Impact Wrestling Bound For Glory 2017
First thing we see is Alberto El Patron arriving to the arena. Intro video was all about what it means to everyone being at BGF. It was a good start.
X-Division Championship 6-Way Match
The Cult of Lee is banned from ringside. Garza is coming in with an injured shoulder it seems. As you can imagine, Petey got a huge ovation, he came in with the Team Canada song. This match is Four Corner Survival style with two legal men, tags and lucha rules apply. Early in the match, since Trevor is the only heel, all the babyfaces were all attacking him with multiple man superkicks or dropkicks. Then they proceeded to do some 3-on-3 spots.
After all that chaos got under control again, Trevor Lee had the heat on Garza for a while, constantly knocking everyone from the apron as to not get tagged out, but eventually Garza got out of the ring and Petey went in for a short hot tag. Sydal did the same, then Xavier for a near fall. They started taking turns with submission and big moves, with other guys breaking them up, which all built to Petey hitting the Canadian Destroyer on Xavier, but Trevor Lee rushes in, throws Petey outside and steals the pin. Good opener, some spots were a bit mistimed, but overall a good match.
Well this is a good surprise, I wonder if this is to make up time for the postponed Red Wedding match? Dux was over for being local, Ishimori was over for being Ishimori. It was a perfectly good match, but an exhibition at the end of the day. Ishimori won with a 450.
Mid-match, Laurel Van Ness was out in the crowd, distracting from a perfectly good match. Eventually the fans started ignoring her and went back into chanting for Dux, so Laurel just sat down I guess. Having said that, I'm down for Laurel being Tyson's manager or something.
Grado meets Abyss - Grado tries to get Abyss not to do this, Joseph is not the boss of Abyss, but Abyss won't take it. So Grado says that then he'll see a new Grado tonight.
Alberto El Patron Returns - JB and Josh are selling Patron as an unscripted unpredictable loose cannon, I guess he has earned that reputation. He kinda shot on the Impact office (they're already gone, so he may as well), and he actually kinda started to win the fans with this promo, but then he would turn it around and get the fans to hate on him again. He talked about getting his championship taken away from him and did the whole I never lost my title and now we have a paper champ. Alberto shot on JB, and even got in his face, and made things awkward, even Josh was like fuck, I don't wanna be here, dick fans chanted for 'table'.
Alberto says he came to Canada with a plan and that plan is to make a statement. He hints killing JB, but ends up taking off and just saying that tonight is gonna be amazing. Great segment assuming it wasn't an actual shoot. Alberto has a doctorate in cutting heel promo disguised as a babyface promo.
Monster's Ball for Grado's Work Visa
The match started with Abyss trying to get Grado to give up before he killed him, Grado jumped him and wanted to get hardcore, at this point all my expectations were at the lowest, but then the first thing that happened was Abyss stapling Grado in the face and I figured, maybe it won't be that bad.
We saw staple guns, cheese graders on Abyss's balls and face, trashcans, kendo sticks, thumbtacks, and several barbwire boards, one of which was outside and Grado did a table spot falling from the ring post to the outside breaking such board. We also saw Grado hit a plancha from the third rope onto a barbwire sandwish on Abyss. Abyss brought in Janice. At one point, Laurel Van Ness interfered, low blowing Grado, but the lights went out and 'no match' Rosemary hit the red mist on Van Ness. The only interesting thing here was that Abyss hinted attacking Rosemary, but he kinda remembered being in Decay, and so they were gonna work together to hit the mist on Grado, who ducked, and so Abyss was pissed and chokeslammed Rosemary into the tacks. Finish came later with Abyss hitting the Black Hole Slam onto the barbwire board for the pin and to kick Grado off from the United States. But they're taping in Canada...
The wrestling was really bad, but the spots looked painful enough to warrant that rating.
Team Impact Interview - Ok stuff, nothing especial. Storm was overly hyped.
Mexicans all came in together, gringos got their own entrances. We are seeing Fantasma and Texano work their AAA feud here. I didn't like the booking of this match, we saw not only Edwards making a comeback, but in Storm's hot tag, how both men could easily take on two of the AAA guys by themselves, it was only when it was 3-on-1 when AAA had control, and even if you're crazy about faces and heels and consider AAA the heels, 3-on-1 is too much. ECIII later on had another hot tag for his team and once again dominated 2-on-1. Finish was a crappy Last Call from Storm to Pagano. Fantasma took out Edwards, they're fighting for the GHC title this week. Storm and ECIII celebrated without Eddie, dicks.
Match was well wrestled, but the booking sucks. I wanna see this match in AAA to see who the wimps are. Dorian is so high up these gringo's ass that is perfectly cool allowing their guys to be booked like this. Also, did I mention that Pagano sucks?
Eli Drake and Chris Adonis Interview - Adonis was good, Drake as always was great.
As we're starting the entrances to the 5150 match, we see that one guy that's been hinted to hang with OVE taking out someone with a Mexican flag. What the fuck is this show, 'Fuck Mexico Show' !? Anyway, it's supposed to be Homicide.
Impact World Tag Team Championship 5150 Street Fight Match
Right off the bat, LAX jumps OVE and they start brawling outside the ring, Santana, Konnan, and Dave Crist head out to the crowd. Jake and Ortiz battle ringside with weapons. In less than 5 minutes we saw a running powerbomb from the ramp into a table in the bottom, we also saw Santana drop a plancha from the rafters into Dave that was laying on a table. These guys are out here to steal the show (a low ceiling so far).
Jake and Ortiz made it to the ring first, where they did a superplex into a bed of chairs, where Jake took it all as he overshot the spot. LAX continue dominance for a bit until we suddenly see someone throw powder to Konnan, and it's the Callihan Death Machine! He takes out Santana and Ortiz, and then a really lackluster pin. 1-2-3. Great match aside from the finish, and I don't know what happened, but if your stipulation was that anyone can interfere, then they really should have done something to really warrant Callihan, because a 53-yr old Konnan is not one. If Homicide and Low Ki are gone, then at least get three or four cronies from Crash.
Post-match - OVE and Callihan attack Santana and Ortiz, Santana is just trying to protect his bro. Fuck those gringos attacking the down guys. I'm seriously starting to suspect that Trump is funding Impact now.
Gail Kim Interview - Kim talks about tonight, her retirement match from Impact. She said 'TNA Knockout's Champion"
Impact Knockout's Championship 3-way Match
The build up video shown before the match was awesome, all three girls cut amazing promos in that video. Sienna started the match in a dominant way going over both Allie and Kim, but later on the numbers were enough for the babyfaces get the upper hand, take her out for a moment, and so Allie and Kim fought for a while. The second half of the match was all 3-way wrestling until Sienna got rid of Allie and Kim hit the Eat Da Feet for the win.
Differently from the AAA vs Impact match, this was really nicely planned, but terribly wrestled, these women were botching some spots and some other ones looked weak.
Santino Marella is in the crowd.
America's Top Team Promo - Lambert is hyping up his boys. Good stuff.
Out of nowhere, Jimmy Jacobs walked out the ramp and joined JB and Josh on the commentary table. He hinted to be working for Impact. JB looked like an idiot for telling Jacobs he doesn't work here.
Six Sides of Steel Tag Team Match
Moose had some rapper singing his entrance, I have no idea who it was, but apparently it was Moose's brother. This was a bit of a clusterfuck brawl inside the ring where whoever was standing would attack whoever else was standing, but they did try to keep Moose and Lashley do the wrestling spots together since they probably didn't want to expose Bonner and Mo as much and keep their spots to big pops. They did as much as possible to keep Boner and Mo apart too since they should get into a real fight, and it was arguably the best part of the match, they probably went about a full 3-5 minute round.
When Bonnar had the upper hand, ATT acme into the cage, but Moose killed them all. Among the chaos, Mo and Moose ended up fighting outside, but Lambert threw in Mo inside and locked Moose outside. Bonnar tried to survive against the whole ATT team, but the numbers game was too much for him and got his ass kicked until Moose climbed over the cage to get back at it. Final two standing were Lambert and Moose, but Colby and Lashley attack Moose, Spear, and the actual fighters win the fake fight. America's Top Team defeated the home boys. This was an entertaining clusterfuck.
Mo had a nasty cut over the eye early in the match, didn't see how he got it.
Johnny Impact Interview - Good heartfelt promo, talking about his dad.
Impact Global Championship Match
This was arguably the best match of the night (again, low ceiling) with straight wrestling, great spots, and aside from the finish which we'll get into in a bit, a well booked match. It was a back and forward match with Impact being arguably better than Drake, but Drake had cheats, he had Adonis, and those things were enough to keep control of the match, yet Impact had his stupidly amazing athleticism that would get him out of spots all the time. As the match escalated, Impact was getting closer and closer to the win with some decent near falls. Except....
Onto the finish. As Impact is about to win with the Starship Pain, Alberto El Patron jumped the rail and pull the ref out of the ring mid-count, took out Impact AND Drake, he hits them both with the title, drags Drake over Impact to retain. Show goes off as Drake celebrates and Patron smirks. I obviously wasn't a fan of this ending because it makes it feel like Drake and Impact were just filler while Alberto returned, but it did give meaning to Alberto's promo earlier in the day. If he wasn't wrestling tonight, I would have just saved his return for the first day of tapings, cut the very same promo and you could do a quick rematch (hell, i'll take the quick title change) between Impact and Drake and now have Patron do that interference giving Drake the win.
Arguably, a terrible show by Impact. It's like when they had awesome wrestlers, they did terrible booking (note that it wasn't overbooking, just bad match planning), and when they had basic good booking, they put it on the girls that were not in their best game. I really disliked the booking of the AAA vs Impact match and the tag team title match, those two matches had soo much potential, and while the tag team match was good, it could have been more. I hate to think that this booking is what we're getting going forward since this is technically the first show post Jarrett leaving.
X-Division Championship 6-Way Match
Trevor Lee (C) vs Garza Jr vs Dezmond Xavier vs Sonjay Dutt vs Petey Williams vs "Reborn" Matt Sydal - 6.5/10
The Cult of Lee is banned from ringside. Garza is coming in with an injured shoulder it seems. As you can imagine, Petey got a huge ovation, he came in with the Team Canada song. This match is Four Corner Survival style with two legal men, tags and lucha rules apply. Early in the match, since Trevor is the only heel, all the babyfaces were all attacking him with multiple man superkicks or dropkicks. Then they proceeded to do some 3-on-3 spots.
After all that chaos got under control again, Trevor Lee had the heat on Garza for a while, constantly knocking everyone from the apron as to not get tagged out, but eventually Garza got out of the ring and Petey went in for a short hot tag. Sydal did the same, then Xavier for a near fall. They started taking turns with submission and big moves, with other guys breaking them up, which all built to Petey hitting the Canadian Destroyer on Xavier, but Trevor Lee rushes in, throws Petey outside and steals the pin. Good opener, some spots were a bit mistimed, but overall a good match.
Tyson Dux vs Taiji Ishimori - 6.5/10
Well this is a good surprise, I wonder if this is to make up time for the postponed Red Wedding match? Dux was over for being local, Ishimori was over for being Ishimori. It was a perfectly good match, but an exhibition at the end of the day. Ishimori won with a 450.
Mid-match, Laurel Van Ness was out in the crowd, distracting from a perfectly good match. Eventually the fans started ignoring her and went back into chanting for Dux, so Laurel just sat down I guess. Having said that, I'm down for Laurel being Tyson's manager or something.
Grado meets Abyss - Grado tries to get Abyss not to do this, Joseph is not the boss of Abyss, but Abyss won't take it. So Grado says that then he'll see a new Grado tonight.
Alberto El Patron Returns - JB and Josh are selling Patron as an unscripted unpredictable loose cannon, I guess he has earned that reputation. He kinda shot on the Impact office (they're already gone, so he may as well), and he actually kinda started to win the fans with this promo, but then he would turn it around and get the fans to hate on him again. He talked about getting his championship taken away from him and did the whole I never lost my title and now we have a paper champ. Alberto shot on JB, and even got in his face, and made things awkward, even Josh was like fuck, I don't wanna be here, dick fans chanted for 'table'.
Alberto says he came to Canada with a plan and that plan is to make a statement. He hints killing JB, but ends up taking off and just saying that tonight is gonna be amazing. Great segment assuming it wasn't an actual shoot. Alberto has a doctorate in cutting heel promo disguised as a babyface promo.
Monster's Ball for Grado's Work Visa
Grado vs Abyss - 1/10
The match started with Abyss trying to get Grado to give up before he killed him, Grado jumped him and wanted to get hardcore, at this point all my expectations were at the lowest, but then the first thing that happened was Abyss stapling Grado in the face and I figured, maybe it won't be that bad.
We saw staple guns, cheese graders on Abyss's balls and face, trashcans, kendo sticks, thumbtacks, and several barbwire boards, one of which was outside and Grado did a table spot falling from the ring post to the outside breaking such board. We also saw Grado hit a plancha from the third rope onto a barbwire sandwish on Abyss. Abyss brought in Janice. At one point, Laurel Van Ness interfered, low blowing Grado, but the lights went out and 'no match' Rosemary hit the red mist on Van Ness. The only interesting thing here was that Abyss hinted attacking Rosemary, but he kinda remembered being in Decay, and so they were gonna work together to hit the mist on Grado, who ducked, and so Abyss was pissed and chokeslammed Rosemary into the tacks. Finish came later with Abyss hitting the Black Hole Slam onto the barbwire board for the pin and to kick Grado off from the United States. But they're taping in Canada...
The wrestling was really bad, but the spots looked painful enough to warrant that rating.
Team Impact Interview - Ok stuff, nothing especial. Storm was overly hyped.
Pagano, Texano Jr, & El Hijo del Fantasma w/Dorian Roldan vs James Storm, ECIII, & Eddie Edwards - 3/10
Mexicans all came in together, gringos got their own entrances. We are seeing Fantasma and Texano work their AAA feud here. I didn't like the booking of this match, we saw not only Edwards making a comeback, but in Storm's hot tag, how both men could easily take on two of the AAA guys by themselves, it was only when it was 3-on-1 when AAA had control, and even if you're crazy about faces and heels and consider AAA the heels, 3-on-1 is too much. ECIII later on had another hot tag for his team and once again dominated 2-on-1. Finish was a crappy Last Call from Storm to Pagano. Fantasma took out Edwards, they're fighting for the GHC title this week. Storm and ECIII celebrated without Eddie, dicks.
Match was well wrestled, but the booking sucks. I wanna see this match in AAA to see who the wimps are. Dorian is so high up these gringo's ass that is perfectly cool allowing their guys to be booked like this. Also, did I mention that Pagano sucks?
Eli Drake and Chris Adonis Interview - Adonis was good, Drake as always was great.
As we're starting the entrances to the 5150 match, we see that one guy that's been hinted to hang with OVE taking out someone with a Mexican flag. What the fuck is this show, 'Fuck Mexico Show' !? Anyway, it's supposed to be Homicide.
Impact World Tag Team Championship 5150 Street Fight Match
LAX w/Konnan vs OVE (C) - 7/10
Right off the bat, LAX jumps OVE and they start brawling outside the ring, Santana, Konnan, and Dave Crist head out to the crowd. Jake and Ortiz battle ringside with weapons. In less than 5 minutes we saw a running powerbomb from the ramp into a table in the bottom, we also saw Santana drop a plancha from the rafters into Dave that was laying on a table. These guys are out here to steal the show (a low ceiling so far).
Jake and Ortiz made it to the ring first, where they did a superplex into a bed of chairs, where Jake took it all as he overshot the spot. LAX continue dominance for a bit until we suddenly see someone throw powder to Konnan, and it's the Callihan Death Machine! He takes out Santana and Ortiz, and then a really lackluster pin. 1-2-3. Great match aside from the finish, and I don't know what happened, but if your stipulation was that anyone can interfere, then they really should have done something to really warrant Callihan, because a 53-yr old Konnan is not one. If Homicide and Low Ki are gone, then at least get three or four cronies from Crash.
Post-match - OVE and Callihan attack Santana and Ortiz, Santana is just trying to protect his bro. Fuck those gringos attacking the down guys. I'm seriously starting to suspect that Trump is funding Impact now.
Gail Kim Interview - Kim talks about tonight, her retirement match from Impact. She said 'TNA Knockout's Champion"
Impact Knockout's Championship 3-way Match
Gail Kim vs Allie vs Sienna (C) - 5.5/10
The build up video shown before the match was awesome, all three girls cut amazing promos in that video. Sienna started the match in a dominant way going over both Allie and Kim, but later on the numbers were enough for the babyfaces get the upper hand, take her out for a moment, and so Allie and Kim fought for a while. The second half of the match was all 3-way wrestling until Sienna got rid of Allie and Kim hit the Eat Da Feet for the win.
Differently from the AAA vs Impact match, this was really nicely planned, but terribly wrestled, these women were botching some spots and some other ones looked weak.
Santino Marella is in the crowd.
America's Top Team Promo - Lambert is hyping up his boys. Good stuff.
Out of nowhere, Jimmy Jacobs walked out the ramp and joined JB and Josh on the commentary table. He hinted to be working for Impact. JB looked like an idiot for telling Jacobs he doesn't work here.
Six Sides of Steel Tag Team Match
Bobby Lashley & King Mo w/ATT vs Moose & "The American Psycho" Stephan Bonnar - 6.5/10
Moose had some rapper singing his entrance, I have no idea who it was, but apparently it was Moose's brother. This was a bit of a clusterfuck brawl inside the ring where whoever was standing would attack whoever else was standing, but they did try to keep Moose and Lashley do the wrestling spots together since they probably didn't want to expose Bonner and Mo as much and keep their spots to big pops. They did as much as possible to keep Boner and Mo apart too since they should get into a real fight, and it was arguably the best part of the match, they probably went about a full 3-5 minute round.
When Bonnar had the upper hand, ATT acme into the cage, but Moose killed them all. Among the chaos, Mo and Moose ended up fighting outside, but Lambert threw in Mo inside and locked Moose outside. Bonnar tried to survive against the whole ATT team, but the numbers game was too much for him and got his ass kicked until Moose climbed over the cage to get back at it. Final two standing were Lambert and Moose, but Colby and Lashley attack Moose, Spear, and the actual fighters win the fake fight. America's Top Team defeated the home boys. This was an entertaining clusterfuck.
Mo had a nasty cut over the eye early in the match, didn't see how he got it.
Johnny Impact Interview - Good heartfelt promo, talking about his dad.
Impact Global Championship Match
Johnny Impact vs Eli Drake w/Chris Adonis - 7.5/10
This was arguably the best match of the night (again, low ceiling) with straight wrestling, great spots, and aside from the finish which we'll get into in a bit, a well booked match. It was a back and forward match with Impact being arguably better than Drake, but Drake had cheats, he had Adonis, and those things were enough to keep control of the match, yet Impact had his stupidly amazing athleticism that would get him out of spots all the time. As the match escalated, Impact was getting closer and closer to the win with some decent near falls. Except....
Onto the finish. As Impact is about to win with the Starship Pain, Alberto El Patron jumped the rail and pull the ref out of the ring mid-count, took out Impact AND Drake, he hits them both with the title, drags Drake over Impact to retain. Show goes off as Drake celebrates and Patron smirks. I obviously wasn't a fan of this ending because it makes it feel like Drake and Impact were just filler while Alberto returned, but it did give meaning to Alberto's promo earlier in the day. If he wasn't wrestling tonight, I would have just saved his return for the first day of tapings, cut the very same promo and you could do a quick rematch (hell, i'll take the quick title change) between Impact and Drake and now have Patron do that interference giving Drake the win.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Arguably, a terrible show by Impact. It's like when they had awesome wrestlers, they did terrible booking (note that it wasn't overbooking, just bad match planning), and when they had basic good booking, they put it on the girls that were not in their best game. I really disliked the booking of the AAA vs Impact match and the tag team title match, those two matches had soo much potential, and while the tag team match was good, it could have been more. I hate to think that this booking is what we're getting going forward since this is technically the first show post Jarrett leaving.