Hola Knockout fans and welcome to this week’s Impact Write-Up. After last week‘s poor attempt of revamping their programming, Impact Wrestling is back this week with some fresh faces to the Knockouts division! We also begin to see that the honeymoon is over from Impact’s darling couple Allie and Braxton Sutter.
The Global Force Wrestling Nex-Gen Champion quickly follows his wife to the ring to put a complete halt in her first ever one-on-one match. He grabs a mic to explain his reasoning behind this decision: “Impact is no longer going to pimp out the ‘Rhodes’ names on its terms.”
Brandi insists to her husband that this is something she wants to do but this goes right through Cody’s ears and he turns his attention to aspiring Knockout Kayci Quinn. He introduces Kayci to the Impact Zone but then deviously tries to pay her to go away with $45, which according to Cody, was $20 more than what she originally would have been paid for. How rude!
Kayci rejects Cody’s offer all while Brandi tries to apologize on behalf of her husband’s behavior. With no Knockouts match taking place, Cody uses this time to challenge Moose for the Impact Grand Championship when he returns from Japan and directs his wife to head on to the back with him.
This leaves Kayci all alone in the ring and when we return from a break, Knockouts Champion Rosemary is on the attack against the aspiring Knockout, brutalizing her outside and inside the ring. Although Kayci bravely tries fighting off the Demon Assassin, it isn’t enough and the Knockouts Champion lays out her with a Red Wedding.
Madison Rayne also makes a rare non-commentary appearance this week in a minute long clip on what the #MakeImpactGreat movement means to her. Madison says Impact Wrestling has been her entire adult life. She’s been with company, through the ups and downs, for nearly a decade and promises to continue to give the fans her above and beyond. May I suggest some more in ring appearances on a regular basis Madison?
We move on to some X-Division action where we spy a match up between Braxton Sutter, Suicide (remember him?) Andrew Everett and the X-Division Champion Trevor Lee. Is Braxton even considered an X-Division star?
After a modified Tower of Doom, an eerie cake eating Laurel Van Ness emerges from the crowd, still in her wedding dress mind you, and begins to scuffle with a ringside Allie. This causes Braxton to step out from his match to break things up but the distraction costs Braxton the match as Trevor Lee would hit a running jumping knee that put Braxton down for the three count.
Laurel isn’t the only black cloud hovering over Allie and Braxton, as Sienna also has her eyes on them. Mic in hand (with pinkies up), Sienna appeared from the entrance ramp after Braxton’s match and says she hopes Braxton and Allie are enjoying their quality time together.
Don’t take it the wrong way, Sienna admits to being a hopeless romantic and having a sensitive side but she then threatens the couple with a Romeo and Juliet reference, stating that their love story always ended with a tragic demise. While this worries Braxton and Allie, Laurel is jumping with joy at the sound of Sienna’s words.
And finally we close out the night with the return of Impact Wrestling’s own LAX.
After Bruce Pritchard declared that new Tag Team Champions would be crowned in the upcoming weeks, out came The Decay who argued that they should be the Tag Team Champions since they “rescued” the titles from space and time last week.
New tag team Reno Scum would come out next and claim their win over DCC last week made them worthy contenders to the Tag Team titles. The even newer tag team of Laredo Kid and Gaza Jr. would make their case for some gold next which all in all, leads to one giant brawl between the three teams inside the six sided ring.
In the end, The Decay would clean out the ring of the newcomers… that is until LAX made their awaited return to the Impact Zone!
Konnan and Homicide would appear from the entrance ramp but it was a surprise attack from new recruitees Diamanté, Angel Ortiz and Mike Draztik that would steal the moment of the night.
The newly established LAX would use the numbers game to wipe out Decay, with Rosemary receiving an elevated cutter from Diamanté, and then cover their victims with flags. Welcome back LAX.
Thoughts: Truthfully, this was a better week for Impact.
Starting off with the Cody/Brandi Rhodes saga, I’m a bit conflicted. On one side, I think it was a complete waste for Impact to try and hype Brandi’s first singles match, bring in an outside talent in Kayci, if it was only going to end in no contest and used to just further the Cody/Moose feud. On the other hand, maybe this was the better route, given that Brandi still needs more practice/time to improve her craft; that is going base off what we’ve already seen from Brandi’s mixed tag matches so far.
I would’ve liked to see more of Kayci as she is a potential new name Impact can bring in and she was even given her own little profile set on ImpactWrestling.com prior to this. Still, in a way, she still helped show some of Rosemary’s dominance and can I say that I really loved how Kayci sold that Red Wedding! My only tiny gripe was the commercial break before that attack. I think Rosemary’s beatdown would came across a bit more effective if we actually saw her jump from the crowd and go on the attack immediately after the Rhodes left the ring.
I’m glad to see that Sienna is given more of a chance to speak on the mic and Laurel continues to play her character pretty well; her reaction to Sienna’s threats were hilarious! I think both have slowly began to find their footing since the the end of The Lady Squad, which in reality was more about Maria Kanellis anyway.
LAX’s return was my favorite moment of the night. I’m a fan of the group and I’m super psyched to see what Diamanté can bring to the table. I think she’ll bring something far different to the group than we saw in Salinas a few years ago and she’s already made a big statement against Rosemary! For now, this sets up more for a some tag matches until new champions are crowned but I’m all for seeing how the Knockouts will help their respective teams capture the gold. It sets up some interaction until we can get a full fledged feud from the two.
Also, as Jeremy Borash mentioned “she” will be here next week but, of course, this was already foreshadowed.
What did you think of this week’s episode of Impact? Disappointed in seeing the Brandi/Kayci match get canceled? Are you excited about the return of LAX? Let us know in the comments below!
