Slammiversary 2008 had the Tagline of “Shake… Rattle… and
Roll!” and took place in Southaven, Mississippi. The event marked the fourth
event with the Slammiversary name and celebrated six years of TNA. This show
featured seven matches with three titles on the line.
TNA missed out on a preshow match the previous year but for
2008 the match returned. We saw The Motorcity Machine Guns (Alex Shelley and
Chris Sabin) defeat the team of Lance Hoyt and Johnny Devine.
The Pay per View began with Kaz trying to capture the X
Division Championship from ‘The Canadian Destroyer’ Petey Williams, who was
accompanied by Scott Steiner and Rhaka Khan. Williams was wearing a face mask
which the commentary team of Mike Tenay and Don West pointed out was due to a
facial injury that Williams had suffered a few weeks before Slammiversary.
After some interference from Steiner and Khan, a lead pipe to the head and some
amazing and inventive moves, Williams still couldn’t keep Kaz down. The end
finally came as Williams flipped Kaz over in the Canadian Destroyer to retain
his X Division Championship title.
Next we were treated… or should I say had to endure a Six
Woman Tag Match which featured the team of The Beautiful People (Angelina Love
and Velvet Sky) with Moose go up against the team of ODB, Gail Kim and Roxxi.
After a lot of back and forth ODB picked up her hip flask and had some ‘Dutch
courage’, which enabled her to lift up Moose and Power Slam her to the mat for
the victory.
We then had the second of three title matches as the TNA Tag
Team Championship of the World was defended as the Latin American Xchange
(Homicide and Hernandez) accompanied by Salinas and Hector Guerrero faced Team
3D (Brother Ray and Brother Devon). After a bucket full of double team moves, a
little bit of interference and a few low blows Homicide managed to roll up
Brother Ray with a School Boy as Brother Devon was waiting for Hernandez to get
to his feet. LAX retained their titles.
Next up Awesome Kong came to the ring along with her manager
Raisha Saeed; Saeed explained that Kong had set a $25,000 Fan Challenge for any
fan in the audience to come in the ring and defeat her. The ‘fan’ that made her
way into the ring was Sarena Deeb, she was demolished in under 2 and a half
minutes. Kong then took on another ‘fan’ in attendance Josie Robinson. She
didn’t even last 2 minutes. Following the second fight Eric Young came into the
arena with an Elvis impersonator, but this just made Kong so mad that she
manhandled Elvis with an Awesome Bomb.
Then we had a wedding! It was Jay Lethal and SoCal Val’s
wedding. Lethal had several Grooms Men including the American Idol contestant
Ace Young, Kamala, Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts, Koko B. Ware with his pet macaw
Frankie and George ‘The Animal’ Steele. Sonjay Dutt said that they couldn’t get
married as he loved Val and a brawl broke out between Dutt and Lethal. Finally
the legends came to Lethal’s aid and Jake Roberts unleashed Damian (a snake) on
Dutt. Dutt ran out of the arena scared for his life.
Next we saw a wrestling master class as two of TNA’s
greatest locked up. It was ‘The Phenomenal’ AJ Styles vs. ‘The Olympic Gold
Medallist’ Kurt Angle with Tomko. Any match involving these two is bound to be
nothing short of amazing, and this one didn’t disappoint. The match came to a
head as Karen Angle (now known as Karen Jarrett) interfered and cost Angle the
victory.
It was now time for the King of the Mountain Match which saw
‘The Samoan Submission Machine’ Samoa Joe successfully defend his TNA
Heavyweight Championship of the World against ‘The War Machine’ Rhino, Robert
Roode, ‘The Instant Classic’ Christian Cage and Booker T with Kevin Nash as the
special guest referee. This marked the first time anyone had ever retained a
title in the King of the Mountain Match.
This again was an amazing match with highlights such as
Christian Cage hitting a Frog Splash from the ‘Time Out’ Cage on to Booker T who
was being held by Samoa Joe with a Coquina Clutch (Rear Naked Choke), Christian
Cage leaping from the Cage onto just about everyone on the floor and Joe taking
Christian Cage from the top of the ladder to the mat with a disturbing Cutter.
At the end of the match Don West stated that “Samoa Joe, in
the nick of time, becomes the first champion to ever enter into the King of the
Mountain and leave as the TNA World Heavyweight Champion.” Tenay closed the
show with the line “When it comes to Slammiversary 2008 we will all remember
that Samoa Joe made history.”
After the event finished and all the people in the crowd had left, an independent construction crew came into the arena to dissemble the set. Whilst this crew were working a very tragic and unfortunate incident happened. A worker by the name of Kevin ‘Angus’ Sinex was removing a light array and fell nearly 20 feet to his death after the scaffold he was stood on broke. He was rushed to the Baptist DeSoto Hospital in Southaven. Another crew worker named Paul Martin was also injured during the accident; luckily he only lost his thumb and not his life. TNA released a statement the next day and dedicated the following iMPACT! Show to Kevin.
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