Impact Wrestling Results, Review, & Video (June 1, 2017): A Rocky Road

Impact Wrestling returned last night (June 1) from the Impact Zone form Orlando, Florida with their seventh episode from the second to last set of tapings. You can find the results at the live blog here.

Main event shake up

EC3’s spot as one half of the main event of Slammiversary lasted an entire week. That shouldn’t be too surprising.

Tonight, Carter opened the show with an EC3 classic: His barbershop singers. They sang his entrance and a couple other songs. This soon drew out Alberto El Patron who wanted to fight Carter (for unknown reasons but Patron doesn’t seem to need one).

This drew out every authority figure Impact has to offer: Bruce Prtichard, Dutch Mantell, and Karen Jarrett. Pritchard had had enough of the fighting and said they could fight tonight. He booked a steel cage match where if EC3 won, he’d win the GFW title and if Alberto won, he’d take Carter’s place at Slammiversary.

At the end of a pretty good main event cage match, Alberto hit his tree of woe stomp from near the top of the cage (in one of the few times the move made sense) and then hit a splash from the top rope for the win.

While getting Alberto in the main event makes sense, the act of getting there felt sloppy. Instead of addressing the issues of Alberto having the GFW championship so having claim to fight Lashley, Pritchard books this match on the fly because he’s tired of two guys who haven’t been around each other for a month fighting all the time. Unless the story is that Impact management doesn’t know what they’re doing? If that’s the case, bravo.

Don’t expect this to be the finalized Slammiversary main event. There are four weeks left so this can change four more times. And while changing the match up as part of the build itself isn’t bad at all, the haphazard way they are doing it makes the main story seem extremely disjointed and not fun to follow. It’s been a bumpy ride with authority figures who don’t seem to know what they’re doing. They say one thing and the do the opposite. Pritchard told Magnus that losing the GFW title meant Magnus was at the back of the line and then booked him in a #1 contenders match an hour later. He alluded to the fact that the GFW champion would get to face Lashley and then booked a #1 contenders match not involving said GFW champion. It’s inconsistent and all over the place.

There’s a bunch of talent at the top. Lashley, who’s been extremely under represented last set of tapings, proved that with his dominant run last year. Despite Alberto popping up in the most dramatic of stories outside the ring, inside of it (and outside of WWE), I enjoy his work. EC3 is a star. But they’re being used so poorly.

I’m guessing this is a build to what could be a triple threat match to merge the titles. Or maybe it’ll be Lashley vs. Rockstar Spud. Who knows at this point?

All the rest:

Dual champs

The finals of the short tournament to crown new GFW tag championships occurred last night as the Veterans of War faced LAX in a no DQ match.

The stipulation gave LAX too much of an advantage and was too much for the Veterans to overcome. Every member of the Exchange got involved which directly led to Wilcox of the VOW taking the double team finish and getting pinned.

The GFW titles mean little because they’re a second set of tag titles with no history or meaning. (And really, why should people care about GFW?) However, LAX holding both titles is interesting as a clue of what may happen with all the other titles. Does this automatically merge the titles? If that’s the case, what was the point the tournament at all? Or are they going to be forced to defend two sets of titles? It’s just another potential muddling given the excess of titles on this two hour show.

The VOW taking the loss was likely for the better. They’re new and still rather bland. Perhaps a loss due to the overwhelming numbers could be the catalyst for them to break out.

Everett’s last hoorah

Andrew Everett finally got his one on one X Division title match against Low-Ki. While he gave it his all, the champ retained. Low-Ki was able to get his knees up when Everett went for his Shooting Star Press. This lead to a vicious missile drop kick in the corner, followed up by the Warriors Way.

Sonjay Dutt was on commentary, hinting that Dutt/Low-Ki will be the next feud. The seeds of this were planted ever since both men returned as part of a multi-man title match. In that bout, Low-Ki hit Dutt bad enough to cause Sonjay’s eye to swell. That was followed by a video promo where the champion mocked Dutt for never winning the X Division title.

So while it looks like they’ll be moving away from Andrew Everett as challenger, he finally got his one on one match. And Dutt/Low-Ki could be really good. It may be a Slammiversary match, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they run it in Dutt’s home country of India.

Allie & Rosemary

Allie defeated one Amber Nova in a one on one bout using a Death Valley Driver. The bubbly one still is finding herself in the ring, as they continue to present Allie as a woman who’s just learning to wrestle. It’s been a charming gimmick so there’s no reason to drop it.

More interesting, however, was her interaction with Rosemary backstage. Allie, asked the Knockouts champion why she helped her last week. Rosemary responded that they (the hive) told her she needed to protect her.

This is quite intriguing. It’s a true darkness meets light story and could be awesome. They are my two favorite female performers in Impact so I’m in on this, even if it’s just to hear Allie to refer to Rosemary as “Ms. Assassin” a bunch more.

Grand Championship

Moose retained his Grand Championship against Eli Drake via decision. It was a close call, with Moose winning the final round by a split decision that could have gone either way.

The thing that stuck out the most; however, was the fact that they replaced the nameless judges with Dutch Mantell, Bruce Pritchard (who had Tyrus at his side), and Scott D’Amore. Because of that, we got way more cuts to the judges writing stuff down than we used to, even during the match at times.

It didn’t actively ruin the segment, but as someone who thinks Impact’s authority figures on screen aren’t doing anything to help the product, the prospect of seeing them even more doesn’t sit well.

Revenge is a dish best served cold

Rockstar Spud finally made his return tonight, seeking revenge on Swoggle, the man who attacked him with a hammer because he accidentally pulled his pants down. (Such a great story.)

And to no surprise, it was wild. After attacking Swoggle with a hammer for a bit, he opened up his enemy’s legs and drove the hammer straight into his dick. It was the sort of outrageous spot that fits so well with this story.

This really may be one of my favorite things in Impact currently.

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Pros of the Show:

• Rockstar’s revenge
• Decent cage match main event
• Allie and Rosemary

Cons of the Show:

• Muddled story telling for the top title(s) continue
• GFW tag titles still mean nothing

This was an extremely mediocre show. I was struggling to find true pros of the show and cons of the show. Almost everything was down the middle average this night. Hopefully things will pick up when they (for real) go to India next week.

Grade: C

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