Impact Wrestling 1.25 Review: GENESIS 2018

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cero2k
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Impact Wrestling 1.25 Review: GENESIS 2018

Post by cero2k » Jan 31st, '18, 13:40

Impact Wrestling: GENESIS
January 25, 2018
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

This is it, final day in Canada. Final day before a big change for Impact. No, i'm not gonna call it Genesis, maybe mutation. Good opening video, but I've seen Impact say the same thing over and over again, but you know what, it makes this show look like important. Great little sound bits by all the talent.

Impact Grand Championship Match, No Round Rules
"Reborn" Matt Sydal vs Ethan Carter III (C) - 7/10
Finally Sydal gets the match he's been asking for, no Fallah Bahh, no judges, no rounds. The whole story of the feud has been that ECIII claims that Sydal always chokes when it matters, so it did make it hard to get invested in the first minutes since we know the story is all about the finishing moves; in addition, Sydal had a pretty bad fall on his neck mid-match, injury that ECIII worked on the rest of the match, and so the match is not just about 'Can Sydal finish off ECIII?', but we now have Sydal coming from the underdog's position. Having said that, the match was great bell to bell, especially when Sydal injures his neck and ECIII starts killing him, it made the comeback feel more dramatic. Finish saw Sydal win with the SSP. Great for an opener.

Allie vs Van Ness Build Up Video - If you still don't take Allie as a credible contender, this video helps a lot.

Impact Knockout's Championship
Allie vs "Hot Mess" Laurel Van Ness (C) - 6/10
Surprisingly, this was more of a brawl than a wrestling match, they started with a collar-and-elbow lock that ended outside the ring. Story here, as Josh Matthews mentioned, is that Laurel is chaotic and her style is all over the place, but when you get her attention, she will kick your ass, and so Laurel had control of the match pretty much from the get go. This gave Allie a lot of hope spots while Laurel kept control. Laurel also, potentially under the influence of alcohol, seemed to be really resilient when it came to kicking out of pins when Allie made a comeback. Finish saw Laurel hit Allie with the belt, but in a way that she wasn't trying to do it behind the ref, but it happen to be behind his back by an incredible coincidence. it kinda sucked that it had a dirty finish, but just going by how dominant Van Ness was, this at least protected Allie. I really don't feel like Laurel just grabbing the title is out of her gimmick anyway.

Bobby Lashley w/KM & Dan Lambert vs Moose - 6.5/10
Match started with Lashley on top, when Moose made a comeback, KM tripped him and Lashley was able to regain control, but this annoyed Lashley and told KM to not get involved. The second time KM tried to get involved, Lashley straight up protected Moose from KM. Lambert and KM are straight up just going to business by themselves trying to set up tables that is costing Lashley the match that he perfectly has under control. Moose takes advantage of the chaos and takes out Lashley with the Game Changer. Match was good, not as good as they've had, but the story told was great and well executed.

Post-match - Lambert blames Lashley for the loss since KM tried to help him. Lashley snaps, spears KM. Lashley tosses Lambert in the ring and for a second, Lashley and Moose see eye to eye and agree that Lambert needs to be taken out. Lashley hits a SICK looking spear on Lambert through a table. It looked awesome. Lashley and Moose shake hands.

Great face turn for Lashley, but I wish Lashley hadn't been so friendly with Moose, it should had been just a Code of Honor kind of acknowledgement IMO.

From NOAH
Impact X-Division Championship Match
Taiji Ishimori (C) vs Andrew Everett - Unrateble
This match was originally 16+ minutes, so we didn't get the whole thing, but it seemed like a slower paced aerial fight. They did show an ugly looking botch where Andrew went for a Phoenix Splash trying to land like Rollins usually does, but landed straight up on his butt. Ishimori retained the title via pinfall following the 450.

6-Sides Of Steel Impact Global Championship
Eli Drake (C) w/Chris Adonis vs Alberto El Patron vs Johnny Impact - 7.5/10
Months in the stove, these three men finally reach their boiling point, as there must be a winner tonight. If there's something I'll miss of Borash from Impact, it's the introductions for main events, they've always felt like big deals.

Match pretty much had everything, we got Alberto and Drake working together against the true babyface Impact; we got each of them dominating the match over the other two; we got Johnny Impact parkour stunts that were really cool looking. There were several big spots that helped change the momentum of the match, Alberto missing a foot stomp from the top rope and hurting his legs and having to look for submission wins instead; Drake low-blowing both guys and starting his match dominance; and finally, a top rope splash from Impact onto the other two that led into all three guys exchanging finishers. Ending of the match saw Drake dead on top of the cage, Patron takes out Impact and is about to escape via door, but Adonis closes it on his face, Impact and Drake wake up and go for the escape racing against each other. Impact makes it out faster, but as he jumps, Adonis catches him and holds him the extra second that Drake needed to land and retain the title. The match was better than I expected honestly, the 3-way we saw from the other promotion wasn't that good, so my expectations were low. I did like the ending, I've always thought that it was a good finish to catch someone falling from the cage, I'll take that over a door escape any day.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Wrestling heavy show, well....it was all wrestling really. Easy show to watch and the wrestling was good. As mentioned at the top of the review, this was the final episode from this set of tapings so it's interesting to see where the titles were left off to end the show since it at least reflects who to expect in the next set of tapings.
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