By Jason Powell, Prowrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Impact Wrestling Hits
EC3 vs. Johnny Impact to determine the No. 1 contender to the Impact Global Championship: A quality television main event involving two fairly flat characters. Impact’s win sets him up with an intriguing match against Austin Aries. Here’s hoping it breathes some life into the show. It’s the first time in a long time that the company has set up a singles match that I’m truly looking forward to watching. A case can be made that this match should have been saved for pay-per-view, but hopefully the idea is to use it to attract viewers to the television show with some plan for retaining those viewers.
Lashley and Eddie Edwards vs. OVE: A good match with rivals Lashley and Edwards working together to beat OVE and overcome outside interference by Sami Callihan. I’m not crazy about seeing the regular tag team lose to singles wrestlers, but we’ll see where this goes.
LAX vs. Trevor Lee and Caleb Konley: A credibility building win for Lee and Konley over the tag champions in a non-title match. Now if only they would ditch the bandanas and the goofball personas. If nothing else, at least they picked up a fairly clean win and didn’t win in pest heel fashion.
Brian Cage vs. Hunter Law: Another all out squash win for Cage. Impact creative is building him up as a monster and he’s definitely doing his part in the ring. I’m looking forward to seeing him work against the regulars, but the squash match approach to start is right for him.
Impact Wrestling Misses
Matt Sydal vs. Petey Williams for the Grand Championship: Good work by the wrestlers. I just can’t get behind the low budget, and oddly edited footage from independent events airing on Impact without any build. This match just seemed to pop up out of nowhere and only filled a few minutes of television time. What purpose does it really serve? Give viewers storylines and promos leading into these matches just as they would get if the same match was held in the Impact Zone. And for the love of God, don’t show us promos delivered over the house mic at the independent events. Fortunately, the subtitles were able to make more sense of Sydal’s promo than I could.
Alberto El Patron vs. Moose: More low budget and heavily edited footage from an independent show. This looked better than the Grand Championship match footage, but it also featured the same rough cuts. Either own it and show the full match or don’t show any of it. The current approach is major turnoff.
Grandma Jenny: Is it wrong that I wanted to see Kongo Kong take her out with a top rope splash? Forgive me. All of this is leading up to Abyss return number 1,754,342. He’ll come back, get a nostalgia pop, work the same old Monster’s Ball match, and most of us will hope that he goes away again. The Joseph Park character might not be for everyone, but it’s much better than the tried Abyss act.
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