By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Impact Wrestling Hits
“The Motor City Machine Guns” Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin vs. Josh Alexander and Eric Young: Forgive my briefer approach than usual approach this week, but this was not a typical edition of Impact (more on that later). The tag match was a well worked television and house show main event.
Grado vs. Trey Miguel: Grado is really fun in small doses. It was nice to see him on Impact television again and he was really over with the live crowd.
Knockouts Champion Trinity vs. Emersyn Jayne in a non-title match: Trinity made her local opponent look good before pinning her clean.
Moose, Brian Myers, and Deonna Purrazzo vs. “Subculture” Mark Andrews, Flash Morgan Webster, Dani Luna: A crowd pleasing six-person tag match. With Andrews and Webster facing Eric Young and Josh Alexander on tonight’s Turning Point special, I’m surprised they had Andrews take the pin when they could have had Luna take the loss for their team.
Impact Wrestling Misses
Show format: Last week, the company oddly ran a highlight show coming out of Bound For Glory. It was a strange choice given that a former Impact employee told me that the post BFG edition traditionally delivered some of the company’s highest television viewership numbers of the year. This week’s show opened with the broadcast team telling viewers they would see matches from a recent live event in Glasgow. I’m not sure why they didn’t just format this as a regular Impact show from Glasgow. And why did they air this show rather one of the episodes they taped the day after Bound For Glory in Chicago? Is Impact in a strange holding pattern for the remainder of 2023 or even until they go back to the bad TNA name at Hard To Kill on January 13? I’m sure there are some viewers who enjoy watching televised house show matches. With so much content available, I find little pleasure in watching inconsequential matches on a show with no storyline progression.
Joe Hendry vs. Frankie Kazarian for the Glasgow Cup: The in-ring action was good. But this was the final match a four-man tournament and they didn’t even bother to show highlights of the first two matches (the two-second shots of the other entrants making their entrances don’t count). I get the idea of catering to the local market with the Glasgow Cup, but it doesn’t hold much appeal to non-locals and the approach the company took with it was no help.
I agree that it’s disappointing they’ve killed any post-BFG momentum with this strange broadcast schedule. I’m not sure how they’re going to fill the weeks between now and Hard to Kill because there are no tapings announced during that period. I assume they taped two weeks’ worth in Chicago which we still haven’t seen and we’ve also got the dreaded Throwback Throwdown ahead of us, but what else? I really hope there will somehow be a substantive build to Hard to Kill.
The broadcast team mentioned something about next week’s show being from Chicago. But I have no idea why they aired this show first. They typically do award shows the last two weeks of the year. I mentioned in my audio review that perhaps they should just run January through BFG if they are going to take this approach. Go the seasonal approach with a premiere every January.
Don’t know why they held off on the Fallout tapings for next week. But the UK shows being taped was a last minute change, because after the BFG tapings they weren’t going to be doing their traditional shooting anymore until the new year when their production is upgraded. So they are pretty much just in a holding pattern until the new year.
They are doing an IPWF show, most likely for Thanksgiving and a joint show with AAA this month, which they’ll probably do another highlight show for before the best of episodes that finish the year.