Impact wrestling thread - It's a Don West tribute thread now!

[Shane O' Mac Version 2]

Don't follow Impact closely, but tuning in tonight. Think it was last year's Slammiversary I enjoyed quite a bit, buoyed by the hype of the WWE releases, and here we are again. Enjoyed the Impact product independent of that hype, but there's only so many hours in the day, and I already follow WWE, AEW, a bit of New Japan, and the Aussie independent scene.

Glad that Impact has fans back. Biggest drawback for me in watching last year's show was the empty studio. Killed the vibe that the otherwise great wrestling provided.

[Jazzy G]

There were some obvious "surprises", some good ones and some disappointments. I wish the knockouts title match had more time, but what an angle to finish. Be interesting to see what happens on Impact this week. That Homecoming event sounds like it could be fun with the mixed tag tournament format. It worked nicely for WWE when they had that tournament. 

[Nick James]

The main take away from this show for me, is how overused the Canadian Destroyer is. There was at least two on this show, one of them was from the Ultimate X structure (at least that one was Petey Williams).

 

[Jazzy G]

Everybody in the Ultimate X got a Canadian destroyer from Petey, but it is his move and a multiman match, so it kind of makes sense. 

[CavemanLynn]

Canadian Destroyers and reverse ranas are becoming the new DDT. 

[Nick James]

36 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Everybody in the Ultimate X got a Canadian destroyer from Petey, but it is his move and a multiman match, so it kind of makes sense. 

Petey doing it is fine, but Chelsea Green also hit Myers with one in their match as well.

[garynysmon]

Must say that the return of a live crowd added so much to the event. There can't have been more than 150 people there but they were loud, invested and knowledgable, so it sounded like more at times.

With Bound for Glory at Vegas (Probably at the 1,200 capacity Sam's Town Casino), surely they need to try and induct Mike Tenay into the Hall of Fame?

If nothing else, Impact has reached the stage where all the PPV's are at least good and usually very good, and rarely disappoint.

Edited July 18, 2021 by garynysmon

[Vegeta]

Fair play I loved and enjoyed that ppv 

The crowd did make a huge difference and added to all of the matches 

Do we think that omega will hold onto the belt until bound for glory and then they build up a challenger to finally take it off him in the main event? 

7 hours ago, garynysmon said:

With Bound for Glory at Vegas (Probably at the 1,200 capacity Sam's Town Casino), surely they need to try and induct Mike Tenay into the Hall of Fame?

If they do have omega to lose the belt in the main event I would love Tenay to be inducted and to call the main event, I would love Tenay just calling the new champion who finally dethrones omega, would feel huge for impact wrestling 

I really loved the show though and big shout out to Rohit in the ultimate X match loved his attempts of climbing to be fair 

 

 

[TildeGuy~!]

Although White/Omega have had good matches together in New Japan I just don’t get the heel/heel feud that they’re setting up, I thought the whole angle was Impact wrestlers doing anything they can to get the title off of AEW’s Kenny Omega, so for a New Japan and AEW wrestler to now feud over the Impact Championship baffles me.

Kinda wish Jay White turned up on Dynamite to be honest though, would have made it feel so much bigger (by the looks of it Jay felt the same too walking out to about 25 people in the audience)

 

Edited July 18, 2021 by TildeGuy~!

[Jazzy G]

@garynysmonImpact is at worst fine, but when it's good it's good. It's very consistent. 

[The King Of Swing]

36 minutes ago, TildeGuy~! said:

Although White/Omega have had good matches together in New Japan I just don’t get the heel/heel feud that they’re setting up, I thought the whole angle was Impact wrestlers doing anything they can to get the title off of AEW’s Kenny Omega, so for a New Japan and AEW wrestler to now feud over the Impact Championship baffles me.

Kinda wish Jay White turned up on Dynamite to be honest though, would have made it feel so much bigger (by the looks of it Jay felt the same too walking out to about 25 people in the audience)

 

I'm guessing they will build the feud around the Bullet Club history.

[sivy]

I think with White Omega you couldn't really do it in aew cause of the current Omega Page build which has to be the number 1 priority. So impact is probably perfect for it, impact seems to have a stronger NJPW alliance at the moment

[DavidB6937]

All this crossover stuff is great if you follow it all. I do wonder about the long term benefits and viewer growth. Unless Impact are at the point where they're just going to do what they want now. I guess it'll bump some PPV buys and stuff which is good. I feel like they deserve some more consistent viewer bumps though as the product is a decent watch.

[Nick James]

I've never watched NJPW outside of the odd clip so, although I've heard of Jay White, I've never seen anything of him, however he looked an absolute star walking out at the end.

Hilarious that Impact are the playground for the big boys of AEW / NJPW when they don't want to use their owns shows for this stuff. 

Obviously it's a huge win for Impact, but you have to think how the contracted talent must feel with non-contracted talent getting the main events etc. We all know how the WWE lot feel about part timers coming in and taking the spotlight etc. 

Has any of the cross over stuff boosted Impacts ratings etc? I can imagine Slammiversary drew fairly well as there was quite a bit of hype behind it, but at the same time, the teases of the likes of Daniel Bryan, Samoa Joe etc but the end product being bloody No Way Jose doing the exact same act and a vignette for Aiden English is peak TNA.

EDIT: I realise the contradiction in the paragraph about Jay White and the last paragraph, however I wouldn't could the Jay White debut as an Impact signing.

Edited July 19, 2021 by Nick James

[BomberPat]

37 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

All this crossover stuff is great if you follow it all. I do wonder about the long term benefits and viewer growth. Unless Impact are at the point where they're just going to do what they want now. I guess it'll bump some PPV buys and stuff which is good. I feel like they deserve some more consistent viewer bumps though as the product is a decent watch.

I think Impact have grown into a really fun niche, where they're not trying to "compete" any more, but still have a valuable position in the pecking order. A lot of the pre-show for Slammiversary involved Scott D'Amore and Tommy Dreamer putting Impact over as somewhere stars are created, and I think at it's best it's a combination of that and a space for more experienced wrestlers to toy around with ideas and reinvent themselves. It does feel like they're just in a comfortable position where they can try whatever they like, and I suspect that doing more "crossover" stuff is the best way to make them stand out from the pack and get eyes on them at the moment, and I kind of like the idea of having a company where almost anyone could show up, and where they can play around with "interpromotional" stories. 

More than anything, I think the best part of Impact's comfortable niche is that you're pretty much guaranteed a watchable show. They very rarely over-reach, outside of the commentary there's rarely anything objectively terrible, it's just a perfectly fine wrestling show that sometimes exceeds expectations but rarely fails to meet them. Also, when they do comedy they're one of the few wrestling companies that are consistently genuinely funny with it. 

 

The show in general was fine, though I found it one of the weaker Impact PPVs lately - that may speak more to the strength of previous PPVs, though. It's a good thing they ended on the Jay White appearance, because for a show they built up pretty specifically on "some of the recent batch of WWE releases might show up!", they really failed to deliver on that across multiple matches. 

Ultimate X was a mad spotfest, with some great moments but also some really overly convoluted nonsense. Petey Williams still does the Canadian Destroyer better than almost anyone, Josh Alexander is brilliant, and I loved Rohit Raju doing a few bits of business trying to reach the belt with ropes and hooks and whatnot, I always love that kind of stuff.

I couldn't care less about the artists formerly known as Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder, Cardona especially, as he makes no effort whatsoever to distance himself from the Zack Ryder gimmick - Myers at least seems to have made an effort to reinvent himself, Cardona is just happily living out a gimmick that was tired years ago. These two endlessly feuding reminds me of Paul Jones and Jimmy Valiant on the first few Starrcades - both brought something to the table, but no one else wanted to work with them, so they were both just booked to feud with each other forever. That this was built on "Cardona used to be in a relationship with Tenille!", which I don't think was ever an on-screen thing, and then lead to him teaming with his current real life partner, again with no prior investment on TV in that relationship was irritating, but these guys have a super popular podcast so I assume they have enough of a following to pick up on all of this stuff. Speaking of which, this is supposed to be a blood feud between two former friends, and Cardona's coming to the ring wearing a T-shirt for the podcast they host together, which might be one of the most annoyingly kayfabe-breaking things I've ever seen on a wrestling show. The only thing that came close was Matt Striker excitedly referring to the number of "callbacks" in this match.

Speaking of Matt Striker, during Eddie Edwards vs. W. Morrissey he told D'Lo Brown that "not a lot of people know the story of David vs. Goliath", which is up there in his list of worst calls ever (it's a long list). I didn't care about this match; even as a mark for big useless lugs, I just can't bring myself to give a shit about Big Cass going through the motions as an utterly unbelievable "psycho killer", and I've never cared for Edwards enough to buy him as someone for Tommy Dreamer to live vicariously through.

FinJuice vs. Fulton & Shera was there, didn't outstay its welcome, and served a purpose for "FinJuice are here", and for Scott D'Amore to say hi to the fans. But, again, given the hype for the show being around surprises and WWE cast-offs, a tag team who have only been away less than two months and haven't wrestled elsewhere in the interim being the surprise "return" felt a bit of a letdown. Dave Finlay Jr is starting to look like his dad.

I can't remember when they aired the "Drama King" hype video, but I'm looking forward to whatever Aiden English is calling himself showing up in Impact, he's someone I think could really prosper in that environment.

Sabin vs. Moose was fine. The kind of perfectly good wrestling that Impact do well. Moose's promo beforehand was believable if unspectacular. I spent a fair bit of this match getting annoyed at Brian Hebner doing a shit job.

I didn't like the tag match - I was looking forward to it once TJP was out, because it meant I got to enjoy Fallah Bahh, who I love, without having to watch TJP, who I don't, and it meant another surprise. No Way Jose was a great surprise, but I don't think they did enough with him, with Swinger cameoing at ringside, or with him interacting with Mack and Swann. The match ended before it really felt like it got into gear.

The Knockouts Title match was really good, but if the surprise was always going to be Thunder Rosa (I wouldn't put it past Impact to have announced a mystery opponent and left their options open), I'd have announced it ahead of time. You don't want surprises to be diminishing returns, and I think you get more out of Rosa by announcing her vs. Deonna, which is pretty much guaranteeing a great match, rather than have people speculating about bigger names and feeling let down by Rosa through no fault of her own. As it happens, the Mickie James appearance ended up making it a bit of a moot point anyway, as they got the best of both worlds. I'm assuming Mickie vs. Deonna headlines the NWA women's show, but hopefully Impact get the match for a future PPV as well.

The main event was a good garbage brawl. There's a lot of rumours about Omega working seriously hurt at the moment, and that would explain while he's pivoted to this sort of match more often, and he's been surprisingly good in them. Don Callis was an absolute star on the pre-show, throughout the show, and in this match; I loved him as Cyrus in ECW, and he's just got even better, just a completely irredeemable prick, and a great heel colour commentator. There was a point early on when he shouted "OMEGA IS DESTROYING SAMI CALLIHAN!" before he got a single move in. The fact that they rely so heavily on the real history between Callis and Omega, and tied it in to Callihan attacking Callis three years ago, makes it feel like one of the more believable stories and relationships in wrestling - you can suspend your disbelief enough to think that Callis and Omega have been plotting everything they're doing since NJPW and then it's not that much of a stretch to think that Callis has been manipulating things and pulling the strings for Omega since day one, because he's a convincing enough promo to make you believe.