Impact Wrestling Final Thoughts
April 12, 2016
By: Josh Boutwell of Wrestleview.com
It would be hard to talk about tonight’s show without mentioning all of the extremely negative rumors regarding TNA going around. It is a very shaky time for those fans that follow TNA as well as anyone involved with TNA I’m sure, but I am going to concentrate on tonight’s show and save my thoughts on all of the rumors for a separate feature coming up.
I thought overall they setup next week’s show to be a pretty special one while still putting on a solid show tonight, thought nothing was really great. I was really disappointed that Pope was back on commentary as I was hoping he would remain in the ring as a talent. I was loving the feud with Lashely. One interesting way they could they could take that angle is that in turns out that Lashley and Pope were in cahoots the whole time and beat the hell out of each other to make people not suspect anything as Pope helps Lashley regain the title. I don’t that is where they are going but it would be a cool angle.
The opening segment was pretty solid and Jeff and Matt both got really intense near the end of it that really made it go from “just okay” to really good. The match itself was just standard stuff, kind of seemed like a house show match with nothing really getting kicked into second gear. The match next week should be crazy though, especially considering how nuts those two tend to get in those types of matches.
The stuff with the knockouts is really weird to me. They really never fleshed out what being “the leader of the Knockouts” meant and it just comes off as goofy to me, and it also takes me back to the time when Brooke Hogan was “leading” the Knockouts and that is not something you want to remind people of. The Ladder Match should be really good though. Jade-Madison had a good match and if it had more time could have been much better (that is always one of my biggest complaints with TNA). I have seen Jade on the Indies before so I know what she can do which just makes it that much more evident that TNA really hasn’t unleashed her just yet. She has only scratched the surface with what she can do in the ring.
The Tag Titles Match was really fun with nonstop action throughout the match, but like the Knockouts Match it just wasn’t given enough time to really develop into an awesome match. It was good but at the pace those guys were going it could have been insane given more time.
I love that Zema is finally starting to get some shine and he has found his niche as a babyface. He gets to open up his offense more and it works really well with a heel like Trevor Lee. Lee can be brutal while Zema breaks out the flashy offense. I don’t know if someone is feeding Josh Matthews lines but when he says things like “Zema has been taking Lucha Libre lessons” it just makes him sound goofy and honestly just came off to me as him trying to sound smart after Zema did a dive. Once again with more time that match could have been awesome but it was just too short for them to really get going.
The stuff with Al Snow and Shera was absolutely terrible until Snow attacked Shera. Snow came off so forced and just sounded horrible during his whole speech, but then when he really got fired up in the backstage segment he sounded awesome. It really was a tale of two Al’s during that whole thing. Snow is still really good in the ring so if this is going to give them a chance to show a different side of Grado I’m all for it. I have no desire to see Shera in anything though.
EC3-Bennett was the best match on the card and they work well together but yet again (I know I sound like a broken record) just not enough time for those two. I did like the story they were telling with Maria continuing to cheat and keep EC3 from winning until EC3 finally cracked causing EC3 to beat himself.
Nothing was bad tonight, other than the first part of the Snow promo, but nothing was stellar either that made this one of the weaker Impact’s so far this year.
– Promo/Segment of the Night: Jeff-Matt
– Match of the Night: Bennett vs. EC3 (**1/2)
– Overall Grade: C