Impact Wrestling Final Thoughts
December 9, 2015
By: Josh Boutwell of Wrestleview.com
There has been some really great matches in this World Title Series but I have to say that Davey Richards and EC3 put on the best show of any of those matches in my opinion. All four matches were fun in their own right and were all different which made for an easy watch tonight and a fun night of wrestling, but probably the biggest news coming out of it was the announcement about the Semifinals and Finals of the tournament.
We all know that TNA originally taped those matches back when the rest of the tournament was taped but now TNA has scrapped that and will instead do the Semifinals and Finals live on the first episode of Impact on POP in January which should make for an exciting debut. I also expect them to pull out something big in terms of a return or debut to get people excited, but the World Title Series conclussion is a nice hook right off the bat to get TNA fans interested.
The opening match between Lashley and Shera was obviously the least, quality wise, of all the Quarterfinals matches, but they did a good job of hiding Shera’s many limitations. The match was pretty much Lashley dominating and Shera hitting power moves to show off his strength.
Tigre-EY was much better and was laid out really well between the two. EY has worked that X-Division style many times and they told a pretty simple story with EY trying to ground the flier and working on his neck the whole match to set up for the Piledriver. Tigre’s offense was crisp and made for an exciting come back right before EY cut him off with the Piledriver. I think if they got a little bit more time to build towards that comeback it could have been even better.
Jessie-Matt was good too and easily the best singles match Jessie has had. They told another simple but effective story with Jessie working on Matt’s back literally the entire match to set up for that Crab, and Matt sold it all the way to through and even after the match. Sometimes simple but effective works better than anything.
Eric Young’s promo backstage was awesome and I really love it when he goes psycho during one of his rants. The rest of the backstage promos all the guys did were very generic and honestly pointless though I did like the back and forth between EC3 and Davey before their match.
The Main Event was absolutely excellent and I would say it was the match of the tournament thus far. They built up to the false finishes and nearfalls so well and that finishing sequence was perfect. It was farely complicated with all of the reversals but they did it perfectly. They didn’t go into the usual finisher overload and instead went with a bunch of finisher reversals into one big finisher from EC3 where Davey took an RVD head bump which made the move look that much more impactful. Just great, great stuff from those two.
Next week is going to be “World Title Series All Star Matches” with a Fatal 4-Way and 8-Man Tag. I don’t know if there is a few more matches in the can they can take in there to fill out the two hours or what they will do though. I’m assuming the last two episodes of Impact on DA will probably be “Best of” type of shows.
– Promo/Segment of the Night: Eric Young
– Match of the Night: EC3 vs. Davey Richards (****1/2)
– Overall Grade: B+