Hola Knockout fans and welcome to this week’s Impact Write-Up! Impact Wrestling comes to us semi-live this week with a night full of action as every Impact Wrestling Championship is on the line! As announced earlier in the week, Knockout fans can look forward to seeing Rosemary defend the Knockouts Championship against ODB.
Our show kicks off with LAX’s Santana and Ortiz defeating Jake Holmes and Joe Coleman in dominating fashion to retain the Impact Wrestling Tag Team Titles. (As if Holmes and Coleman actually had a chance…) Post match, Konnan takes a mic for some “Latino Empowerment” talk.
He vows to balance out the current power structure with the help of Homicide, Diamanté and los boricuas Santana and Ortiz. The Decay’s music hit and it doesn’t take long before an all out brawl breaks out between both stables that eventually needs to separated by security! Later in the evening, Jeremy Borash would announce that a Tag Team Title street fight between LAX and Decay would take place on next week’s show.
Up next is Karen Jarrett with some big news regarding a change for Impact Wrestling and GFW’s future alike. She announces that both Impact and GFW have officially merged as part of making Impact great, although I’m sure most of us saw this coming.
Time for our Knockouts title match:
After the challenger and champion make their entrances, the bell sounds off and ODB lands the first strike with numerous forearms. She then runs the ropes and takes down the champion with a spinning clothesline. ODB maintains control with a corner splash to Rosemary, which forces her to retreat to the outside ring.
ODB chases after Rosemary, looking to land a suplex on the entrance ramp but Rosemary is able to fight out of it. The champion then lands a kick to the midsection and is able to take down ODB with a vicious clothesline.
The Knockouts find their way back to the ring where Rosemary is in full control, charging after a cornered ODB and adding in a suplex. Rosemary goes high risk by climbing the top rope of a corner but misses her attack, allowing ODB to regroup herself. She starts her comeback with a fallaway slam and two shoulder blocks. A Thesz Press from the second rope earns ODB a two-count over Rosemary.
The champion manages to turn things around in her favor again after countering out ODB’s Bronco Buster with a big boot and swiftly scooping ODB up to hit the Red Wedding for the three count and win. Rosemary is still the Knockouts Champion!
Speaking of champions and mention of the Impact/GFW merge, Sienna confronts Karen Jarrett backstage with a wondering question as to where she is hiding the GFW Women’s Champion Christina Von Eerie. Karen tells Sienna she isn’t hiding CVE anywhere and that when CVE does arrive, Sienna better be ready.
Sienna makes one more appearance, along with Laurel Van Ness and KM, at ringside for Kongo Kong‘s Impact debut match where, naturally, Kongo is victorious in the squash-style match. Could Braxton Sutter and Allie still be on Sienna’s hit list?
Oh hello, Low-Ki. #IMPACTonPOP pic.twitter.com/APNj5j43CF
— TDE Wrestling (@totaldivaseps) April 21, 2017
On a side note and completely off topic in terms of the Knockouts but I’m super excited to have Low Ki return in his Hitman Agent 47 (my favorite anti-hero ever) getup and winning back the X-Divison championship in the main event of this week’s show! Good showing by all involved!
Thoughts: I’m usually excited whenever Impact are able to do any kind of live episode of Impact and/or PPV.
Although it was a pretty safe bet that Rosemary was going to retain here, I do have to admit I am a bit disappointed on how short this Knockouts match was. It felt pretty underwhelming and there isn’t a whole lot to take away here other than Rosemary’s contentious reign as Knockouts Champion over an established name in ODB. Ironically, I found myself more interested in seeing the whole Decay/LAX brawl from earlier in the night – which played out well ahead of next week’s street fight.
As far as the GFW/Impact merging news goes, well it was certainly something that was going to happen with Jeff Jarrett back in power. It was his sideline project that, in my opinion, never really took off aside from initial excitement on a new wrestling promotion. Still with Sienna quick to seek out the GFW Women’s Champion, all while still highlighting her tension with Karen, this can help Impact bring in new talents in the mix to their roster. We’ve already seen when the whole ‘GFW vs. Impact’ themed storyline but with this being a permitted ordeal, I hope that we are in store for more deep storylines in the coming weeks.
What did you think of this week’s episode of Impact Wrestling? What are your thoughts on the Impact/GFW merge? Excited to see more of GFW’s talent appear on Impact? Let us know in the comments below!
