Bound for Glory 2010: A Major Main Event and Lethal Lockdown Carry TNA's Biggest Stage

The Motor City Machine Guns defended the TNA World Tag Team Championship against Generation Me at the Daytona Beach Bound for Glory pay-per-view. Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin built their opener around tight tandem exchanges and dives to the floor, while Max and Jeremy Buck attacked Shelley’s neck and interrupted several apparent finishes. Generation Me created a genuine near fall when Jeremy hit a 450 splash after Max held Sabin in position, forcing Shelley to break the cover. The challengers then attempted their More Bang for Your Buck double-team finish, but the champions had studied the timing well enough to avoid it.

Shelley got his knees up during the attempted splash and Sabin followed by dropping Max from the top rope with a German suplex. Sabin then hit Jeremy with a neckbreaker, Shelley followed with a crossbody and Shelley covered Jeremy for the pin. The match worked as a 12:52 high-risk tag title opener with a coordinated finish rather than a succession of random dives. Its A- (8.5) reflects the tension of the challengers’ close counts and the Guns’ ability to answer with a recognizable team combination.

The Knockouts Championship was contested in a four-woman match with champion Angelina Love, former partner Velvet Sky, Madison Rayne and Tara, while debuting Mickie James served as the special guest referee. The ring was crowded, leaving little time for a sustained singles exchange, and tensions between Rayne and Tara added an extra layer: Rayne expected her ally to support her bid, not pursue the title herself. Mickie had to intervene to stop the participants taking liberties with the rules while several quick reversals and breakups prevented a predictable finish.

Tara avoided Velvet’s attempt to counter her finisher and caught her in a rollup to earn the pin and win the Knockouts Championship. Rayne confronted Tara afterward about winning a title she had expected to regain, until Mickie turned Rayne around and punched her. The title change advances several rivalries, yet the roughly six-minute structure gives none of them room to develop convincingly in the ring. The C (6.2) and skim verdict credit an actual title switch and Mickie’s introduction without exaggerating the match quality.

Ink Inc. faced Eric Young and Orlando Jordan in a six-minute-plus supporting tag match that quickly became a story about a dysfunctional team. Jesse Neal and Shannon Moore were trying to string together ordinary tags, while Young appeared with drawn-on tattoos, consulted a rule book and occasionally acted as if he were the referee. When Jordan attempted to use the ropes for leverage on a pin, Young interfered to prevent his own partner from cheating. The comedy escalated when Young moved to the opposite corner and treated Moore’s accidental touch as a legal tag onto himself.

Instead of attacking Ink Inc., Young struck and suplexed Jordan, prompting Neal and Moore to capitalize on the confused opposing partnership. Their combination attack left Jordan down and Moore covered him for the victory. Young then celebrated with the winners while Jordan was furious that the match had been sabotaged by his teammate. The C- (5.8) accepts the low-stakes comedy as the point of the segment but recognizes that the strange officiating business crowded out much actual tag-team competition.

Jay Lethal retained the TNA X Division Championship against Douglas Williams in a match built around Williams deliberate control of the challenger’s arm and repeated attempts to neutralize Lethal’s speed. Lethal rebounded with a slingshot crossbody to the floor, the Lethal Combination, a flying kick and a springboard moonsault that earned a close fall. Williams then countered with a high knee and exploder suplex, forcing the champion to recover instead of simply outpacing the veteran mat specialist. The contrasting techniques made this more than a routine title defense on the Bound for Glory undercard.

Williams hit his Chaos Theory rolling German suplex, but Lethal kicked out. Williams placed him on the top rope and attempted a hurricanrana; Lethal rolled through into a pin and held Williams for three. Robbie E and Cookie then attacked the celebrating champion, setting up the next X Division rivalry without changing this match result. The B (7.5) reflects an athletic contest with a finish connected directly to Williams risky move, not an unexplained sudden pin. The post-match attack is storyline progression, not a second result.

Rob Van Dam met Abyss in a Monster’s Ball match rather than a World Heavyweight title defense, and their immediate brawl used barbed-wire boards and steel chairs to establish the stakes. Van Dam initially sent Abyss into one barbed-wire board, then missed Rolling Thunder and landed on the exposed wire himself. Abyss propped a table between the apron and ringside barricade, but Van Dam interrupted an attempted slam and leapt from the ring with Rolling Thunder through the table and Abyss. The exchange became a contest over who could use the next weapon without paying the greater cost.

Abyss threw a chair at Van Dam on the turnbuckle, sending him through another barbed-wire board. Van Dam recovered and delivered a corner-to-corner dropkick that drove the board into Abyss, then evaded Abyss attempt to use the nail-covered Janice weapon. Van Dam struck Abyss with the weapon, followed with a kick and the Five-Star Frog Splash for the decisive pin. The B (7.8) rewards purposeful escalating spectacle and an actual finish. Abyss repeated his mysterious "10-10-10" warning afterward, but the announced takeover was not revealed during this match.

Jeff Jarrett joined Samoa Joe against three opponents—Sting, Kevin Nash and D’Angelo Dinero—but the handicap match hinged on his refusal to finish what he had agreed to start. Joe handled much of the early offense, sending Sting into the barricade and answering Nash knee attacks with a series of chops and a big suplex. When Joe fought his way back from being isolated and finally reached his corner, Jarrett jumped off the apron rather than taking the tag. That choice left Joe facing all three members of the opposing team, even though the result was recorded as a three-on-two contest.

Sting, Nash and Dinero attacked Joe together once they saw he no longer had a partner. Joe continued throwing punches, but the numbers finally overwhelmed him and Nash connected with the Jackknife powerbomb to score the pin. The C (6.0) reflects the intentionally broken match structure: Jarrett abandonment and Joe inability to escape explain the result more than any sustained team contest. This is worth skimming for the betrayal because the match exists primarily to reveal Jarrett as part of the story that culminates later in the main event.

The Lethal Lockdown cage matched EV 2.0 against Fortune in a staggered-entry fight that built from Stevie Richards and Kazarian to a full ten-man brawl. A.J. Styles and Robert Roode exploited their arrival advantage on Richards and Tommy Dreamer; Sabu and Raven later countered with rapid attacks, and Matt Morgan powerbombed Sabu into the cage when Fortune regained its advantage. Rhino entered last, and the cage roof descended with weapons hanging overhead. Mick Foley and Ric Flair battled outside, with the wrestlers using chairs, kendo sticks and tables as the ring became increasingly difficult to control.

Kazarian climbed onto the cage roof, where Richards had positioned a table. Brian Kendrick appeared without having been a member of either announced team, attacked Kazarian and backdropped him through the table, preventing a roof-top escape. Inside, Dreamer drove Styles from the turnbuckle onto a chair with a Dreamer Driver and pinned him to give EV 2.0 the victory. That is the actual winning fall; the roof-table spot was outside the final pin, and Kendrick was not an additional officially announced EV 2.0 team participant. A- (8.7) reflects the frantic payoff to a long faction rivalry, even with distracting interference.

Kurt Angle, Mr. Anderson and Jeff Hardy fought for the vacant TNA World Heavyweight Championship. Their 26-minute three-way mixed Angle repeated German suplexes with Anderson’s Mic Check and Hardy’s Swanton Bomb; each wrestler broke up near falls that would have ended a conventional singles contest. Angle even applied simultaneous ankle locks before being sent across the ring. The match built to an increasingly frantic closing sequence with Angle landing a moonsault, Anderson surviving the Swanton and Hardy fighting free of the ankle lock. The vacant-title setting gave every pin attempt more immediate consequence.

After a collision knocked out the referee, Eric Bischoff entered with a chair and Hulk Hogan appeared on crutches as if to stop him. Hardy accepted a crutch from Hogan, struck Angle, then used a second crutch to hit Anderson. Hardy delivered the Twist of Fate to Anderson and Bischoff returned the referee to position for the three count. Hardy’s championship win was not clean; the finish publicly aligned him with Hogan, Bischoff, Jarrett and Abyss as a new faction. The A- (8.9) rewards the spectacular three-man wrestling and historically transformative heel turn while acknowledging that outside involvement made the title decision controversial.