TNA Wrestling: British Boot Camp II: Episode 3 Review

TNA Wrestling: British Boot Camp II: Episode 3 Review

With the format firmly established, it was time for the last round of preliminary qualifiers in TNA’s British Boot Camp II. This time, the judges took to London’s York Hall, to see what the Capital’s wrestlers had to offer.

Like many men across the country, I’m forced to watch the X-Factor with my better half if I’m home over the weekend. This means that over the years, I’ve come to truly appreciate the idiosyncrasies of the televised reality talent show, but that it’s also left me jaded and cynical of the format. Here’s what I thought…

I’ll be honest. The first three weeks of British Boot Camp have been boring and repetitive, but it was necessary. It was almost like checking in before a holiday in the sun, as the show trudged along toward a supposed promised land of wrestling goodness. It was just going to take a while to get there. (Roughly three hours with adverts.)

As the card rundown of the 16 hopefuls was shown at the end, it all came together with a real moment of magic. Every match looks interesting, but that’s for next week…

The London edition had a strong showing from start to finish, adding nine wrestlers to the final roster for the next round. Each had something different to offer. Dave Mastiff moves with a grace that belies his size, Martin Stone was good enough to be picked up by the WWE developmental team, and the Owens (identical) twins were willing to split up to give one of the sisters a chance to go through, though both eventually qualified.

R J Singh is a British Asian deputy head, Richard Parliament is basically a knockoff William Regal (but entertaining nonetheless), Joel Redman looks like an Olympic swimmer, and Sha Samuels represented the East End well, with a menacing performance throughout.

Grado also returned (I would’ve never guessed) and he soon became the focal point of the show, with a decent matchup against Samuels during the second round of testing. He showed an in-ring ability that matched his character, with a decent burst of speed at the end after he seemed tanked (he’s a natural actor), while Samuels played the role of the bully well.

It was an easy decision for Al Snow in the end as he put all of them through to the live matches, shown next week. Interestingly, Al seems to have morphed into the head judge over the past few weeks, and he used Grado to continue his hot-streak of putdowns, but it mostly felt like filler as time started to drag on towards the end.

Thankfully, they announced the matches for the live shows, and every one should be an entertaining contest:

·         El Ligero v Noam Dar

·         Joel Redman & Martin Stone v Richard Parliament & R J Singh

·         Mark Andrews v Chris Travis

·         Nikki Storm v Kay Lee Ray v Owens Twins (Four-way match)

·         Dave Mastiff v Rampage Brown

·         Sha Samuels v Grado

If I didn’t sit through the first three weeks, then the matches wouldn’t matter as much, if at all, so they really were necessary. Hopefully they’ll live up to the hype.