Rebellion is now in the history books as AEW Champion Kenny Omega secured a hard earned victory over Rich Swann to win the Unified Impact World Championship. Along with the AAA Mega Championship, Omega can now call himself “Kenny 4 Belts” as the man now has a ton of gold to carry around on this ‘belt collector’ crusade.
Although the main event was the primary focus of the pay per view because of the significant implications of the outcome of the title vs. title match, we also saw other title changes, or non title changes, and other hard fought wins from other wrestlers’ matches at Rebellion.
With that in mind, here are my five takeaways in the post Rebellion aftermath.
Is Option C once again a real option?
Rebellion’s opening contest saw a new X Division Champion crowned, as the “Walking Weapon” Josh Alexander pinned Ace Austin with his Divine Intervention piledriver for the pinfall victory. An accomplished mat and submission wrestler and former tag team champion, Alexander brings something new as a singles wrestler to a division well known for high flying offence.
While I personally would prefer Alexander settle into a long reign and turning back all challengers, including any new wrestlers that may join Impact in July, or even the occasional AEW person, Walking Weapon does have the choice to exercise the clause known as Option C, by which the X Division Champion can trade in the title for a World title match.
Option C was last used by Brian Cage about two years ago, but since then no subsequent X Division Champion has exercised this option. With an AEW wrestler currently having the Impact World Title in his possession, might the resident purveyor of ‘Canadian Strong Style’ be eyeing Impact’s top prize and looking to notch another achievement underneath his resume by challenging Omega?
Finjuice may be here to stay for the long term
In what I consider an upset victory, Juice Robinson and David Finlay managed to defeat the proverbial favourites the Good Brothers, Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows, to retain the Impact Tag Team Championships. Conventional wisdom, at least for me, would have been FinJuice enjoying a brief title reign to showcase the developing relationship between New Japan and Impact Wrestling before dropping them back to an actual Impact team.
But the win at Rebellion indicates that the Good Brothers may not be the ones to dethrone Finlay and Robinson, and perhaps another team at Impact may be in line to get those tag belts back. Another reason I believe FinJuice may be staying in America for awhile is based unfortunately on real life developments. Japan is current in the midst of another wave of COVID-19, and their central government recently announced states of emergency in Tokyo and other key prefectures, which resulted in cancellation of some upcoming NJPW shows.
NJPW already has an American footprint from their weekly show ‘NJPW Strong’ so if FinJuice is required to keep their New Japan dates, they can do so safely in the company’s American location…while keeping up with Impact appearances.
What’s next for Deonna Purrazzo?
Unsurprisingly, the Knockouts Champion successfully retained her title after a hard effort by Tenille Dashwoods. But afterwards, the returning Taylor Wilde came out to confront the Virtuosa before the champ made a hasty retreat.
Since November 2020, Purrazzo has been champion when she pinned Su Yung to begin her second title reign and she also has the distinction of winning Impact’s 2020 Wrestler of the Year award. She’s already turned back some of the biggest names in Impact Knockouts history, such as Taya Valkyrie, Rosemary, Jazz and ODB. Wilde may be a former Knockouts Champion and Tag Champion, I only see her as being another obstacle for the Virtuosa to overcome
Which begs the question, who’s next? Jordynne Grace is currently a Knockouts tag champ with Rachael Ellering so maybe preoccupied. We may have to wait until Slammiversary to see if any new players enter the fray, such as Chelsea Green aka Laurel Van Ness, who may pose a real challenge to Purrazzo’s reign as champion.
Cardona, Swann and Miguel may be destined for tag team roles
Unfortunate as this may sound, Rich Swann’s Impact Championship reign was not as impressive as some may think. He had a really rushed rematch with Eric Young that may have foreshadowed Young’s current status on the injury list. Swann is a great worker, but I felt his reign was overshadowed by Omega coming to Impact since last December.
That being said, there are two other men that may serve as better tag partners for Swann than just continuing on their own: Matt Cardona and Trey Miguel. Even though Miguel just beat Sami Callihan in a brutal last man standing match, I can definitely see him teaming with his good friend Swann to wrest the Impact Tag Team titles back from FinJuice.
Cardona may have unfinished business with Brian Myers after losing to him at Rebellion, so suffice it to say he may not be inclined to reunite with his friend as a tag team. But maybe Cardona would do so with Swann; both men have this natural energy that can bounce off each other and may prove to be a winning formula to be a successful tag team.
Finally, the most important takeaway of all…
Isn’t it time for that Impact invasion to AEW?
Since this collaboration between the two companies began, this whole angle has been lopsided to favour All Elite Wrestling. Tony Khan jokingly buys ‘paid ads’ on Impact air time to hype AEW Dynamite, Omega and Callis run roughshod over Impact on several occasions, Matt Hardy and Private Party showed up and now Kenny Omega has taken Impact’s top prize over to Wednesday nights.
Even that quashed storyline of Sammy Guevara coming over to Impact to go after the X Division title only serves to highlight this disparity: AEW promoting itself on Impact’s time.
By contrast, nothing has been done on AEW programming vice versa. Impact’s presence has been limited to Omega’s old Bullet Club running buddies the Good Brothers. It was shocking to me that Swann wasn’t featured on at least even one segment on a Dynamite showing him getting his comeuppance on Omega, such as Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston’s truck ramming into the Elite’s trailer last week, in the lead up to their Rebellion title match.
That goes to show you how this Impact vs. AEW feud has been booked so one-sided, at least in the beginning.
Now that their championship is actually on AEW, is it time for Impact to start rally some of the troops to storm Daly’s Place? Moose is likely the next contender; I can envision him leading a troupe comprised of Sami Callihan, Eddie Edwards, Willie Mack, James Storm and Chris Sabin to do ‘an invasion’ angle to finally kick this inter-promotional program into high gear.
Fingers crossed.
An average professional doing the 9-5 grind who really loves wrestling across all platforms. Here's hoping wrestlers finally get some basic workers rights in 2021.
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