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Impact: James Storm hits career milestone, show hits the right buttons

Bob Kapur

“Cowboy” James Storm hit a huge milestone on this week’s episode of Impact, wrestling his 1,000th match with the company against fellow company mainstay Eric Young. The strong match capped off what was overall a strong episode, with some really good matches and strong building towards both the upcoming Hardcore Justice show and the Rebellion PPV.

 

Match 1: Havok & Nevaeh vs. Fire N Flava (c) – for the Knockouts Tag Team Championship

This was a pretty even matchup, with the advantage switching hands several times. Havok and Nevaeh impressed with their power, but Fire N Flava may have been a bit craftier, using double-team moves when they could to work the legs of their larger opponents and attack them on the ground. After a series of high-impact moves on each other, Fire N Flava were able to plant Havok with a Corkscrew Fisherman Buster by Hogan, followed by a Frog Splash by Steelz ,and that was enough to keep her down for the count. After the match, Nevaeh attacked and beat up Havok, saying that it was Havok who was the weak link and not her like she had thought and was feeling guilty about recently.

This was a good match, and surprisingly ended with a clean win. Fire N Flava may be the most improved wrestlers on the roster, really gelling as a team since joining forces. Havok and Nevaeh will undoubtedly feud for a while now, which could be fun.

Winners, and still Knockouts Tag Team Champions: Fire N Flava

Backstage, in an interview with Gia Miller, James Storm dedicated his match tonight – his 1,000th with the company – to the late Bob Ryder who was the one who urged the company to hire Storm and his partner Chris Harris in the first place. That was classy. He then told Eric Young, his opponent tonight, that he knows Young will bring Violent By Design to the ring, so he was bringing backup in the form of Chris Sabin and Jake Something. They told him that they’d brought a surprise for Storm – and the “Wildcat” himself came out. The former America’s Most Wanted partners embraced, and they all headed out. That was all sorts of good to see.

Deonna Purrazzo told Gia Miller that she had pretty much closed the door on Jazz after last week. Susan started trash-talking Jazz, who ran in and attacked them both, leaving Susan laying after smashing her in the head with a plastic garbage pail.

 

Match 2: Sami Callihan vs. Larry D (w/ Acey Romero)

Larry was sporting bright neon gear this week, which amazing for its outright tackiness. This was a slobberknocker, with the guys slugging it out with hard shots. Larry caught Sami in a flying dive attempt, and then used the ring apron to deliver some punishment before going to commercial. When we returned, Larry was continuing the abuse, whipping Sami hard through the ropes to the floor. They brawled around ringside, and then continued the fight in the ring, including by a huge clothesline by Larry that looked great. Larry nearly got the pin after a running Splash, but Sami kicked out. Sami caught Larry going up top and hit a Death Valley Driver for two. They fought on the apron in the more, and in the end, Sami tied up Larry in the ropes and hit him with a modified Cactus Special for the pin.

After the match, Acey attacked Sami and beat him down. Tellingly, Trey Miguel did NOT come in for the save, despite Sami having saved him from a beatdown last week. Despite getting beaten up, Sami was happy and started applauding, and the commentators tried to make sense of it, saying that Sami was applauding the fact that Trey showed he wasn’t soft by not repaying the favour.

The match was good, hard-hitting and physical. The storyline between Sami and Trey is getting to be a bit convoluted, unfortunately, so hopefully there’s a clear end-game in sight.

Winner: Sami Callihan

They showed a highlight reel of the Impact Tag Team Champions FInJuice on their current tour in Japan for New Japan Pro Wrestling. When it ended, the screen panned out to a lounge where Don Callis was watching the footage with AEW Champion Kenny Omega and the Good Brothers. Callis and Omega were impressed by FinJuice, but the Good Brothers were dismissive. They played a game of Telephone and the Good Brothers left the room, very happy by the secret message.

In the back, Sami confronted Trey for not coming to his aid earlier, and they had words. Sami said that he was pushing Trey to help channel Trey’s anger and passion. Sami said that he wanted to be Trey’s mentor to help Trey take over the company. Sami said he was going to ask Impact Executive Vice-President Scott D’Amore for a tag team match between the two of them and XXXL next week. Trey was adamantly against the idea, but Sami said he should take time to think about it. Trey was very yelly here.

 

Match 3: Brian Myers vs. Suicide

Can we all take a minute to remember that Suicide is a character that was introduced in the TNA video game some time ago? You can read our historical reviews of the game here and here. By the time you read those, you will have missed the inevitably-dull Brian Myers match. Though, to be fair, his matches are more compelling than his promos. Myers hit the Roster Cut (a big running forearm) to get the win.

After the match, Myers said Matt Cardona only challenged him to a match to get the rub off of Myers’ name. So he was declining the challenge.

The match was fine. The Myers-Cardona feud is pointless, who cares, let’s move on.

Winner: Brian Myers

Backstage, Jazz ran into Tommy Dreamer while hunting for Deonna Purrazzo. Dreamer suggested Jazz put up stakes to get a title shot against Purrazzo at Hardcore Justice. Jazz said she’d put her career on the line for the match. Dreamer made the match. This is interesting. Jazz’ return to Impact was supposed to be just a final stop before she retired. So maybe this will be the match where she hangs up the boots for good? Or possibly she’ll win the title and stick around a little while longer? Either way, it’s an interesting stipulation.

The weekly paid ad from AEW owner Tony Khan and announcer Tony Schiavone was up next. They hyped up tomorrow’s episode of Dynamite and ran down some of the planned nonsense. If they were trying to make Tony Khan looked like an angry nerd hyped up on too much Jolt Cola well, mission accomplished. Even Schiavone looked like he didn’t want to be near him.

Don Callis and Kenny Omega entered Swinger’s Palace to find out the odds on the Kenny Omega vs. Rich Swann title-for-title match. They got offended when Swinger told them the odds were even, so he showed Swinger the video they made of Kenny hitting the One-Winged Angel. This swung the odds into Omega’s favour, and then they made a $20K bet on Omega to win.

 

Match 4: TJP and Josh Alexander vs. Ace Austin and Mad Man Fulton

The story here was that Austin was reluctant to get into the ring at all, since both Alexander and TJP want a piece of him and his X-Division Championship. So Fulton did the heavy lifting and Austin only tagged in when he really had to, and spent most of his time trying to reach his corner and tag out. But Alexander and TJP also had problems working together, as they jockeyed to get into the ring and punish Austin. Austin and Fulton’s chemistry let them double-team TJP for a while, but after a great Tornado DDT, he tagged in Alexander who matched power with Fulton and things evened up. But some miscommunication resulted in Alexander accidentally hitting TJP. They then fought over who was going to pin a prone Austin, and while they were squabbling, Austin rolled up TJP to get the win.

This was a good match and the story worked well. It would seem to be leading up to either a 1-on-1 match with the winner getting a shot against Austin or a three-way match. Either scenario would make sense and result in some good in-ring action.

Winners: Ace Austin and Mad Man Fulton

Don Callis found Willie Mack sitting in catering and invited himself to sit down with Mack. He tried to make Willie watch the One-Winged Angel highlight video, but Mack wasn’t interested. Rich Swann walked in, and Callis mocked him, saying that Kenny was looking forward to kicking out of Swann’s finisher. Swann said that if Callis weren’t his boss, he’d smack him. Callis told him that for the next ten minutes he was no longer an Executive and squared up to fight Swann. But it was all a ruse, as Omega and the Good Brothers ran in and took down both Swann and Mack. Eddie Edwards ran in to help Swann and Mack, and with the odds evened, Callis and crew ran off.

A vignette aired, presumably to hype someone coming in. The video panned around a bathroom in what looked to be a punk rock concert venue. It ended with a graphic that said “Impact Wrestling Presents ‘Coming Soon’ Impact Zone, April 2021.” And then a hangman type clue: –T’- G– —D-‘.  Any guesses?

Backstage, Rohit Raju went up to Hernandez. They beat the team of Fallah Bahh and Mahabali Shera on the Before the Impact pre-show, so Raju assumed they were now a tag team. Hernandez disabused him of that notion, saying that the only relationship they had is that Hernandez would take money from Raju to team up with him, mercenary-style.

A Violent By Design video aired. Eric Young said that James Storm made a mistake by challenging him tonight. He said that he would not offer Storm to be baptized into VBD, but rather he was going to show Storm that the world didn’t belong to him… it belonged to us. Typically good cryptic promo by EY.

Dreamer was holding a session with all the Knockouts to talk about Hardcore Justice. After hyping Purrazzo vs. Jazz, he tried to talk with Susan and maybe tweak her brain to cause Su Yung to re-emerge, but Purrazzo and Susan stormed off.

Dreamer then told the others there was going to be a Knockouts Scramble Match at the show. All weapons would be legal in this match. The winner will become the number one contender to the Knockouts Championship and get a title match at Rebellion.

It was announced that next week, Kenny Omega and the Good Brothers will face Willie Mack, Eddie Edwards, and Rich Swann.

 

Match 5: Eric Young (w/ VBD) vs. James Storm (w/ Chris Sabin, Jake Something, and Chris Harris)

Storm had the edge early on, but distraction by VBD let Young hit a cheap shot, slamming Storm’s on the ringpost to take control as the show went into a commercial. Young was dominating when the show resumed, hitting Storm with a big Neckbreaker for a near-fall, and then bashing him with elbows, forearms, and stomps in the corners. Young hit a series of moves like a vertical Suplex that whipped Storm hard into the turnbuckles, and a Neckbreaker, but Storm would not stay down. He finally found his second wind and made a comeback, hitting a big kick to the face and a nice Running Neckbreaker. He followed that up with Eye of the Storm, but Young was able to kick out. Then it was Young’s turn to come back, and he hit a Running Neckbreaker and a Flying Elbow Drop, but this time Storm kicked out.

Storm got the best of a slugfest, and hit the Lung Blower that would have ended things, but Deaner jumped up on the apron to distract the referee. That led to a brawl between the teams on the floor. As the referee tried to deal with that fracas, Young went to the corner to get his hockey mask so he could smash Storm with it. Chris Harris stopped him from getting it, and when Young confronted him, Harris clocked him with a punch, and rolled Young back into the ring where he walked into the Last Call Superkick by Storm, and that put him down for good.

After the match, Storm and his buddies celebrated the win on the entrance ramp while VBD stewed over the loss. The final shot saw Storm once again thank Bob Ryder for getting them into Impact, before the show went off the air.

This was a really good match. Good storytelling, no silly stuff, just smart, solid wrestling. The feud between these teams looks like it’s going to continue, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Winner: “Cowboy” James Storm

 

 

Impact Wrestling - March 30th, 2021
4.5

Skyway Studios - Nashville, TN

After last week’s stumble, Impact recovered and put on a very good show this week. With strong matches throughout, and good builds for the upcoming big shows, this one ticked all the boxes.

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