I haven’t seen Bound for Glory for some time, but I know it’s one of Impact Wrestling’s four main pay per views during the regular calendar year. Judging by the number of debuts or returns on this past week’s Impact Wrestling, BFG in Las Vegas is shaping up to be a can’t miss event.
The show started with Scott D’Amore preparing for the handover of the X Division Championship by Josh Alexander as he invoked Option C, whereby the Walking Weapon gets an Impact World Championship match at BFG, in this case against current champion Christian Cage.
We get some heated back and forth between champion and challenger, with Cage saying that while Josh almost lost his career in wrestling due to a prior injury, Cage DID lose about seven years of his career. Cage said Josh would regret giving up the X Division Champion and being the face of the X Division, because he wasn’t going to be the face of Impact. Without hesitation, Alexander hands the X Division title over to D’Amore and the title match is on!
For some reason, Ace Austin and Madman Fulton felt the need to cut into this conversation, despite Austin losing his title opportunity to Cage at Victory Road. A brawl ensues between the four men, ending with Austin ramming his cane into Cage’s eye as the champion tried to hit the Kill Switch on Fulton. This led to the Walking Weapon demanding a match with Ace Austin for the main event.
A rather solid segment that continues the build for Josh Alexander as the challenger to Christian Cage the champion, but as I will outline later, there may be a potential curve ball thrown into the mix.
Opportunities abound
With the need to crown a new X Division Champion, it was announced by D’Amore that three triple threat matches will determine the combatants for another triple threat match at Bound for Glory to crown a new champion. Next week a triple threat qualifier will take place featuring Trey Migeul, Laredo Kid from Triple AAA who won a five way match at Victory Road, and the debuting Alex Zayne, formerly Ari Sterling on NXT.
I’m not sure if this is just a temporary appearance by Zayne or is he fully signed to Impact. In any event, with all this Forbidden Door stuff taking place this year it won’t be surprising if more surprise names who aren’t usually seen on Impact, as well as former X Division Champions, show up at this tournament.
Another opportunity at Bound for Glory is the return of the Call Your Shot Gauntlet Battle Royale, whereby the winner gets a trophy which grants them a title shot at any championship of their choosing. Despite being a tag team, Rich Swann appears to be gunning for the Battle Royale while Willie Mack seems to be entering himself into X Division Championship contention.
Finally, the next Impact Plus special is Knockouts Knockdown, hosted by Impact legend Gail Kim. A tournament was announced for this event whereby the winner will get a future Knockouts Championship title opportunity. Four Impact knockouts will face off against four female wrestlers from outside the company. So far wrestlers such as Lady Frost and Mercedes Martinez, fresh off her release from NXT, will be participating.
Not every new face showing up in the Impact Zone needs to be for major shock factor, and these spots in the Knockouts show and the X Division qualifiers are great opportunities to introduce new faces to Impact. Speaking of some new, or returning faces…
Bullet Club invading Impact
We next get continued hostilities between FinJuice and Bullet Club representatives Hikuleo and Chris Bey, in a match between Hikuleo and David Finlay. Although Finlay ended up getting the surprise pin on the big man, the aftermath was more significant as another BC member, El Phantasmo, jumped into the mix for the beatdown on FinJuice.
El Phantasmo has been on Impact before, last time seen challenging Alexander for the X Division title at Under Siege, but now he’s back for completely different reasons. The BC logo did flash by during the BFG promotional commercial, along with the New Japan one. We may be seeing more BC members emerge in the weeks building up to the pay per view.
Desi Hit Squad redux
We had another rarity on Impact: an intergender match between former Knockouts champion Chelsea Green and former X Division Champion Rohit Raju. The match ends when Raj Singh runs out to provide a distraction to allow Rohit to roll up Chelsea for the win.
Myers may be pruning his ‘Learning Tree’
If you’ve been watching Impact the last few weeks, you may have seen the “Most Professional Wrestler” Brian Myers recruiting random dudes to be part of a group of apprentices referred to as “The Professionals” but now apparently they are being referred to as “The Learning Tree”, ironic because it’s really Myers who is supposed to be the tree and his ‘students’ are the branches.
After a backstage challenge, Swann and Mack would face Myers and a tag partner of his choosing from his Learning Tree, but he ended up picking up and coming star VSK, seen previously on Impact and AEW Dark. Unfortunately, a miscalculation made by Sam Beale, Myers’ first apprentice, allowed Swann to pin VSK.
Mickie James vs. Deonna Purrazzo for Knockouts Championship
This was the only likely outcome after Deonna attacked Mickie at NWA 73 and the previous build for the NWA Empower show that highlighted the tensions between the Knockouts Champion and the former champion and Impact Wrestling legend.
It’s also a good idea to follow some of the back and forth exchanges on Twitter between the champion and now challenger to get an idea of the story building between these two.
Backstage segment breakdown
Here are my brief thoughts on the various backstage segment that took place this week.
VBD gives Rhyno an ultimatum: it looks like Violent By Design is giving Rhyno a choice whether to continue his allegiance with them or ‘suffer the consequences’. Perhaps this is foreshadowing a reunion between the Man Beast and his buddy Heath who is recovering from injuries to face off against VBD?
We also got an odd black and white vignette of the Impact Tag Champions, the Good Brothers, hyping themselves as the best tag team ever, that type of promo.
We saw at New Japan’s Resurgence a month ago that the Guerrillas of Destiny (G.O.D.) team of Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa confronting the Good Brothers after the Impact champs defeated Jon Moxley and Yuji Nagata. With all these Bullet Club members showing up on Impact, should we be surprised if G.O.D. comes in to increase the BC representation for BFG?
Su Yung and her ‘Undead Brides’ have apparently recruited Swingerella Number 3, who was missing in a previous segment of Swinger’s Palace. Just a week before, Kimber and Brandi were seen lurking outside the illegal casino, apparently targeting her. Is Su assembling an army to take on Decay for the Knockouts Tag Team titles?
The biggest backstage segment had to be Eddie Edwards and Sami Callihan going on a backstage rampage looking for Moose and Morrissey, after the latter powerbombed Eddie’s wife Alisha at Victory Road. The violent duo found Moose and beat him down with their bat and kendo sticks before finding Morrissey in the hallway apparently hassling a backstage hand for lunch money.
Before things completely broke down, D’Amore and security stepped in to keep Morrissey, Edwards and Callihan separated, booking a no DQ match between Edwards and Morrissey for next week. I’m predicting that Eddie wins this one, and something to happen either during the match or post match that continues to solidify his and Callihan’s reluctant partnership.
A Fallen Angel has flown back to the Impact Zone
We’ve seen the return of Raj Singh and El Phantasmo, but none of those could hold a candle to the shocking return of one of the founding pillars of Impact Wrestling after the main event of Josh Alexander vs. Ace Austin: the Fallen Angel, Christopher Daniels.
During a post match beatdown on Cage and Alexander by Ace and Fulton, as the duo prepared to inflict some more damage on the number one contender, Daniels’ music played and the Fallen Angel came in to make the save. The last image was the past (CD and Christian) and present (Josh Alexander) of Impact Wrestling standing in the middle of the ring.
Since CD and Frankie Kazarian lost an AEW tag team titles match to the Young Bucks, thereby disbanding the team, Daniels has been absent on television for months as his former partner embarked on a one man crusade against the Elite. In all honesty, I thought that final match with Frankie was CD’s swan song as an in-ring competitor as he transitioned to a backstage producer role on AEW.
But obviously that is not the case, and the Fallen Angel now has a match booked next week against Madman Fulton. CD has also been seen on the indy circuit as he made an appearance recently at Defy Wrestling. Good to see that the 50 year old veteran can still go in the ring.
The triple staredown at the end also foreshadows potential future challengers. Should Cage or Alexander emerge victorious at BFG, they may be staring at a Fallen Angel looming over that Impact World Championship.
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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