The Work Still Needs to be Done: Rebuilding Impact

Many of us hoped – foolishly, of course – that when Impact Wrestling was finally pried from Dixie Carter’s cold, dead hands, that we would immediately see a company able to breathe. We would see a company that was no longer being run as a vanity project, but instead one that would be treated as a wrestling company looking to make money by drawing in fans with their incredible action.

Speaking only for myself, I really hoped that we’d see a lot of the dumber aspects of TNA removed. That there’d be sense to the product. As 2016 ended, the company had made some strides in their presentation, and in the people that they decided were worthy of their attention. Eli Drake was being positioned as a top heel, EC3 was finding a new avenue for his character to travel, Lashley was settled in as the force in the company, and out of nowhere, Eddie Edwards became a fighting heavyweight champion that was capable of beating anyone, even Lashley, on any given night.

Sure, sure, we were still going to get generous servings of The Matt and Jeff Hardy Show, but as long as they were to be kept in the tag division, I wouldn’t mind it so much. And, as we know, my opinion is what matters most to those putting Impact together!

My first hope of this “Less stupid, more sense” line of thought for Impact came out a couple weeks ago when they held the first ever Race For the Case matchup! No, this wasn’t a totally original match. Instead, they took the framework from their terribly stupid Feast or Fired match, and removed the part that made zero sense: why anyone would ever risk grabbing a briefcase for a title shot when they could very well be fired. I’d much rather work my way up the ladder to a title shot, knowing I won’t immediately be fired on the spot.

This time, to remove that stupid point of interest, we had four briefcases placed on poles, with a number inside each case. Each case would be used later on, and would grant each person a match with any stipulation of their choosing, against anyone. The number would let you know the order of challenging – he with the “1” in his briefcase would go first, and so on and so forth. On top of that, a championship could only be contested once. So, if the #1 guy did the obvious thing and called out the World Champion, and won the title, the #2 guy could not challenge the new champion, as the World Title is now out of the running.

Yes, probably still a little too convoluted. Still, they’re trying! And I was so happy that they removed the “fired” aspect of the match that I didn’t even care that they still had a silly set of rules. At the very least, they had thought it out completely, right?

I know, Mister Anderson. I know.

This past Impact, on the return of Open Fight Night (a concept I loved when they were doing it before, and was stoked to see return), the winners of the Race For the Case would finally get to make their challenges. We had learned previously the order, with it being:

1 – Jeff Hardy (because TNA Impact)
2 – Bram
3 – Trevor Lee
4 – E_Li_Drake

So it was no shock at all when Jeff Hardy laid out his challenge to Lashley for the World Championship. What was a surprise, however, was the newly added rule that no wrestler would be forced to wrestle twice. And just like that, the Impact Tag Team Championships were out of the equation, because God forbid Jeff Hardy wrestle two matches. Or, you know, God forbid we don’t just hand Jeff Hardy a World Title shot simply because he’s there.

This was a stipulation that should have been clarified, and was not. What seemed like super obvious booking (Hardy for the World, DCC challenges the Hardys, Lee goes for the X Title, with Drake attempting to capture the Grand Championship), was now thrown out the window.

And sure, sure… there’s the Devil’s Advocate who would bring up that We don’t know that DCC would have challenged for the tag team championship!, and that’s actually fair. We don’t know that. At the same time, one would assume that the match they would have selected, as a group (though the briefcase was Bram’s) would be the match where they can get some gold around their waists, while at the same time, beating the team that humiliated them not too long ago.

Instead, Bram’s briefcase would go towards a Falls Count Anywhere challenge towards Decay. It was a violent six and a half minutes between the two teams, but I still couldn’t help but feel like Bram got totally screwed over by a rule that was not originally stated. Jeff Hardy had made the first challenge; he would not have been challenged twice. On top of that, his match was a World Championship match, and not a Tag Championship match. The belts were different. There was no reason to protect the Hardys in this manner.

Then things got even crazier, as Drew Galloway would jump the line. Removing himself from possibly being challenged by anyone with a briefcase (which must’ve been really fun for Lee or Drake to see), Galloway would proclaim that every night is an Open Fight Night for him. When Moose came out to test that theory, Galloway informed Moose that he’d had his chance, and instead granted a Grand Championship title shot to Rob Ryzin. And just like that, in three matches, Impact had made it so that two of their four championships could not be challenged for by the men holding the briefcases if they so desired.

But hey, at least Rob Ryzin got to jump the line.

Trevor Lee would then bring us back to earth when he challenged DJ Z for the X Division Championship. Z was injured, and Lee knew it. Making the match a ladder match only increased the difficulty for Z to walk out with his belt, and it was only a matter of time before Lee, with substantial help from a chair, managed to climb the ladder and earn another reign as the X Division Champion.

Which left us with E_Li_Drake. It also left him with no championships to challenge for. He promised a challenge that would make history through his mouthpiece, Tyrus, but I know I was a bit dubious. I joked that perhaps he would challenge Rosemary for the Knockouts title (history!), but my buddy pointed out that she would probably be counted as a participant in the prior Decay / DCC matchup.

Instead, Drake would come out and allow Tyrus the honor of laying down the challenge to Ethan Carter, III (MY BOY EC3). Carter was still hurt from his match with Lashley, with a gigantic bruise on his waistline more than obvious. Would you believe that the super injured guy was able to beat the perfectly fine guy? I know, that’s insane. But it happened, with EC3 stealing the win with a jackknife rollup.

Just like that, the briefcases were gone. Two champions were completely protected from being challenged, and two briefcase winners were forced into other options. It seemed like “more of the same” from the company with a rebranded name. They had clearly laid out a path, but then decided to get too cute for their own good, which ultimately unraveled the whole thing.

As I was preparing for yet another “What the f—“ exclamation, Impact showed that we have reason to hope. Reason to believe in the new regime. The DCC would appear in the ring, and would first assault Carter, before turning their attention to Tyrus and Drake, taking them out as well.

The DCC have been horribly bungled from the second they made their official appearance in the Impact Zone. They almost immediately became “just some guys” after a few weeks of vignettes were devoted to make them seem important and scary. They were owned by the Hardys in faceoffs. They lost the masks for a bit. Their music is atrocious.

I had worked with a theory that “DCC” was going to stand for something related with Dixie Carter, with them either doing her bidding, or looking to take her out. With Carter basically removed from the company, the group has floundered with no real goal.

The ending of Impact Wrestling showed that this group may not be dead in the water after all. It will take quite the effort, but James Storm, Bram, and Kingston can absolutely be a three headed monster that inspires dread inside everyone else on the roster. They just have to, you know, not be treated like complete jokes that are nothing of which to worry.

Taking out Ethan Carter, E_Li_Drake, and Tyrus was a great first step.

There is absolutely work to be done, and I’m sure we’ll have plenty of instances of the old TNA still creeping up into today’s Impact as they work out the kinks. But it’s still nice to see, on a night where they really blew what could have been a home run, that instead of completely shitting the bed, they managed to pull it back and get a respectable ending out of it.

Now, about Aron Rexx…

It’s All Wrestling. It’s All Silly. We All Love It.