, Joe wasn't even advertised for the show, so the crowd went nuts. Until, Hardy's music hits that is. Now there was this little boy right in front of us who was definitely a Jeff Hardy fan. He came dressed as Jeff to a T, he was great, did the hand gestures and all, downside to this was, I think his dad was a little bit of a mark and bought into it more than his 4-5 yr old son, as Dad was dressed like Jeff too. So after Hardy's song plays for a good minute and a half, Jeff finally comes out. Typical Hardy match, Joe beat him down, for Hardy to make a little comeback, little more Joe beatdown, repeat, until finally Jeff hits the twist of fate, and Swanton for the win.

After the match, JB tries to make his announcement look like a suprise but good ol' Don West already told us this before intermission. Says Jeff had a great idea before the match that afterwards instead of only having, the recipents of backstage passes come back and meet the guys, that anyone, any group no matter how many people, can get in the ring with Jeff and get their picture taken for $20. Well, I sure hope that little boys parents got him in there with Jeff.

As we were walking out there was Earl with his box of shirts for sale, and he would autograph, so we said hey, and shook his hand and went on. On the other side of the fence there was the Pope, still signing, and West was jawing about "get your Pope sunglasses right now for only $10". Pope starts calling him something, and looks at all of us standing there, and says" what the hell is his name again??" and laughs, so by this time i'm really tired of hearing Don's voice screaming all night, so I said just call him Big Mouth he's gotta know its him" and the Pope got a good laugh outta that, and said "we tell him each time he don't have to yell, but he just gets pumped up man."

Oh almost forgot. Ran into a couple of friends who did get the backstage passes. Well 1 got it and you were allowed a guest. So they went back before the show, and met them. This is their report so take it for what it's worth as I didn't meet none but the Pope and Earl Hepner. They said Kurt was very nice, friendly and took pics with the people who had the backstage passes, but the guest he hardly spoke too, and just generally seemed like he didn't wanna be there. I found it to be kinda odd, but then thought, well maybe Kurt does kind of have an ego, and thinks working at a county fair is beneath him. Or it could be his Ex wife's new husband is one of his traveling companions. Like I said, I don't know how much truth there is to that, but there it is.

TNA put on a great show for probably 300 fans at most, and did it like it was a packed house for TV tapings.