Victory Road (2009)

The 2009 Victory Road was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA), which took place on July 19, 2009, at the TNA Impact! Zone in Orlando, Florida. It was the fifth event under the Victory Road chronology.

In October 2017, with the launch of the Global Wrestling Network, the event became available to stream on demand.

Storylines
Victory Road featured nine professional wrestling matches that involved different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines. Wrestlers portrayed villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in the scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches.

At Slammiversary, TNA's preceding pay per view, Kurt Angle won the TNA World Heavyweight Championship, and subsequently reclaimed his position as leader of the villainous alliance, The Main Event Mafia. Former champion and executive shareholder of the company, Mick Foley, decided to get a rematch for the title at Victory Road.

To appease Angle in getting his match, Foley also gave Main Event Mafia member, Kevin Nash, a match for the TNA Legends Championship against A.J. Styles; he also had created a chance for two other members of the Mafia in Booker T and Scott Steiner to challenge Beer Money, Inc. (the name of the tag team of Robert Roode and James Storm) for the TNA World Tag Team Championship, which they received their chance following their victory over Team 3D (Brother Devon and Brother Ray).

After allowing Angle to win the TNA World Heavyweight Championship at Slammiversary, Samoa Joe was initiated into the Main Event Mafia at the expense of its former leader, Sting, which was represented by the Mafia beating down on Sting the edition of Impact! following the show. After weeks of confrontation between Joe and Sting, it was announced on the July 9 edition of Impact! that the two would face each other at Victory Road.

Abyss had been seeing a psychiatrist for months in the form of Dr. Stevie in an attempt to overcome his sadistic desires; it came to light eventually that Stevie was physically and mentally abusing his patient and controlling him with stun guns and drugs, eventually recruiting associates (Raven and Daffney) to aid him in controlling Abyss in similar fashion, as well as threatening Abyss's love interest, Lauren Brooke. The provocation continued, and on the July 16 edition of Impact!, it was announced Abyss would face Stevie.

Reception
The Wrestling Observer Newsletter named Victory Road as the worst major wrestling show of 2009, while the match between Morasca and Sharmell was named the worst match of 2009 by the same publication and is widely regarded as being among the worst televised professional wrestling matches of all-time. Figure Four Weekly webmaster Bryan Alvarez said on the July 19, 2009 edition of "The Bryan and Vinny Show" that he could not rate any match above two and a half stars, and was critical of the finish to the Beer Money vs. Booker T and Scott Steiner match saying that referee Earl Hebner should not be able to get into a ring faster than James Storm. Alvarez saved his harshest criticism for the Jenna/Sharmell match; not only did he give it a minus five star rating and call it the worst women's match he had ever seen, he said he had been unable to remember the last time he had done so because it had been so long since he had seen a match that bad.

The Morasca vs. Sharmell match is widely considered one of the worst matches in wrestling history. Dutch Mantell called it "the worst match [he] had ever seen." Dave Meltzer gave the match minus four stars out of five, and WhatCulture ranked it as the second worst TNA match ever.