Impact Wrestling
Thursday, October 11th
RESULTS: Petey Williams over Trevor Lee, Puma King & Jack Evans, Maximo over Grado, Rohit Raju over Gursinder Singh, Austin Aries & Moose & Killer Kross over Johnny Impact & Eddie Edwards & Fallah Bahh, Tessa Blanchard over Keyra
-This was the final episode of Impact before Bound for Glory this Sunday and their final episode from the tapings in Mexico City. The show was not a hard sell for the pay-per-view and was full of matches with a minimal bearing on Sunday’s show excluding the six-man tag.
-I hope Josh Mathews is getting a cut of this deal with Comda DOT COM.
-The high point of the show was the closing segment with Konnan and Eddie Kingston cutting promos on the other with the OGz and LAX in the ring. Eddie Kingston has been excellent throughout this program and his promos have been top level stuff. Having Konnan in Mexico where he spoke Spanish for the audience and then shifted to English worked well for the audience in Mexico City. Konnan told Kingston he raised him. The final message was the ceasefire is over and they fought as the show ended. The Concrete Jungle Street Fight match has been the best-promoted match for Bound for Glory and I can see an argument to the match closing the show. The promos have been great and aside from the hit-and-run angle, I think the feud has worked very well.
-Austin Aries pinned Johnny Impact in the six-man tag heading into their Impact title match on Sunday. The story is that Impact came back from a neck injury and in this match, he re-injured it with a Saito suplex from Killer Kross onto the floor. Aries then hit the brainbuster on the bad neck and pinned Impact. Aries has been terrific with his promo work, but Impact hasn’t clicked as the main event challenger for the top title. The two should have a strong match but I don’t sense the level of importance that they managed to achieve for Moose challenge Aries at Slammiverary.
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-Father Jim Mitchell returned for a strange segment with Allie. We learned that Allie made a deal to give up her soul and now she needs Mitchell’s help to get her to the “Undead realm” to save Kiera Hogan. So, Mitchell is going to have Allie enter a coffin on Sunday and enter the “Undead realm” to take on Su Yung. This sounds nuts, but Mitchell was so great here that the most outlandish story on the show is still entertaining.
-Eli Drake issued an open challenge for Bound for Glory, but it’s only open to New Yorkers.
-Rich Swann announced that his tag partner at Bound for Glory will be Willie Mack to take on Matt Sydal and Ethan Page.
-Rohit Raju defeated his tag partner Gursinder Singh of the Desi Hit Squad and Singh must go back to India. Singh was pleading to Gama Singh that Raju was injured, then was hit with a flying knee as Raju capitalized and beat Singh. The audience didn’t care about this and I don’t know why it was on the final show before the pay-per-view.
-The four-way to open the show has some impressive spots, especially from Jack Evans, but never hit the second gear and was too quick. On paper, it looked great with the talent involved but I was a bit disappointed it was so short.
-The rest of the show featured a lot of non-essential stories that were divorced from the build-up for Bound for Glory. The final ten minutes were the big sell for the pay-per-view and the rest of the show felt like a standard episode.
