Part of me wished I had done this on 3:16 day, just so we can talk about something that isn’t WWE-related or even Stone Cold-related… oh well, maybe next year.
Then again, maybe next year, I’ll have more than these weekly Impact postings to see a “regular” occurrence. To tell you the truth, I’m still shocked that I’ve been keeping up with these shows for as long as I have. I figured the dumping of D’Amore would’ve lead to a drop in quality (or at least the return of that fucking owl logo), but thus far, the show has been somewhat pleasant, if not uneventful.
In any case, this is the post-Sacrifice edition of Impact, which means we can start building towards TNA’s other PPV offering for this year, Rebellion.
According to Sacrifice results, we have new Tag Team champions; Dani Luna and Savannah Evans defeated Masha Slammovich and Killer Kelly to win the Knockouts Tag titles while Brian Myers and Eddie Edwards won the Tag Titles over ABC. Also, Hammerstone made his debut and stole Josh Alexander’s headgear… which makes Josh made.
We open with X-Division Champion Mustafa Ali retaining the title over Chris Sabin… I figured this happened at Sacrifice, but I guess not. Good match, though. Then we get Josh cutting a promo about Hammerstone and wanting his World title back… yeah, for those who don’t know, Josh Alexander was the reigning IMPACT World Champion who had to relinquish the title after suffering an injury… so clearly, that’s a thread that needs to be pulled. In the meantime, out comes Oleg Prudius – some would know him best as that Vladimir guy in WWE from ages ago – who taps out to Josh’s ankle lock in less than a minute. Way to make Josh look like a killer… and all it took was some big dude stealing his head gear.
Kazarian defeated Chris Bey in a match, after which Eric Young comes out to “scare” Kaz away. AJ Francis (former Top Dolla and WWE Antiquities host on A&E) gets a win over Joe Hendry thanks to a chair shot from Rich Swann, who looks to be Francis’ new partner going forward. So, that’s a new twist on this ongoing feud that has been some bits and bobs here and there. Not the most exciting thing, but it’s something. And the main event saw Nic Nemeth team up with Speedball Mountain to overcome the Rascalz and Steve Maclin in the six-man main event tag match.
After a series of somewhat above-average shows, we’ve got a pretty good one this week. Stuff happened, the wrestling was better than usual, and there was a bit more energy in terms of the pacing. What can I say? I enjoyed this show more than usual.
dtm666 