Impact Wrestling spoilers from April 26: Title change, more Slammiversary build

Impact Wrestling finished building out from their Redemption pay-per-view (PPV), and toward July’s Slammiversary, with a fourth night of their second taping under the direction of Don Callis and Scott D’Amore. How did they wrap a week with mostly positive buzz on Thursday night at Universal Studios?

That’s what we’re here to tell you, Cagesiders. You can see what happened earlier in the week at these links for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday’s tapings.

These results are compiled from a variety of live reports - including Twitter’s Sir Owen Disney - 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 April 26:

- Grado (w/ Katarina Leigh) def. Caleb Konley (w/ Trevor Lee) (Xplosion)

- El Hijo del Fantasma def. Jake Crist (w/ Dave Crist); Fantasma fought off the oVe numbers game in the aftermath, but was taken down when Sami Callihan and his baseball bat ran in. They began to unmask him, but the lights went down and when they came back up, Pentagon, Jr. was there to run the trio off and get into a staredown with Callihan before celebrating with his fellow luchador.

- Eddie Edwards vs. Grado (again w/ Leigh) never starts after Eddie attacks Grado with a kendo stick and threatens Katarina if she doesn’t leave. Edwards cuts a promo about having bloodied and broken Sami Callihan, but Sami ruined it. Callihan has people fooled and Eddie wants to expose him as a fraud. He calls out Tommy Dreamer, telling him to get his “fat ass” out there. Dreamer tried to calm down Edwards, calls him a hypocrite and tells Eddie to move on. He says Edwards hasn’t talked to his wife in a week, and Eddie wants to know how Tommy knows that. They get into a shoving match and Edwards makes to leave after getting pushed down, but comes back to cane Dreamer before leaving.

- LAX (w/ Eddie Kingston) def. Z & E (DJZ and Andrew Everett) to become new Impact Tag Team Champions. Ortiz and Santana celebrate in the crowd afterwards.

- Promo segment with KM where he talks about having tried to take Fallah Bahh under his wing, and how he’s bigger than Impact - claiming they should change the name of the show to “KMpact Wrestling”. Bahh comes out and hand him a note before saying “bye bye”. KM read the note, written in Bahh-speak, which leads him to think he’s about to face Richard Justice. Instead, he gets the Big Bad Booty Daddy.

- Scott Steiner def. KM with Steiner Recliner

- Madison Rayne def. Taya Valkyrie; afterwards Madison gets on the mic to say she hadn’t planned on returning to Impact as a wrestler, but circumstances changed and now that she’s picked up some big wins, she’s asked management for another big moment to share with her daughter. At Slammiversary, she’ll face Su Yung for the Knockouts Title. The Undead Bride’s laughter fills the Impact Zone, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

- Matt Sydal def. Brian Cage via countout to retain the X-Division Title. Jimmy Jacobs and Kongo Kong came out, distracting Cage. The countout came when Kong threw Cage into the steel steps, which was somehow missed by the referee? Jacobs and Kong celebrated with Sydal afterwards, and appeared to be aligned as a new group.

- Tessa Blanchard def. Kiera Hogan in a No DQ match following a facebuster onto a steel chair

- Dezmond Xavier def. Petey Williams in a match which got good reviews from those in attendance

- Pentagon Jr. and El Hijo del Fantasma def. OVE (w/ Sami Callihan); post-match, Callihan took both luchadors out with his bat. Penta recovered and was going to break Jake Crist’s arm before taking another bat shot. Sami threatened to unmask him, but was chased off along with his crew by a steel-chair swinging Fantasma.

- Su Yung def. Diamante (w/ LAX); not sure if the Knockout Title was on the line. Crowd was excited to see the returning Diamante, who reportedly had a pretty bad botch but continued on to finish the match strong.

- Katarina Leigh (w/ Grado) def. Alisha Edwards (Xplosion); Katarina sent Grado away before the match, but he still came back out and they celebrated together afterwards.

- Eli Drake def. Fallah Bahh (Xplosion); they ran an angle afterwards where Drake taunted the crowd and Bahh with cheesecake, which ended up all over his face after Fallah beat him up. This was probably just to send the live crowd home happy.

H/T: Wrestling Inc.