Last night, Impact Wrestling held their biggest show of the year as Chicago hosted ‘Bound For Glory’.
It was another momentous night full of surprises, international dream matches and shocking revelations. Championships changed hands and moments were made as Impact heads into a new era, returning to a major television network.
But what did we learn last night? Well school is in session as I tell you five things we learned from Bound For Glory 2019.
1. You Can’t Always Get What You Want
The match I was most looking forward to was the trio of The Rascalz facing the AAA trio of Dr Wagner Jr, Taurus and Aerostar. I was sitting waiting for it to open the show (as is impact’s house style) but it did not. So I waited…and waited, and waited, and waited and just before the main event Josh Mathews announced that this match was on the pre-show.
The key thing to note is that they made no mention of a pre-show in the last few weeks.
Also, from reports I’ve heard this match only got six minutes. This is maddening as you have three of the worlds best athletes in a trio against a Mexican wrestling legend and two of Mexico’s biggest stars. So you dump it on the pre-show and give it less than ten minutes. That’s poor. All six men deserved better and you should not hype a match and then dump it from universal view.
2. It’s Not time for For An Emma-lution
After her debut at the Mexico tapings, many thought Impact were going to build their Knockouts division around the former WWE and Ring of Honor star Tenille Dashwood. However, they seemed to really pull back on her, having her feud more with Madison Rayne and Keira Hogan. Meanwhile, Taya seemed more concerned with trying to get Havok or Rosemary to take out Dashwood before Chicago.
Taya did a cut a very good promo on the go-home show before Bound For Glory, which gave us some good exposition on them both but this did feel really cold. The match was passable enough, and we did get a moment where it looked like Dashwood would win the belt but in the end all the build-up was for ultimately nothing as Taya continued her record breaking reign.
Again, Tenille can’t capture the momentum of her days in NXT and is still being kept at arms length. Something isn’t clicking yet with her, hopefully she finds it as she is exceptionally talented. Perhaps Impact have found a new face to build the promotion around?
3. A Smily Future
The wrestling world was, as the kids say, shook when Kylie Rae was announced for a special Impact-branded event on Saturday night. Well, I imagine they were even more “shook” (don’t know the plural) when she appeared in last nights ‘Call Your Shot’ gauntlet battle royal.
Her departure from All Elite Wrestling is still one of wrestling’s greatest mysteries. She was a tremendous find for AEW and for Impact to capitalize on her rapidly rising name would be a great idea. Could she be the person now to dethrone Taya as Knockouts Champion? Only time will tell but AEW’s loss could be Impact’s gain, seemingly at the expense of their last big capture.
4. A Heel Rob Van Dam Might Be Fantastic
During the Impact Tag Team Championship triple threat match, Rob Van Dam shocked everyone by dropping his partner Rhino with a superkick, before leaving Rich Swann and Willie Mack laying to allow The North to win. For the first time since 1997 Rob Van Dam is a proper heel in a wrestling promotion and I am very intrigued.
Since he returned to Impact, his character has been ‘yo I’m Rob Van Dam innit’. He’s a tremendous athlete still but they have been trading off his name value and that’s it. However, this gives a whole new dimension to RVD. He’s a big star now, a legend of this business and why not let the braggadocios character brag about being a legend? Also with the signing of his girlfriend Katie Forbes, let’s have mid-life crisis Van Dam; with his younger girlfriend and inflated opinion of himself. Have him feud with the other ECW guys and if all goes well, you have a new heel to challenge Brian Cage for the gold down the line.
Impact have had a good track record of reinventing stars in a new image (Bully Ray, Broken Matt Hardy) so I am very intrigued to see where this goes.
5. Expect The Unexpected, But Prepare To Be Entertained
This show was most definitely a “bracket buster” as all of our predictions went out of the window. Eddie Edwards winning the battle royal was the only expected thing I hoped wouldn’t happen and everything else seemed pretty linear. Tessa wins the X-Division Title, Sami wins the World Title – collision course down the line. Simple, but we all were excited for it.
However, Ace Austin popping up after Blanchard battled away all of oVe and cracking her in the skull with his cane was a tremendous visual and a shocking swerve I was happy to see. Brian Cage then powering out of Sami’s piledriver into the thumbtacks at one point and destroying Sami was a cathartic ending, but this one seemed more of a swerve because we all thought it was going one way.
Sometimes, the place we expect to go is the place we should go because it’s the place we want to go.
As Impact head into the AXS era, I thought we were going straight into the continuation of Sami Callihan vs Tessa Blanchard, but with the gold on the line. However, it seems we have Brian Cage leading as world champion (possibly against Moose following his win), Ace Austin and Eddie Edwards for the X Division Championship. This leaves Tessa and Sami out in the cold a little and takes us off the ‘Tessa for World Champion’ journey many think we were heading.
Either way, Impact had another really solid showing on pay-per-view and with a legit television network behind them once more; things look bright for the promotion that is ‘hard to kill’.
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You can find the author of this article on Twitter @MattyID. Thanks for reading!