Impact Wrestling results, review, & video (Oct. 26, 2017): Slumping when it counts

Impact Wrestling returned last night (Oct. 26) from the Impact Zone in Orlando, Florida as they build to Bound for Glory (BFG) in just over a week. You can find the results at the live blog here.

Filler

Maybe someone should tell Impact that they have a big pay-per-view (PPV) a week from Sunday. Because they’re certainly not booking their shows like it.

Instead of working on building to their biggest PPV of the year, they dumped a bunch of filler in our laps. Everything from the first hour was backstage or taped at a different promotion. There was nothing actually in the Impact zone for the first half of the program. The show opened with a match at Triple A in Mexico, went to a match in Ontario, then Japan, and then Ontario again.

Showing a match from a different promotion on the show isn’t a bad thing. But doing that for the majority of the show definitely is. A show needs to have flow and jumping from place to place to place, all places that have poorer video quality, kills that. And none of these bits filmed outside the Impact Zone are going to help build the stories headed into BFG in any meaningful way.

I’m sure some will have enjoyed seeing matches from all over the globe. But unless the match has meaning, I have trouble finding reason to care. These matches didn’t even have a build. They were just there.

That was all the first hour was: A string of random matches. At best, it does nothing to build to the BFG. Worse, it can kill interest people already had.

Here’s what happened outside Orlando:

• EC3 and James Storm defeated Texano and El Hijo de Fantasma. This time it was the Triple A guys who were bickering and that straight up cost them the win. Fantasma hit Carter with his finish and Texano straight up broke up the pin. I guess these guys aren’t getting along. They’re trying to tell a story about this brand warfare, but it’s fallen apart as soon as it left the Impact Zone. Triple A matches are super random and that doesn’t help with story telling.
• oVe retained their tag titles at Border City Wrestling in Canada. Not a bad match, but certainly inconsequential. The outcome was never in doubt and it did nothing to build their upcoming PPV match with LAX. They cut a very quick promo later in the night outside some building saying they were bringing their own family to equalize the numbers of LAX and you see another man’s tattooed arm. (Sami Callahan?) I guess that 20 seconds could be considered building to their big PPV.
• Eddie Edwards defeated Naomichi Marufuji in Japan to retain his GHC heavyweight title. Pretty good match which was edited down a bit. Has zero impact on Bound for Glory.
• Petey Williams won a fatal 4-way at Border City Wrestling.
• Trevor Lee retained his X Division title in the Crash promotion with a handful of tights so aggressive they had to blur out his opponent’s butt.

And Inside the Impact Zone...

Moose vs. Lashley

The main event was Lashley vs. Moose. Moose had Stephan Bonnar in his corner and Lashley had Dan Lambert. Lambert played the traditional heel, grabbing Moose’s leg when he tried to enter the ring, allowing his guy to get the advantage. And then when Moose was down outside the ring and the ref distracted with Bonnar, Lambert made sure to step on Lashley while he’s down.

And when Lashley was in trouble after Moose nailed a shot that started swelling Bobby’s eye, Dan Lambert ran in and hit Moose over the head with a trophy, ending the match.

Dan Lambert may not be good at cutting a 10 minute promo, but he’s a good heel for this story. I really want to see him laid out at Bound for Glory.

After yet another attack from American Top Team, one which Moose was able to fend off with a steel chair, he proposed making their tag match six sides of steel, which American Top Team seemed good with.

Stagnant

The Impact world title program was represented as a tag match between Johnny Impact & Garza Jr. and Eli Drake & Chris Adonis. While there were some fun moments of tandem offense from the exciting Impact and Garza, this didn’t do anything to advance the world title story. Ever since this match was booked, this story has spun its wheels buying time until the actual match happens. Instead of telling a story or adding some layers, they announced the match and then worked these four guys in some form in an uninspired fashion.

Also...

There were no women on this show. Am I to believe they didn’t have one women’s match taped they could have placed in that first hour?

Pros of the Show:

• The main event was alright

Cons of the show:

• The rest

This episode was a chore.

We’re a little over a week from Bound for Glory and I couldn’t care less about it. Instead of trying to prep their big PPV, Impact has been mainly filler, which is likely a consequence of trying to film three months at once. That’s now biting them in the arse.

Grade: F

Sound off below.