GFW’s Impact Wrestling continued a weekend of taping on Friday at Orlando’s Universal Studios backlot (aka the Impact Zone). This continues the post-Alberto El Patron direction, and the promotion’s latest makeover, building toward October’s Bound For Glory pay-per-view (PPV).
This is compiled from a variety of live reports, which are subject to a couple levels of interpretation, and final production of the material for airing on television usually changes context, so...
Take these with a grain of salt, is all I’m saying. Still the big matches, winners/losers and story beats are here.
Filmed Friday, Aug. 18 for probable broadcast Aug. 31 and Sept. 7:
- New World champ Eli Drake is out to celebrate with Chris Adonis at his side. Johnny Impact interrupts to get a title shot. Eddie Edwards follows for the same reason. Jim Cornette makes a tag match: if Impact/Edwards win, whoever gets the pin gets a championship match. If Drake/Adonis win, neither of them do.
- Ethan Carter III def. El Hijo del Fantasma by split decision to retain the Grand championship. Judge Hector Guerrero (replacing the “fired” Bruce Prichard) voted for EC3, which pissed off Fantasma. He and another wrestler attacked Carter, and Edwards ran in to make the save.
- oVe def. Fallah Bah and Boykara
- Petey Williams def. Caleb Konley. Trevor Lee was with Konley, and they jumped Petey post-match, but Sonjay Dutt evened the odds.
- Kongo Kong def. Richard Justice. Mahabali Shera jumped him afterwards, but Kong stood tall.
- Low-Ki def. James Storm following a distraction which allowed Santana to hit the Cowboy with one of the tag belts
- Drake and Adonis def. Impact and Edwards (the champ pinned Eddie)
- Lashley came out with American Top Team after the tag match, but Cornette appeared to back him off, and announced that Drake’s next match was against Matt Sydal.
- Williams and Dutt def. Lee and Conley
- Sienna and Taryn Terrell def. Gail Kim and Allie, when Sienna counters a move from Allie to pin her. Afterwards, the heels beat up the faces, prompting a run-in by Rosemary. The save fails, and Sienna and Taryn continue the assault until a debuting Taya Valkyrie runs in and backs off the villains, but turns and joins the attack, laying out Rosemary with a facebuster to end the segment.
- Cornette promo hyping Sydal vs. Drake gets cut off by Johnny Impact, who wants the winner of that match. Konnan appears to claim that’s an example of white privilege, which leads to LAX attacking Impact. Johnny fights them off.
- The man who helped El Hijo de Fantasma is introduced by Jeremy Borash as Pagano from AAA. He’s signed with GFW.
- Fantasma and Pagano def. Edwards and EC3 with help from a debuting Texano. Texano used his bull rope to beat down Carter, which brought out James Storm, who cracked a beer bottle over Texano’s head before shaking hands with Eddie and leaving.
- Eli Drake def. Matt Sydal to retain his World title, with help from Chris Adonis, who created a distraction that let Drake hit Sydal with his belt.
- Borash announces that Bobby Lashley is done with wrestling. Lashley says he wants one more match before he goes to MMA full-time - Moose. That brings out Moose, who got a shot in on Lashley, but ended up laid out by Bobby and ATT.
H/T: PWInsider, WrestleZone