Impact Wrestling on Pop TV
Thursday, October 25
Universal Studios
Orlando, FL

Global Impact used to be the name of Impact’s yearly one hour presentation of Wrestle Kingdom (the first of which was a superb look at WrestleKingdom 2) as well as a short lived YouTube show—but this episode of Impact, which featured matches from five companies in four countries was as close as Impact has coming to truly fulfilling that Global Impact name.

EC3 and James Storm def. Texano and El Hijo Del Fantasma

This was taped in AAA on September 4. Texano and Fantasma openly started fighting which cost them the match. None of this stuff has really made me want to see whatever the BFG match will be (one would assume a six man tag) – nobody gets along, everybody hates each other, why should I care? Storm won with the Last Call. **

IMPACT World Tag Team Championships
oVe def. Phil Atlas and Brent Banks

This match was taped in Border City Wrestling on October 14. I’m not particularly familiar with Banks and Atlas, other than Banks having a superb match vs. Mike Bailey on the WCPW Canada World Cup qualifiers show. Solid squash for oVe but Banks looked impressive. Hope he can pick up some bookings after BFG. oVe won with a tombstone/double stomp combo. **

GHC Heavyweight Championship
Eddie Edwards def. Naomichi Marufuji

This match was taped in Pro Wrestling NOAH on October 1. They didn’t air the full match, rather extended highlights, but it looked in the region of ****+. There were some absolutely insane bumps, including a bananas tope as well as a piledriver on the apron. I should really watch the full match and Impact would be smart to pursue a rematch of this in the US (or Canada now I guess).

Petey Williams def. TAREK, Idris Abraham, and Kaito Kiyomiya

Another Border City Wrestling match. All four guys looked really solid here, again guys I’d have no problem being used at the upcoming tapings. Kiyomiya is a NOAH young lion on excursion in Canada at the moment – he shows a tonne of promise. Abraham has appeared a few times on Impact this year and looked like the very definition of a good hand and I know very little about TAREK but he looked good too. Petey won with the Canadian Destroyer before they played the original Team Canada music which gave me goosebumps because I’m a giant doofus. ***

Garza Jr and Johnny IMPACT def. Eli Drake and Chris Adonis

It would appear Drake and Adonis are going by D & A, representing their surnames. Every time Garza Jr pulls his pants off you can hear a handful of people audibly swoon and its delightful. A two segment, double heat tag highlighted by some energy injected by Garza and particularly IMPACT but rather unremarkable otherwise. IMPACT put Adonis away with a roll up. **1/2

Impact X-Division Championship
Trevor Lee def. Ultimo Ninja

This match was taped in The Crash on October 5. Lee gave Ninja a tonne (as their aired this match in full) before he Lee put Ninja away with the standing double stomp. Decent match. **1/4

Bobby Lashley def. Moose

They never really explained why Lashley is wrestling considering he decided to leave Impact a while back. I get the idea is Moose antagonised him back in, but they never connected those dots. Lashley’s heat segment was pretty dull and just as the crowd were getting fired up for Moose’s comeback, Dan Lambert interfered to cause the DQ. Stephan Bonnar made the save, dropping Lashley with a discus clothesline. Moose then powerbombed one of the American Top Team lads over the top to the guys on the floor. Moose and Bonnar vs. King Mo and Lashley was made a Six Sides of Steel match. The match was fairly flat but the post-match angle came off really well. This American Top Team angle has really turned around these last two weeks. **

Final Thoughts:

A show like this wouldn’t work all the time, but once in a while it’d make for (and in this case did make for) a really nifty change of pace. It put the Global in the now defunct Global Force – allowing a bunch of different wrestlers and styles be introduced to US audiences. It was a fun show with a strong closing angle.