Impact Wrestling "GENESIS" 1/26/17 Review: Edwards vs Lashley Ironman Match

[cero2k]

Impact Wrestling
January 26, 2017

We open the show with House Hardy out to the ring. Matt seems to have lost his voice this week. Brother Nero says it is time for him to become the World Champion once again. Matt had a premonition of a never ending wave of tag teams challenging them, Matt says that he and Brother Nero must go out to the world and acquire every piece of gold there is. Out came The DCC, James Storm cut a promo full of insider jokes and hinted on challenging for the titles next week. This brought out Decay, Decay, Decaaaaay. Meh promo by Abyss, awesome promo and delivery from Crazzy Steve, he should do all the talking for the team, he has been watching Kenny Omega videos.

Crazzy Steve challenges to a 3-way between all three teams, DCC accept, House Hardy accepts...and so...

Impact Tag Team Championship 3-Way Match
House Hardy (C) vs The DCC (Bram/Kingston) vs Decay w/Rosemary - 6/10
Decay and Hardys are on corners next to each other, this is bothering me a lot. Crazzy Steve had a babyface in peril run against The DCC and Abyss the hot tag. Then Nero was babyface in peril to a Matt Hardy hot tag. Match was short, but it did its job. Someone should have mentioned that if DCC won the titles, they could use their briefcase on a different title next week, same with if the Hardys lost, would they go for a rematch or the World title. Hardys defended after Steve hit Kingston with the green mist.

Drew Galloway mini-promo - He says that he is heading to the ring and says his title is being defended tonight.

ECIII Interview - ECIII says that he had a big run as the top guy, but he knows he hasn't gotten the job done lately, he keeps making it to the No 1 contender spot, and he keeps failing to win the big one. He kinda says his back is fucked up but he is not taking off, he will come back and once again regain the title. Kinda pointless if we ended back on the beginning.

Braxton/Laurel Segment - They're out to dinner, Sutter is annoyed, but Laurel is hot. I love Sutter, he's awesome.

Drew Galloway Promo - Awesome. He says that all he does is for the greater good of the company. He is starting an open challenge run apparently. Moose comes out, it actually does kinda make sense that Moose would be the first to answer the challenge. Moose cut a Stone Cold promo.

Impact Grand Championship
Drew Galloway (C) vs Moose - 5/10
Moose is wrestling with ROH trunks. Good opening round, I'd give it 10-9 to Moose, judges agreed. In round two, Moose hit his rainmaker thing and while falling, Galloway kinda hit a low blow, look accidental, but ref still took a point off, Galloway went for the Claymore, and Moose kicked out, then there was a ref bump, Galloway again kicked Moose in the groin and pinned Moose. So judges don't take points off unless the ref tells them to? Anyway, match was actually kinda cool but terribly booked.

More Braxton/Laurel stuff - Sutter is bored as fuck at Laurel, i'm with you man, but dang she's hot.

Monster's Ball for the KO's Championhip
Rosemary (C) vs Jade - 7/10
Weapons surround the ring. Jade starts with a suicide dive to Rosemary during her entrance. I take it they're not getting that much time, Rosemary went for the tacks within the first 5 minutes of the match. Ok, granted, lasted a lot more that I expected. This match was a test to see how much Rosemary can take in the ring, she took a release german unto the tacks, she took a lionsault knees-to-the-face WITH the barbwire bed on top of her, and she kept kicking out. she kept kicking out! Who the fuck is supposed to be the babyface!? Match was short, but great, given some 5-10 more minutes, this could have been the best women's match in Impact since the Kim vs Terrell days, they were really going all out on the spots.

During this match I realized how smart is to have the booker doing commentary, she is telling us all she has in her mind about the feud that tends to be missed in translation. Granted I don't want Gaburick on commentary, but it's important to have at least one commentator involved in the booking meetings if you ask me. At one point Josh said something like Jade doesn't know what else to do to put Rosemary out, Rayne immediatly corrected him saying she didn't feel that at all, and explained her view.

Post-Match - Gail Kim came out to look over Jade. Rosemary hit the purple mist on Kim.

Brax and Laurel Dinner Stuff - Laurel wants to take Braxton back to her place. Sutter says he's getting the check and taking off, again amazing. Laurel calls Maria and tells her everything is going awesome. Delusional.

Caleb Konley Vignette - He's Here!! Good intro to his past and he says that he is winning the title tonight, so he's debuting with a title shot AND losing it.

5-way for the X-Division Championship
DJZ (C) vs Trevor Lee vs Caleb Konley vs Andrew Everett vs Marshe Rocket - 5/10
I totally forgot DJZ was the champ, he's been kinda irrelevant since he won it. Helms is out here with his Dynasty. Too many spots, too many guys involved for my liking. I don't think Rocket should be starting with these type of matches, he's huge, even if he is doing the X-Division thing, he could be built towards a one on one match, plus this match should had been more about Konley. DJZ retained and I was like meh, someone else should have won.

Post-Match - Helms Dynasty attack and Pillmanize his leg, they hinted dissension between Everett and Lee. Lee is using the briefcase next week against Z.

Wolves backstage segment - Davey is all about winning tonight, Eddie wants to do this on his own to shut Lashley up.

Vanguard-1 shows House Hardy who he can challenge next week - Ricky Morton was an option. This was ok.

30 Minute Iron Match for the TNA World Championship
Eddie Edwards (C) vs Lashley - 8/10
I'm looking at my clock, I don't think we're getting the whole 30 minutes. These guys started all out. Lashley scored the first pin around the 5 minute mark after a Spear. He scored the second pin some time later after hitting Edwards with a powerbomb to the ramp, looked awesome, made Josh swear. Lashley was almost going for 3-0 with an extra countout and fans started chanted "It's Too Easy!". After the commercial break we are now under 9 minutes, two turnbuckles off, Eddie scores a roll up pin after Lashley spears the exposed turnbuckles, Lashley looks unphased. Minute later Eddie hits the BKP outside the ring, but Lashley makes it back in time, he hits another inside the ring to tie the score. We're tied 2-2 with 5 minutes left. I those final minutes, Lashley kicked out of a BKP and Eddie out of a spear; so you're telling me that after failing to kickout before, now they could? the fuck? Lashley taps out Eddie less than 3 minutes left, Lashley kind of wants to wait it out, for some reason Pope gets in his face, and with one minute left, Eddie Edwards locks in a guillotine, which Lashley outlasts to win the title.

Terrible finish if you ask me, Ref is checking Lashley's arm, but he never checked for the third time and clock runs out. It made Eddie look bad because he couldn't choke Lashley out with a perfect submission. Made Lashley look bad because he really did look out. Ref looked crooked. Match was great in my opinion, but not as an ironman match, this could had been a great one fall match, but I understand at this point, a stipulation was necessary.

I really dislike 30 minute Ironman matches, I'm so accustomed to seeing these guys go 30 minutes under one fall matches that when I see all these falls under 30 minutes, it just doesn't click. Also, the name Ironman used to be a prestigious title to those who could go 60 minutes, so half of that just doesn't seem all that amazing.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:
An ok show for Impact, we had two matches to end feuds and some good build up to next week's Open Fight Night. I really think we could have cut out the whole Braxton/Laurel stuff and that X-Division match (change it to just a quick segment), and given that time to Rosemary and Jade. Next week we're supposed to be getting Hardy vs Lashley, Lee vs DJZ, DCC vs Hardys (two matches for Jeff?), and maybe Galloway vs E-LI-DRAKE. I kinda feel that the fact that all titles were defended was ignored, should had been promoted more.

[Big Red Machine]

30 Minute Iron Match for the TNA World Championship
Eddie Edwards (C) vs Lashley - 8/10
I'm looking at my clock, I don't think we're getting the whole 30 minutes. These guys started all out. Lashley scored the first pin around the 5 minute mark after a Spear. He scored the second pin some time later after hitting Edwards with a powerbomb to the ramp, looked awesome, made Josh swear. Lashley was almost going for 3-0 with an extra countout and fans started chanted "It's Too Easy!". After the commercial break we are now under 9 minutes, two turnbuckles off, Eddie scores a roll up pin after Lashley spears the exposed turnbuckles, Lashley looks unphased. Minute later Eddie hits the BKP outside the ring, but Lashley makes it back in time, he hits another inside the ring to tie the score. We're tied 2-2 with 5 minutes left. I those final minutes, Lashley kicked out of a BKP and Eddie out of a spear; so you're telling me that after failing to kickout before, now they could? the fuck? Lashley taps out Eddie less than 3 minutes left, Lashley kind of wants to wait it out, for some reason Pope gets in his face, and with one minute left, Eddie Edwards locks in a guillotine, which Lashley outlasts to win the title.

Terrible finish if you ask me, Ref is checking Lashley's arm, but he never checked for the third time and clock runs out. It made Eddie look bad because he couldn't choke Lashley out with a perfect submission. Made Lashley look bad because he really did look out. Ref looked crooked. Match was great in my opinion, but not as an ironman match, this could had been a great one fall match, but I understand at this point, a stipulation was necessary.
I totally disagree that a stipulation was necessary. I know that they've had a bunch of sh*t finishes in every match since Eddie won the title, but it certainly hasn't felt like they were actually building to anything. It felt like they just needed t have another regular match or at the very most have some sort of authority figure (I like how we've gone from three to zero in a matter of months with no one even bothering to comment on it) to just say "anyone who interferes in this match will be fired." The closest thing this feud has had to a story is that, as Josh and Pope keep saying "Eddie has Lashley's number" and "Eddie is the only guy who has been able to figure Lashley out." Doing an Ironman match where Lashley wins by pinning Eddie a bunch of times (especially right away) totally destroys that.
The finish here is one of the things that made me give up on TNA. Eddie had ONE f*cking really, truly clean finish in his title reign (which was against Eli Drake, an upper-midcard guy). Every other finish was TNA overbooking themselves in order to try to protect top guys. I get that you want to protect Lashley, but the way you do that is by not constantly booking him in matches that you don't want him to win. I could theoretically understand the desire to protect EC III if you are building towards EC III vs. Lashley... except that they just did that at BFG with a clean finish so going back to it this soon would be stupid. And now they're doing this stupid finish to try to protect Eddie except that 1) IT'S A F*CKING IRONMAN MATCH SO HE HAS ALREADY BEEN BEATEN MULTIPLE TIMES, INCLUDING FIVE MINUTES IN, and 2) if you're so worried about protecting him, WHY DIDN'T YOU BOOK HIM STRONGLY LEADING INTO AND DURING HIS TITLE REIGN?
And meanwhile the DCC were being portrayed as this dangerous faction of heels, except that they kept getting their butts kicked even when they had the numbers advantage! TNA often feels like they bought a book about the inner-workings of pro wrestling, second-hand, and the copy they got had everything but the glossary ripped out. They know that various concepts in booking and promoting exist and they know the dictionary definition of them, but they have no idea how, when, and where to apply the concepts, so we wind up with this revolting mess all over the place.


I really dislike 30 minute Ironman matches, I'm so accustomed to seeing these guys go 30 minutes under one fall matches that when I see all these falls under 30 minutes, it just doesn't click. Also, the name Ironman used to be a prestigious title to those who could go 60 minutes, so half of that just doesn't seem all that amazing.
Yeah. I think if you're doing a thirty-minute Ironman you need to really work it around submissions to make it work because of what you said above. I also really don't think that there is much of a reason to ever do a thirty-minute Ironman match because generally the same story that would build up to an Ironman match would also build up to 2-out-of-3 falls, except if you're placing all of the focus on the conditioning aspect, and if you're placing all of the focus on the conditioning aspect then a thirty-minute Ironman feels weak because all of the iconic ones are sixty.