Is Impact* the best wrestling promotion in history? *(Now TNA again, 2024)

[El-P]

Rebellion : Jonah vs Tomohiro Ishii. 

Holy shit.

Eddie Edwards vs Rocky Romero was excellent. Romero has to be one of the most underrated workers of the last 20 years, as he never seem to be in conversations but damn he is so good and has been for so long.

Finally, the Chelsea Green turn that was expected and built on for a while now, and it was just expertly done, with Cardona jumping on Mickie James to boot. AEW badly need some big time angle of the sorts for their women division and badly need someone as good as Mickie (granted, she's been doing it for ever now and she's really good) as far as working angles.

[El-P]

Ishii vs Edwards, Bailey vs Shelley and White vs Sabin were excellent matches. Not bad for a late show at Wrestlecon, with some of these guys who already went through wars.

Funny how context matters so much. Aldis may look like a "big" deal in the NWA studio, but coming alongside his wife in IMPACT to face Matt Cardona & Chelsea Green, it really came off like "Who's that NPC behind Mickie James ?". 

[The Thread Killer]

Sounds like The Briscoes are coming in full time as of the next set of TV tapings after the PPV.

[sek69]

On 4/7/2022 at 7:47 AM, El-P said:

Funny how context matters so much. Aldis may look like a "big" deal in the NWA studio, but coming alongside his wife in IMPACT to face Matt Cardona & Chelsea Green, it really came off like "Who's that NPC behind Mickie James ?". 

To be fair, that's because Mickie is a million times more charismatic than him. He looks like the coolest guy in the world in the NWA when he has someone like Kamille next to him who's gimmick was just to stand there and look intimidating, but put him next to Mickie he looks like a local competitor from mid 90s WWF TV. 

[El-P]

13 hours ago, sek69 said:

To be fair, that's because Mickie is a million times more charismatic than him. He looks like the coolest guy in the world in the NWA when he has someone like Kamille next to him who's gimmick was just to stand there and look intimidating, but put him next to Mickie he looks like a local competitor from mid 90s WWF TV. 

Honestly I never thought he looked like the coolest guy in the world in NWA either. He always came off like a forced cosplayer to me. But yeah, local jobber from mid 90's TV is exactly that.

[El-P]

IMPACT is really delivering big time these days, Rebellion was a mostly excellent show capped off by a GREAT, an AWESOME main event between Moose and Josh Alexander. Long-term storyline, masterfully built to a apex of a match that saw the babyface triumph over the dastardly heel who basically stole his title in front of his wife and kids. The match was even better than I expected it to be, Moose is working like someone who wants to do the G1 (he sure has loved his Ishii match, that's obvious) and they worked an amazing ending stretch with one terrific nearfall (doesn't take more than one to push a match toward greatness). Alexander did turn himself heel to me by pulling off a Ricky Steamboat (you know the one spot I refer to), but hey, whatever, great match, great ending, once again IMPACT shows that booking pro-wrestling logically week-to-week for months up to a peak is not rocket science.

Undercard had plenty of excellent stuff too, Sabin vs White vs Maclin was a terrifc opener (I've been loving Maclin's work), Trey vs Speedball vs Austin was an insane X-div orgy of unbelievable sequences and moves (Mike Bailey is just next level, the guy is legit incredible and one of my new favorite workers in the world, and that's despite barefeet and mulet which trigger the hell out of me usually), Deonna vs Taya was very good and I was glad to se Taya again (Deonna is just always a pleasure), Jonah vs Ishii started off kinda slow and I was expecting a rather minor match until, of course, it finally got going and turned into yet another great Ishii match and another brutal (in a great way) Jonah match. And yes, Ishii did do the fucking brainbuster on Jonah in the most WTF spot of the night. 

Rosemary vs Steelz was okay but our favorite Demon Assassin really was a body for Steelz to slay. The tag-team gauntlet peaked early with Cardona, Myers & Green's involvement (Chelsea Green is a trooper) and ended up cold (really now, Rhyno & Heath isn't doing it at all).

20 years of IMPACT/TNA at Slammiversary. Sucks that AJ Styles won't be there. Maybe they could get Samoe Joe or Chris Daniels to show up. Jarrett has to be there, he has to.

[Tenese Sarwieh]

Rebellion was a thumbs up show. Solid matches that lead to a banger of a main event. If I had my way Josh would have a dominant title reign that leads to a returning Jake Something being coranated as a second ace. The tag gauntlet slow down things and I was one of those expecting The Briscoes to appear so that was a let down.

[El-P]

As I expected, the IInspiration losing to the Influence on the pre-show basically was the end of them in IMPACT. And now they are taking an indefinite leave of in-ring action. And honestly, there is probably other ways for them to monetize their names, because as far as in-ring work, they still were not close to good (I mean, McKay is still embarrassingly bad at point). Fun personalities but a gimmick that is pretty much limited too (they are tall, hot and goofy... and that's pretty much it).

[sek69]

Yeah they are the rare case of an act that would have been better off in the Divas era. Funny, great personalities, attractive, but unfortunately can't wrestle for shit. 

[The Thread Killer]

I assumed that eventually they would have to get better, but from what I hear they didn’t. I found them painful to watch back in NXT. It’s pretty amazing considering how much experience they have gained since then that they didn’t get much better. No aptitude, I guess?

[NintendoLogic]

I recall a few people saying McKay was actually a good worker in SHIMMER. Does anybody know what caused her to fall off a cliff?

[El-P]

Jessie McKay debuted in 2007. That's kinda scary to have 15 years of in-ring work and be *this* crappy still. She works like a rookie in her first six months, and not a good one either. They have a few cool double-team move and Cassie actually can be decent in spots (that's at best and working against really super solid girls like Madison or Tenille), but fuuuuuck, they indeed were so much better suited for the Diva era. Also, it was striking how tall they were standing next to most IMPACT women (of course Madison is tiny, but still). 

As far as "McKay was really good in SHIMMER", I would take this stuff with a grain of salt, honestly. The SHIMMER hype has seemed to be kinda deceptive to me over the years.

[sek69]

I dunno, SHIMMER had the best women workers around most of the time (even ones who didn't end up making it big), so she would have looked better there. 

[El-P]

Josh Alexander vs Tomohiro Ishii set for the next IMPACT+ special next week. We're really living in a time where there's so much great stuff that it's hard to not take it for granted. 

[Alucard]

 This is Jessie McKay's career best match ever, just a wonderful match all around.

FWIW I was enjoying their brief Impact run. 

[Dale Wolfe]

On 4/25/2022 at 7:16 PM, El-P said:

 (Mike Bailey is just next level, the guy is legit incredible and one of my new favorite workers in the world, and that's despite barefeet and mulet which trigger the hell out of me usually), 

Really made me laugh that 

Funny how it works, I read this thinking "need to check this out" and then next sentence nah fuck that guy. I'll probably stick with the latter

[El-P]

14 hours ago, Alucard said:

This is Jessie McKay's career best match ever, just a wonderful match all around.

FWIW I was enjoying their brief Impact run. 

This was really good indeed and although Madison Eagles was the star of the match by a wide margin, it seems like McKay did fell off a cliff. Maybe she took the PC training of unlearning everything she knew from the indies because it's the wrong way to work a bit to much at heart.

I enjoyed their IMPACT run, but mostly for her characters and interactions, the matches weren't anything to write home about.

[El-P]

Not that it should come as any kind of surprise, but Josh Alexander vs Tomohiro Ishii was awesome. Like, great G1 match awesome level. Ishii working the US against various opponents and killing it every time only confirms he's one of the all time greatest. 

Maclin vs Sabin, Trey vs Austin and the 10 men clusterfuck were really good matches too.

Sami Callihan made his return to attack Moose, who "broke his leg" few months ago, so those were what the cool vignettes were about. I guess Moose vs Sami at Slammiversary and it could/should be a terrific brawl.

The Briscoes won the tag-team championships, as expected (by me at least). And Mia Yim made her comeback, confronting Deaonna Purrazzo, so that's another Slammiversary match maybe.

I'm a broken record, but IMPACT is just delivering every time around including on these IMPACT + specials. Tasha vs Havoc was only ok, but everything else on the card was at least pretty fun, including a good showing by Gisele Shaw in the opener.

(as usual, no spoilers from the upcoming tapings people, thanks)

[SirEdger]

Seems like Mia's contract is a bit like JONAH's was; 6-month contract with possibility of extension after Bound for Glory

[Tenese Sarwieh]

Six months will be enough time to build for Deonna/Mia. 

[El-P]

Can't get a more Scott D'Amore main event for Slammiversary than Josh Alexander vs Eric Young. Having a Queen of the Mountain match is cute, but the match was usually a complete mess (could be fun though). I sure hope the Jarretts are showing up.

[sek69]

I always think poor Eric Young gets a bad rap. He's always been solid in any match I've seen him in, and most of the negatives about him were gimmick oriented and that's seldom the performer's fault. 

[El-P]

12 minutes ago, sek69 said:

I always think poor Eric Young gets a bad rap. He's always been solid in any match I've seen him in, and most of the negatives about him were gimmick oriented and that's seldom the performer's fault. 

I've been sold on Eric Young since he showed up back in IMPACT (and believe me, when he was announced, I wasn't thrilled at all as I was right into the *worst* part of his TNA career, before he hooked up with ODB and finally got things working for him again, as he used to be tons of fun in Team Canada). He has been nothing but very good, even having an awesome angle and a terrific match with Rich Swann during the empty arena months. He's been injured for a while, then has been working tags mostly, but lately had another terrific match with Jay White (shocking, I know), so actually I was not criticizing the booking here (I mean, D'Amore is by far the best booker IMPACT ever had, easily one of the best bookers of the last 20 years in term of making the most out of what he has and keeping storylines in check with logical week to week progression). But the guy from Team Canada vs the guy from The North, all Canadian main event, both D'Amore's guys, really. On paper it's an excellent main event.

[strobogo]

I like goofy, mostly comedic mid card stooge EY. I've not liked any of his serious heel runs, especially the psycho stable leader EY from Sanity through VBD.

[Embrodak]

I have a vague memory that they did a Daniel Bryan copycat story with EY when DB was getting big, and did it in a less asinine and convoluted way.