GFW/TNA/Impact Isn’t Serving The Fanbase Looking For An Alternative

If you want to watch Impact Wrestling as an alternative to WWE, good luck to you. It’s simply not at this point. Ring of Honor and even NXT are much better “alternative” products than Impact/GFW/TNA/whatever we’re calling them at this point.

Anthem Sports has lost their chance to make a first impression. Period.

Instead of starting something fresh and new, the show is still in front of the same tired crowd, in the same tired building, and it all feels like the same tired product.

Whatever you want to call the company — and with an apparent controversy over the GFW name, I’m not even sure what to call them right now — they’re a lite version of WWE. Nothing they do stands apart from WWE, and there is a group of wrestling fans who have given up on their product. They’ve turned to ROH, New Japan or UFC.

That’s the landscape in 2017. GFW/TNA/Impact will continue to toil, because it’s been proven enough, over a long period of time, that not enough people are willing to pay their money to see a stripped down version of the WWE product. People that want to watch something different than the WWE product aren’t served by GFW/TNA/Impact and the people that enjoy that style of show are simply watching the company (WWE) that does a much better job presenting it.

Johnny Impact beat KM to retain his No. 1 contender status

I’m sorry, but what a way to make your babyface look stupid. It’s not as bad as having him lose the No. 1 contendership, but why did Impact agree to put his title shot on the line? He has no history with KM. None at all. It just doesn’t make any sense. Is it supposed to show that he’s a fighting No. 1 contender? As KM rolled Impact up with his feet on the ropes, the announcers essentially said that Impact was foolish for putting his status at stake because it could all change if KM cheated like that. He didn’t need to be cemented as a babyface for being a “fighting No. 1 contender.” There was no reason to do that.

And on top of that, you take KM and beat him in three minutes? For what? They clearly have no plans for him or else he would have looked a lot more legitimate in there against Impact. Not to mention he hasn’t been on TV in weeks. They just killed a chance to actually do something with him. There are plenty of heels for Impact to get a tuneup win against before Drake … Chris Adonis, maybe? At least that would make some storyline sense.

Taya Valkyrie beat Ava Storie

After the match, they setup a six-woman tag with a bunch of run-ins for next week, including Allie, Rosemary and Gail Kim against Valkyrie, Sienna and Taryn Terrell.

From a match standpoint, that’s how you should build a heel. It’s how WWE built Nia Jax and Braun Strowman, and it worked. It will work here too. The post-match angle just gets Valkyrie lost among a larger group in the division. The match this week and last week were helping her stand out.

Pagano & El Hijo Del Fantasma beat ECIII & Eddie Edwards

Good match and more setup for the eventual AAA vs. Impact match that will probably happen at Bound for Glory. For the most part, these inter-promotion matches don’t usually go well (look at the NJPW/ROH relationship, and the oftentimes one-sided booking) but this has some potential.

Texano debuted in Impact after the match, beating down the Impact guys with his AAA teammates before James Storm ran down to even the sides.

Kongo Kong beat Mahabli Shera

They’ve wasted doing anything with Kong at this point. There’s just nowhere to go with him. They had a chance to make him different, but I realized last night that they’ve never even explained who he is. He’s this monster, but why? Where does he come from? Who is he? We have no idea.

Johnny Impact beat El Texano to retain his No. 1 contender status

o not only does Impact put his No. 1 contender up once, he does it twice! And this time to a guy who wasn’t even on the roster 15 minutes beforehand. That pretty much sums up Impact booking at the moment.

That said, this was a really good match (by far the match of the night) which saved the segment despite the silly circumstances in which the match was set up. Just do this match down the line, and don’t have the No. 1 contender status at stake, because that’s a ridiculous thing to put on the line voluntarily, even for a babyface.

Eli Drake beat Bronce to retain the Global Title (match was shown from Mexico)

I’m glad they finally showed a match like this in its entirety rather than with music video highlights. They didn’t do a very good job explaining who Bronce was, but that falls more on Impact’s awful announcing than anything else. The entire show they built up “Eli Drake will defend the Global Championship in Mexico!” without once mentioning his opponent. We didn’t know who he would be facing until they got to the match itself.