SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
IMPACT HITS
New Tag Champs: A minor hit here. The team of Andrew Everett and DJZ has some potential but this was badly rushed. Blame management for having so few tag teams on the roster to give the division any sort of depth. The new champs just debuted as a duo last week and now they have the belts. It would have been more fun to watch them rise up the ranks for a bit before getting their big opportunity. Still, though, it’s good to get the titles off of Scott Steiner and Eli Drake. While they have more star power, having them as the focal point of the division felt like a nostalgia act.
Katarina Leaves: Grado continues to be the Santino of Impact for me, in that I just don’t find his brand of comedy all that funny. To each their own. But his pairing with Katarina felt doomed out of the gate. We’d already seen him search for a girlfriend and it wasn’t entertaining the first time. At the end of Grado’s match with Kongo Kong, she quickly headed for the back and left her boyfriend in the ring. It appears this duo isn’t for long, which is the right call. Still, they shouldn’t have done it in the first place as the breakup will mean nothing since it was so short lived and he was gone for so long. Here’s a thought, have Katarina turn into back into Winter and join Jimmy Jacobs and Kong to form a new stable.
Rosemary’s Funeral: Well shot. Looked cool. These are the type of vignettes that Impact should be producing on a consistent basis. The feud between Su Yung and Rosemary continues to be one of the highlights of the show and creative is doing a nice job of keeping you wondering where it’s headed next. (unlike the “where the hell is Konnan?” angle that is just meandering about aimlessly). However…if Yung can shoot fire out of her mouth, why doesn’t she ever do that during a match? Seems like a waste of her powers of me!
The Main Event: An entertaining way to end the night. Pentagon Jr., Phantasma, Austin Aries and Matt Sydal delivered a fun, nearly 20 minute match that effectively built up a pair or title matches over the next two weeks of television. Props to Sydal and Pentagon for timing the kick to the face off of the Shooting Star Press. It was the coolest move of the week.
IMPACT MISSES
Commentary: Having Sami Callihan beat up Don Callis continues to have been a poor creative move. This marks two weeks in a row that he has been off of the commentary booth, leaving Josh Mathews to go solo. This is not good for anyone. As nearly universally agreed upon, Mathews is a mediocre announcer at best. And due to his heel runs over the past couple of years, his credibility is beyond shot. Asking him to carry a show by himself is an uphill battle. If nothing else, they should have brought in Sonjay Dutt for the night once again or given another wrestler a shot in the role of color commentator.
Production quirks: Whoever is directing the backstage segments in Impact should consider telling other people in the area to be quiet. On one hand, it adds to the realism. Basically, angles can happen at anytime. That’s not a bad route to take, except for the fact the company is writing angles like Su Yung and Rosemary, meaning they’re already throwing any sense of realism out the window. So when Pentagon Jr. is talking directly into the camera, we shouldn’t be hearing other people talking and moving about backstage. It only serves as a distraction.
Callihan vs. Edwards: Impact took their longest running, most personal feud and decided to have the big showdown in an arena that looks worse on TV, with worse sound and terrible camerawork. Makes perfect sense to me! So due to the sheer potential brutality of this match, it simply couldn’t have aired in the Impact Zone. Well, Barbed Wire Massacre was far more violent than this, so what gives? And did nobody edit this match before the show? They randomly cut to a cameraman smiling and chatting with another production guy as the camera tried to awkwardly adjust to where the wrestlers were. The brawl itself was decent, but it didn’t live up to their other bouts. Also, Mathews was badly exposed once again for his inability to convey genuine emotion when he tried to convince us “This has gone too far!” He kept putting over how evil Edwards is becoming, except that all Eddie did was choke Callihan with a bat for 30 seconds, which if nothing else, is getting revenge for what Callihan did to Don Callis. We’d seen Edwards do far worse to his nemesis, so Mathews’ shock seemed ridiculously overdone.
Cage’s World Tour: This continues to be dumb. If Impact isn’t going to show an entire match on TV, then don’t air any of it. It’s impossible to get into the flow of what you’re watching because they can cut the action at any time. Besides that, the hard camera was a lousy angle, as it was too far away from the action. I’ll confess I’ve never heard of Facade in my life (and I’m assuming the majority of the viewers hadn’t either because he’d never been on the show), so why exactly did Cage want to go after HIM? Seriously, why is Facade, specifically, someone that Cage felt he needed to get on a plane to travel to another country to face? That’s the question Impact needs to be answering with this tour. Otherwise, it looks like he’s going around the world to beat up random jobbers at indy shows. Congrats? A simple fix would to be to have his next opponent cut a 30 second promo where they challenge him to a match, then air it on TV.
Overall Show: A much better effort than last week (which I thought was flat-out terrible and counterproductive), but this was a bland offering. It’s hard to recommend this show to anyone right now. If you’re looking for your wrestling fix for the week, well…Impact is shorter than Raw and there’s less corporate-nonsense talk than Smackdown. Otherwise, I got almost nothing. Rosemary and Yung is fun. A possible Edwards/Tommy Dreamer feud could be intriguing, and maybe there’s still time to salvage Pentagon Jr. and make him feel like a star in the Impact Zone. There’s been some sloppy booking lately, though, and they have their work cut out for them if they truly think they’re the hottest promotion in the company right now. 5/10
The wrestling show was great. This review is the same old garbage. I give this entire column a miss week after week after week. It’s like the Roman Reigns push only not as exciting.
Façade wrestled last week on Ring of Honor. If you were a wrestling fan, you would know who he is wouldn’t you?
Sadly, that is the issue with m any of these dirt sheet “writers” They watch WWE tv and pretend to be experts. I don’t lump Keller into that group, but maybe good help is hard to find these days? In the “good old days”, I actually had a subscription to the Torch and was glad to see it arrive in the mail. Back then, you could learn about various federations and organizations. The writers seemed knowledgeable. Maybe it was just Wade back then, I don’t know. I was just a kid. Back then, the Torch was well worth the price I paid for it. I had considered looking at other content here, but if the paid content is just know nothings shitting on anything not WWE I am glad i have passed on that to this point.
I know she was only there to set up an angle, but I really enjoyed Madison Rayne’s work on commentary. There were little things she said, like at the start how she’d have tried to roll up Tessa for a quick pin, that both made sense, and added to the match. It tells a story within a story of how Hogan is maybe young, and still learning.
I agree with the writer here on one point: the Brian Cage World Tour stuff is a miss with me. It’s not because I wasn’t familiar with Facade, however. Although I do understand the author’s point that there may be people like him who aren’t. My issue though is that they’ve done absolutely zero as far as character development goes with Cage. Is he a face? A heel? Does he just want to Drill Claw every wrestler on the planet?
That said, I feel it’s way too harsh to call this entire show a miss. I enjoyed it. I feel like people want to drag Impact through the mud anymore just because it’s “cool” to do. You can tell they’re trying things, and not every thing will work- but they’re getting a direction, and I think 6 months from now they’ll be a in a strong place.
You make some great points. As other organizations succeed and projects like ALL IN succeed, the WWE marks like the writer of this article, are going to have some real issues. They are just afraid of the competition. That is really all it is, how dare someone go against the might corporation of WWE. 🙂 I find WWE to be extremely boring most of the time.
I thought that was a great show ! I really enjoyed it. I would recommend people to check out the show even if this guy wouldn’t .
This guys has watched Impact wrestling every week and he just doesn’t get it. I mean it’s clear that certain characters on the roster are going to get the Broken Universe treatment separate from the rest of the roster. And as far as Cage,if that match was held at the Impact zone it would be a squash match but when they air it from another arena then some people want to make it more than what it is and that’s still a squash match. I think this guy over thinks Impact wrestling weekly in his reviews.
It is clear to me that he isn’t a wrestling fan, but more of a sports entertainment guy. Which is cool, but he should really let someone else do this column because as far as wrestling goes, he seems to know less than my dog.
You are correct when you say he doesn’t get it. Great point on Cage. I actually enjoy the matches from other areas. WWE rarely acknowledges there is any other wrestling out there, at least give Impact props for not pretending they are the only game in town and that wrestling fans are so stupid they can’t figure out where the product is if you want to watch something else.
And saying the company is throwing any sense of realism out the window is ridiculous for a wrestling fan to say!Did the WWE throw realism out the window with the Undertaker and Kane? No they could do things Steve Austin couldn’t do.They had special powers to have lightning strike or to have fire come from the ring post. That didn’t mean realism was gone from the rest of the show. Lol just a ridiculous comment to make from a long time wrestling fan.
Do you just go on wrestling journalism sites to troll them?
This guy is right. Impact hasn’t been good for two years. This show was better during the Aces and 8s era. They were best during the Billy Corgan era.
Jarrett did some good story stuff, but had personal meltdowns and wanted to push authority figures and his wife on TV. Not to mention Del Rio
Callis and D’Amore suck now. Pentagon is a joke here where MLW and Lucha Underground are treating him as a true main eventer.
Cage is just a more boring Ryback. See that? Boring Ryback
Aries isn’t even on their roster. He’s a freelancer
And they force feed cheap indy footage no one wants to see.
Not to mention, the only thing that D’Amore seems to put effort in is dumb sports entertainment segments like Grado or KM
You don’t like it? Then turn the freaking channel ! Simple solution why don’t some of you people get that? There’s plenty of other wrestling shows out there for to partake in some you have already mentioned. I enjoy Impact wrestling and based on the other comments on here I’m not the only one. But way to single me out.