It feels like it took forever to get here and the many twists and turns leading up to this match have been, well, underwhelming, but here we are.
Bobby Roode was supposed to win the title last year at Bound for Glory (BFG) before a split with James Storm would lead to the dissolution of their Beer Money tag team and an eventual year-long feud that would culminate in a match at this year's Bound for Glory.
Or at least that's how it should have gone.
Instead, Roode lost in his title shot at BFG last year, and Storm won the belt from then champion Kurt Angle on the next episode of Impact Wrestling. This led to a title match between the tag partners where Roode turned heel by smashing a beer bottle over his friend's head to win the belt.
That actually turned out to be a hot angle and built a ton of heat between the two.
But, because TNA can never seem to get through an entire program without screwing something up, they complicated matters by not staying the course and had the two in a match at Lockdown earlier this year in Nashville.
The idea was sound, what with Nashville being Storm's neck of the woods, but the crowd was dead as a door nail and the match didn't get over. On top of that, it killed some of the heat in the feud. The idea was to rekindle it by having Storm win the BFG Series this year en route to a title rematch against him at the PPV where he would win the title, ending Roode's record long streak and become the next big babyface of the promotion.
Instead, Roode lost the title to Austin Aries and then cost Storm the Series, leading to a grudge match. To take away from the rematch even further, King Mo Lawal was brought in as special guest referee/enforcer.
So instead of a big blowoff match to one of the hottest feuds of the last year, we're getting a big blowoff match to a feud that has little to no heat left with a Bellator light heavyweight taking attention away from it all.
Still, the match should be good and it's worth getting up for, even through all the bullshit.
Let's just hope TNA doesn't go with a smoz finish by having Lawal turn heel and help Roode win or something silly like that.
Oh god, that's going to happen, isn't it?