Impact Wrestling Final Thoughts
March 29, 2016
By: Josh Boutwell of Wrestleview.com
Last week was, by far, the weakest episode of Impact since the move to POP in my opinion, but Impact bounced back nicely this week with another strong episode. The opening segment with EC3, Bennett, and #MattHardyBrand was entertaining as hell and led to the opener.
I hate Handicap Matches and the match was pretty standard stuff until Bennett got involved. I think we are eventually heading to a 3-Way Feud between EC3, Galloway, and Bennett and Hardy vs. Hardy soon coming from all of this.
The stuff with the Knockouts was really confusing. Jade was named #1 Contender last week but then Gail steps up and says that she gets to name a number one contender to, and I thought it meant that person would be next in line after Jade, but the way Josh Matthews was saying it was they weren’t sure if Madison or Jade is the top contender. That’s just lazy booking to not make it clear, and if you are going for a Madison-Jade match to name the true contender then make it clear that is where it is going instead of just confusing people.
Bro-Mans back together felt really lackluster to me and like a last minute desperate hail mary to bring in an established team with Roode leaving TNA. With that said I enjoy them a hell of a lot more as a babyface team than as heels and I think they will have a better run as babyfaces. The promo with Drake was entertaining and the match with Bram/EY was good.
The Tag Team division went from being revamped just a few months ago with The Wolves, Beer Money, Bram/EY, Drake/Jessie, The Decay, etc. all coming together at once and now the whole division has been decimated. Davey is injured so The Wolves are out for the minute, EY is leaving so EY/Bram is gone, Roode is leaving so Beer Money is out, and now Jessie has reformed the Bro-Mans with Robbie E. They teased Eddie Edwards teaming with Helms but I think it is pretty clear they are easing towards an Eddie vs. Trevor feud in the X-Division which I would much prefer and should be fun. The X-Division still has a long ways to go to be rebuilt but as hard as it is to believe the Tag Division has even further to go. They need to bring in another luchador and put him with Tigre so there you have an exciting high flying team that can also break off in the X-Division as singles at times. Storm is probably the best tag team wrestler in the game right now and with the World Title scene being so crowded I could see them putting him with another partner to form a team. I don’t want it to be forced, though, so it should be someone that meshes with him. They certainly need to go to the Indies and find a tag team to bring in as well.
Madison-Velvet was fine but it was just filler.
I absolutely loved Pope’s promo with Lashley and I really cannot wait to see him back in the ring. I think he has way too much left in the tank to be at the announce table right now. Hopefully this is going to be an extended return for him and they really did a great job of establishing him as someone that can still go and not a washed up wrestler with that fight. I could even see this whole thing with Lashley ending up making Lashley respect Pope and them pairing up possibly as a tag team and certainly with Pope being Lashley’s mouthpiece since it looks like they have dropped the whole angle with Raquel as quickly as it started.
The Main Event was absolutely terrific and continues TNA’s long string of great Main Event’s so far this year. I would put it up there with Galloway’s last match with Angle as one of the better matches this year in TNA. Next week’s show with Lashley-Pope, Hardy-EY, and Hardy-Drew plus the continuation of the Eddie Edwards-Helms stuff should be really strong.
– Promo/Segment of the Night: Lashley-Pope
– Match of the Night: Galloway vs. Hardy (****)
– Overall Grade: B+