IMPACT HITS & MISSES 11/2: Final hype for Eli Drake vs. Johnny Impact BFG main event, Dan Lambert’s promo, Moose, X Division

HITS

The Final Segment: Eli Drake vs. Johnny Impact in no way feels like a WrestleMania-level main event, but the company at least offered up a solid final angle to tease potential fans into buying Bound For Glory. Drake appeared strong and ruthless and Impact looked sympathetic in the post-match beatdown. Logical booking that is probably far too little, far too late.

Lambert’s Promo: There are few people who are as good on the microphone in all of professional wrestling right now than Dan Lambert. This is due in part to everyone in WWE sounding so overly-scripted (which is something Impact should further capitalize on) but Lambert is just great at getting under your skin. Of course, him threatening to destroy wrestling by having MMA guys beat up a former football player and another MMA guy doesn’t make a lick of sense, but this was an entertaining segment that set the stage pretty decently for his team’s match (except for King Mo or Bobby Lashley not talking..that probably would have helped).

MISSES

Video Packages: Impact has done a much better job in 2017 with their video production work than in prior years, but much of what we saw on this episode was clearly shot a long time ago. They’d used the same Bound For Glory sit down hype videos over and over again over the past month, which added nothing to the final sell. It’s fine to be promo video heavy for the last episode before a big show, except that the prior two weeks also were overloaded with much of the same content.

Opening Match: Rosemary & Allie vs. Sienna & K.C. Spinelli (who?) was fine…if you saw it at a local indy show. But airing it on TV looked lousy from a production standpoint and storyline-wise it added nothing to Bound For Glory. The outcome made Sienna look weak and didn’t help her upcoming match title defense in the slightest. Also, Josh Mathews needs to drop his dumb “she looks like an Easter Egg” comment about Allie.

Moose’s Match: I found myself heavily disinterested in Moose’s tag match on the show, mostly because I didn’t buy into any of the near falls. Well, that and I didn’t know who three of the wrestlers were. I figured unless he was involved in the finish (which is logical), there’s no way the match would end. And then it ended. And he wasn’t involved. Sure, his team won but how was that sufficient as a final sell? Throw in the fact that Moose didn’t respond to America’s Top Team running him down in the ring and you have another bizarre and lackluster go-home build. This match could have aired three months ago on Impact (it was shot a month ago) or aired three months in the future, and the result would have been the exact same. Fine, but meaningless.

The X-Division Match: Impact’s grand idea to gets fans excited for the upcoming X Division title match is to give them the exact same match on TV for free, just without the Ultimate X gimmick involved. It’s about as lazy of booking as you can get.

Overall Show: Not as amazingly terrible as the past two weeks, but still far from good. This is a promotion not just spinning its wheels but driving backwards at a scary pace. Had this show aired during the summer it would have been forgettable. But having it air before their biggest show of the year likely encouraged very few fans to drop over $40 to watch the pay-per-view. The leftover creative team has to immediately find a new direction and implement some consistency to have any chance of turning this thing around.

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