By Jason Powell
GFW Impact Wrestling Hits
New LAX member: It was a good call to open the show with Konnan announcing that a new member of LAX would be unveiled. In fact, it was such a good hook that they probably should have announced it a week out. Part of the reason the hook was effective was that it kept me engaged more than the Alberto El Patron, Dos Caras, El Hijo de Dos Caras vs. LAX six-man tag match would have without it. In fact, the Hit goes to Low Ki being revealed as the new LAX member rather than the actual match. I just can’t pretend to care about seeing Alberto’s 66 year-old father and his younger brother wrestle. Konnan’s mind game that the new member might be Alberto’s own father or brother was solid, yet the backstage scene with Alberto accusing his brother of being the new member was sappy and somehow made worse when Karen Jarrett inexplicably got involved to deliver a pro family speech.
Dezmond Xavier vs. Drago in a Super X Cup match: Another good X Cup match. It’s good to see the personality profiles for the wrestlers in the tournament continue. The videos are brief, yet help introduce the wrestlers new to GFW to the viewing audience. Xavier going over was surprising if only because Drago is the bigger name. That said, Xavier is a GFW regular, and Jeff Jarrett raved about him in a recent GFW conference call, so it would not be surprising to see him win the tournament in two weeks. The broadcast team has been solid coming out of Slammiversary now that the Jeremy Borash vs. Josh Mathews feud is over. Unfortunately, Borash didn’t do Xavier any favors with a rather subdued call of Xavier’s upset pinfall. It felt like this should have been positioned as a major upset and instead it felt like it was a routine win. On a positive note, it was good to see a post match interview with Xavier.
Grado, Suicide, and Braxton Sutter vs. KM, Fallah Bahh, and Mario Bokara: A solid high energy six-man tag match. The live crowd reacted to Grado’s antics and popped nicely when he pinned KM. The post match angle with Grado proposing to Laurel Van Ness concluded with the expected Kongo Kong interruption and destruction. Will Sutter’s recent heelish actions lead to Allie marrying Grado’s character to help him stay in the country?
GFW Impact Wrestling Misses
Moose vs. EC3 for the Impact Grand Championship: EC3 dominated all about the last 45 seconds or so of the second round, yet he still lost the round on the judge’s scorecards. Moose controlled the majority of the final round, yet Dutch Mantell and Scott D’Amore scored it a 10-10 round. Meanwhile, Prichard scored it 10-8 in favor of EC3. I have less of an issue with Prichard’s score because he’s clearly going heel, but the scoring by the other two judges was just as absurd as his score. Obviously, they took that approach to make Prichard’s score seem completely unbiased, but none of the scores actually matched what happened in the ring.
Lashley and Matt Sydal video: There were some positives in this. They did a good job of promoting a match two weeks in advance for the Destination X pay-per-view. The negative was Lashley telling viewers that it would be one of the better matches of the year. Lashley is billed as The Destroyer. His match descriptions should be closer to that of the legendary Clubber Lang predicting “pain” for his showdown fight with Rocky Balboa. Lashley did say that Sydal could have a great match with him, but only had a lottery chance of winning. Even so, his character should have no respect for the smaller Sydal.
Trevor Lee and Sonjay Dutt: The old masked wrestler switcheroo gimmick used during the Lee vs. Mumbai Cat match was fine. It’s just hard to overlook the ridiculousness of this angle from the standpoint that Lee continues to walk around with the X Division Title, while the actual champion is banned from the building for wanting his title belt back. I get it, Bruce Prichard is turning heel, but why don’t the additional authority figures step in? For that matter, when Dutt pinned Lee, why didn’t he just take his title belt back?
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