Impact Wrestling terminates relationship with Eli Drake

[Big Red Machine]

Source: www.F4WOnline.com


By Joseph Currier | @josephcurrier | Apr 7, 2019 11:58 am


Eli Drake is no longer with Impact Wrestling.

Impact issued a brief statement today announcing that the company has terminated its relationship with Drake: "Impact Wrestling announced today that it has terminated its relationship with Shaun Ricker, known as ‘Eli Drake’."

Drake had said his contract with Impact was going to expire on May 31.

Drake was originally announced as Tessa Blanchard's opponent for this past Thursday's United We Stand show, but Drake tweeted on February 22 that he wouldn't be participating in the match. "I have amazing respect for @IMPACTWRESTLING and @Tess_Blanchard and can see that she is likely the greatest female talent in wrestling today," Drake wrote. "Although that said, I will not participate in a one on one intergender match."

Joey Ryan instead faced Blanchard at United We Stand. Drake didn't have a match at the show, but he wrestled at Impact's television tapings in Windsor, Ontario, Canada in March and continued his storyline with Eddie Edwards.

[cero2k]

sucks, he is really good

[KILLdozer]

Sounds like a work or is that his actual feelings about it?

[cero2k]

Sounds like a work or is that his actual feelings about it?

i think it's legit. he's one of those that are anti-intergender matches

[Big Red Machine]

Sounds like a work or is that his actual feelings about it?

i think it's legit. he's one of those that are anti-intergender matches

I'm becoming one as well. People just seem to be going way too overboard with it and doing them just to do them. It feels like promoters trying to draw people who fetishize men beating on women or women beating on men. There's porn for that. Stop forcing it into my wrestling shows.

[cero2k]

I'm becoming one as well. People just seem to be going way too overboard with it and doing them just to do them. It feels like promoters trying to draw people who fetishize men beating on women or women beating on men. There's porn for that. Stop forcing it into my wrestling shows.

that's because most of it happens in the indies and most indies don't usually have stories built into those matches. Seeing people beat other people is what wrestling is all about, it's just hidden under the idea that there is a story going into that match. if you have a promotion that does a proper story between a man and an women, it doesn't matter the gender.

it's the same with dives, and hell in a cell matches, and curtain calls, and technical masterpieces, and shoots, if every match/show does it, then they stop being special or making sense having them.

[Big Red Machine]

I'm becoming one as well. People just seem to be going way too overboard with it and doing them just to do them. It feels like promoters trying to draw people who fetishize men beating on women or women beating on men. There's porn for that. Stop forcing it into my wrestling shows.

that's because most of it happens in the indies and most indies don't usually have stories built into those matches. Seeing people beat other people is what wrestling is all about, it's just hidden under the idea that there is a story going into that match. if you have a promotion that does a proper story between a man and an women, it doesn't matter the gender.

it's the same with dives, and hell in a cell matches, and curtain calls, and technical masterpieces, and shoots, if every match/show does it, then they stop being special or making sense having them.

I mean... I'll argue that technical matches are the kayfabe building block upon which the whole show is constructed so having "too many technical masterpieces" is like saying there are "too many great Lucha Libre matches in Mexico for them to feel special."

I think that intergender stuff in particular has become almost like deathmatches were in the early 2000s on the indies where people are not only doing them for the sake of dong them but going out of their way to scream from the rooftops about how they're doing them and look at how cool we are for doing so. And yes, you could say that about more technically based promotions and technical matches or CHIKARA and their comedy, but this just feels like it's a little too much to me. Like they're trying to tap into the freak-show element of things rather than doing ti for the purposes of trying to draw with good pro wrestling that just happens to be intergender.