When you are a fledgling company with no upcoming television taping yet you're contract has yet to expire? Here is what you do, you run a full slate of tapings for a few weeks, turnover the heavyweight championship title at your latest pay per view then have World Cup style tournament to create a new title holder. That’s exactly what TNA is doing here and with this set up quietly becoming must see television in professional wrestling. Now clearly there are some green screen inconsistencies that will come into play or issues of wrestlers not truly showing up in their current roles (or even on the current roster) but you have to admit this is pretty creative for Impact brass. 38 wrestlers both male and female will have their chance to win the TNA World Heavyweight Championship.

On the first episode they showed EC3 bringing legal action to TNA for his lost at “Bound For Glory”. This prompted Matt Hardy to relinquish his title which is what kicked off the tournament. Dixie Carter and Billy Corgan announced the tournament and the Pope and Josh Matthews laid out the format. The series has group play with a point system scoring procedure with different totals for wins, losses and draws. In week one we saw four groups being announced and out of all of those groups we watched matches from Drew Galloway - Bram, Gail Kim - Brooke, Rockstar Spud - Grado, Awesome Kong - Madison Rayne, EC3 - Austin Aries and Lashley - Mr. Anderson.

The first match saw Drew Galloway hold off Bram in a fight between the two UK giants. Drew had most of the momentum early on and only a few of moments did Bram find his edge. After the two stood toe to toe for a few moments Drew got the upperhand and pulls off the victory over Bram. During the match they also showcased the round table where each group talks about their upcoming opponent. It really is a nice addition to this makeshift tournament and as you will see some very creative match ups come from this.

Brooke takes the first 3 points in the Knockout group with a hard fought victory over Gail Kim. It was surprising to see Kim lose but these taping were done during Brookes latest surge for the title. The match was very closely contested with Gail getting a slight edge doing work outside of the ring. Brooke reverses Kim's “eat da feet” and actually wins the match with a clean schoolgirl pin. That gives Brooke the lead in the Knockouts group with Kong and Madison Rayne yet to compete.

Rockstar Spud took care of Grado in a very entertaining match in the second round robin match for the UK Group. The two englishmen had a hell of a match showcasing the antics of Grado to the full extent. Rockstar always the comeback kid did his best underdog act (which really doesn’t work when u look at Grado) and eventually hit his finisher on the chubby foe to gain his first 3 points of the series.

Why is Austin Aries back? A month ago we saw this man walk out of TNA after losing to Spud. Josh loosely says the fact that Group Champions was only for former champions which is why he was allowed to compete? Hmm. Still it was a great match between the two that ended in a draw. Both wrestlers finishing moves were countered and while EC3 got no assistance from Tyrus, Aries received a little help from his valet. After each wrestler received their points EC3 attacked Aries from behind. That attempted was thwarted when Aries negated EC3 from his 1 percenter and hit the brainbuster.

Awesome Kong has little difficulty with Madison Rayne. Both ladies did a fine job of selling in this match but the ending was inevitable. Rayne implored a lot of kicks and running attacks to try and put down the larger Kong but there was not enough offense in the world to keep the powerful wrestler down. It will be interesting to see if they will give Madison a victory at all during the course of this tournament as they are already downplaying her spot in the series.

The final match of the evenings visited the group of champions once again. Mr. Anderson took on Lashley in a fast paced finale that saw Bobby finishing on top. The two went at it delivering power move after power move. Lashley produced the most offense out of the two and eventually hit the spear on Anderson. With these taping existing in the past tense you wonder if TNA would have changed a few of these outcomes to make more sense for where the placement is of each athlete. Still it’s an entertaining way to continue the show for television purposes and has us geared up for the next set of groups to be unveiled last week.