Powell’s Impact Wresting Hit List: Ace Austin vs. Tessa Blanchard for the X Division Championship, Jordynne Grace vs. Miranda Alize for the Impact Knockouts Championship, Michael Elgin vs. Eddie Edwards in match four of the best of five series

By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

My apologies for being so late with the Impact Hit List this week. To make a long story short, the WWE Super ShowDown event threw off my entire schedule this week. Better late than never.

Impact Wrestling Hits

Ace Austin vs. Tessa Blanchard for the X Division Championship: The Ace Austin and Scott D’Amore opening was a nice way to make the taped show feel more timely by having a clip from the weekend Sacrifice show that set up the television main event. The match itself was well worked and Taya Valkyrie interfering was a logical way to have Austin retain his championship without having the Impact World Champion lose. But Blanchard just isn’t clicking with me as the world champion. I enjoyed the journey to her beating Sami Callihan for the title, but the actual reign feels flat and gimmicky.

Jordynne Grace vs. Miranda Alize for the Impact Knockouts Championship: A showcase win for Grace. At the same time, Alize stood out as having a good look and in-ring upside. I really hope they pull Havok from the Undead Realm division and give her a serious push because it feels like Grace could use a monster type opponent to work against.

Impact Wrestling Misses

The Rascalz: Zachary Wentz vs. Rohit Raju match was a Hit worthy match. But how long will Impact continue to waste trio that makes up The Rascalz? Trey Miguel has featured in some bigger singles matches lately and while that seems like a step in the right direction, he’s lost most of those matches. Wentz, Miguel, and Dezmond Xavier should be featured players in this company, not being wasted as mid-card comedy guys. At the very least, two of the three should be moving into contention for the tag titles. Yes, they just had a tag title shot at Sacrifice, but I can’t even remember the last time they were positioned as a meaningful act on television.

Michael Elgin vs. Eddie Edwards: I cringed the moment I saw the match was taped at an independent event. As always, it’s nothing against the independent promotion (Pro Wrestling Revolver in this case), but the venues rarely look good on television. The live crowd came off like they were half asleep to the point that the atmosphere was as bad as for this match as it was when the first two matches were held in Mexico. Hopefully the final match was taped in Vegas and will be the best of the series.

Rob Van Dam vs. Daga: RVD was counted out because his girlfriend Katie Forbes walked off after getting upset by something she read on social media while at ringside. Really? The only encouraging part of this angle was that Joey Ryan sympathized with the couple, perhaps signifying a heel turn and him moving away from the repetitive penis joke gag.