Let’s put this baby to bed. During Eli Drake’s title reign, Impact and Global Force Wrestling stopped cooperating and Impact went back to being called Impact. Their championship’s name followed suit. As you probably noticed, Impact had started hosting almost all of their shows in Orlando, Florida. That remains true where we join the Impact Championship, but it will soon change.
February 1, 2018 – Orlando, Florida
Austin Aries def. Eli Drake {Impact World Championship Match}
From Impact, and the company is back to a four-sided ring again. Because the company is starting to push so many smaller wrestlers as main eventers, this is the name the title landed on (taking a cue from Ring of Honor). They continued to use the GFW title belt, with an Impact plate clumsily pasted over top of the words Global Force. Aries returned to the company here during a main event Drake promo and beat the champ in 51 seconds while they’re both in street clothes. Chris Adonis had attacked Aries from behind and Drake figured he’d just pin Aries to teach him a lesson. But it backfired and Aries kicked out of a belt shot and then pinned Drake with a brainbuster. There was no fanfare, probably because Aries isn’t likeable, but in theory this was a cute way to move the title. N/A
April 22, 2018 – Orlando, Florida
Pentagon def. Austin Aries and Fenix {Impact World Championship Triple Threat Match}
From Redemption, though aesthetically there is zero difference between this and an episode of Impact. After three years of only running two PPVs, Impact expanded to a third with this one. Aries and Alberto el Patron were meant to fight Fenix and Pentagon on the Lucha Underground vs. Impact show, but Patron no-showed and got fired so they had this same three way, which Pentagon won (thus earning this title). I’m not sure why in my review of that show I thought that Pentagon was already the champion, so most of my comments about the logic of the match are moot. The build to this, with Aries trashing Patron for being unprofessional becomes very funny later. More on that in a bit. It’s not clear given the build why Fenix is in this match except that this same matchup was well-received on the interpromotional show. The current Impact Championship belt debuted here. Well, the blue version of the current title. This was about on the level of their first triple threat, though Aries did less annoying indulgent stuff here, so this gets the edge. The finish was also better. The Lucha Bros took out Aries with superkicks, then Pentagon baited Fenix into going for the pin but then hit him with a superkick. Then he hit the armbreaker on Aries, a tandem shinbreaker on Fenix and Package Piledriver on Aries, then hit the Fenix Driver on Aries for the win at 16:15. A very emphatic victory indeed. ***¾
May 31, 2018 – Orlando, Florida
Austin Aries def. Pentagon {Impact World Championship Match}
From Impact: Under Pressure. This was the final title change to date to happen in Orlando, as the company had begun touring again. This was a decent, but certainly not great match that got bogged down in a really stupid finish. Aries locked Pentagon in the Last Chancery on the floor and both guys got counted out at 11:36 (shown). Aries demanded the match be restarted and Pentagon agreed. They fought for 1:36 before Pentagon hit a Package Piledriver on the apron and both guys got counted out again. Pentagon wants the match restarted this time, so when the referee goes to call for the bell, Aries hits a low blow behind his back and wins the title in nine seconds with the brainbuster. I guess good on Aries for showing his ass in victory, but it didn’t make for an interesting title change. **½
October 14, 2018 – New York, New York
Johnny Impact def. Austin Aries {Impact World Championship Match}
From Bound for Glory XIV. Good lord, the production of this makes it feel like an indie show. What happened? Probably the same cost-cutting that made them put an advertisement in the middle of the mat. Aries had Moose and Killer Kross in his corner, while Impact had Taya Valkyrie in his. Aries’ crew did nothing, but Valkyrie was involved in the finish. After a solid match with a few cool flourishes, Aries hit a Heat Seeking Missile on Valkyrie. So Impact freaks out, beats Aries up, and his him with his own brainbuster and then hits the Starship Pain for the win at 20:59. And then, blink and you’ll miss it, Aries gets up before Impact, yells at the crowd a little, and flicks off the commentary on the way to the back. Then, Impact celebrates as if that didn’t happen. This match is fine, but not worth going out of your way to see for the action or for the supposed controversy. It’s all tame by the standards set by other, cooler stuff. ***¼
So what happened here? I almost don’t want to address it because it’s only half interesting, but after this Impact continues on quite tamely (less one hiccup). So let’s pad this post. In an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Aries, while admitting that he’s a dick because he’s short and that he has low emotional intelligence, proves those things to be very true. He talked about the build up to this match where, on twitter, he used homophobic and ableist language and brushed it off as an in-character thing. Aries, who doesn’t seem to understand that his speech has consequences, who smokes cigarettes while telling people with bad diets that they deserve to die, says that the whole thing was one of the greatest works ever performed (showing he doesn’t understand his place in wrestling). He says everyone was in on all the build and all that happened in the ring and at ringside. And then he says that when it came time to sign a new contract, he didn’t like the terms and turned them down, thus never returning. It turns out a lot of that is true, except the last bit. In real life, everyone decided that Aries was too difficult to work with and too much of a pain to be around and he just wasn’t offered a chance to reup in the end. And he cried over it. Now, I think a man should be allowed to cry without being shamed at any time. Except when that man is a person like Aries, who thinks that he can be an ass all the time and everyone else is wrong for disagreeing.
April 28, 2019 – Toronto, Ontario
Brian Cage def. Johnny Impact {Impact World Championship Match}
From Rebellion. These two had an awesome cage match in Lucha Underground a couple years earlier. Much like that match, this also doesn’t serve as the main event of the show that it’s on. Lance Storm is the guest referee. The production is world’s better here than it was at Bound for Glory the year before. This was a sort of average match, boosted by some well-executed extracurriculars. Cage bled a lot, made more remarkable because it got all over Impact and Storm. The finish was completely overbooked. I sighed at first, but the way the overbooking kept building on itself turned out to be a lot of fun. In the end, Cage convinced Storm not to disqualify Impact and hit the Drill Claw for the title at 13:16. ***½
October 29, 2019 – Windsor, Ontario
Sami Callihan def. Brian Cage {Impact World Championship Steel Cage Match}
From Impact. I kind of thought they’d be finished moving the title on the weekly show, but here we are. Cage had defended the title against Callihan a few days earlier at Bound for Glory, but this was the first episode of the show on a new channel (AXS TV, which had been purchased by Impact’s parent company Anthem) so they felt that they needed something big. This is such a lame WWE move. There was some fun to be had here. Callihan barricaded cage outside before the match, so Cage climbed in way more quickly than someone his size should be able to. From there they had a solid, hard hitting, and bloody match. But it was very short and Callihan’s win felt like it came before the match could peak. He hit a second rope piledriver for the win at 9:49 (shown). ***
January 12, 2020 – Dallas, Texas
Tessa Blanchard def. Sami Callihan {Impact World Championship Match}
From Hard to Kill. The title belt has a red tint now, because the company changed the entire motif of their brand from blue to red after moving to AXS TV. That’s an incredibly elementary way to think about branding. This match was terrific. Once you get beyond Callihan spitting all over himself and just generally being gross, you get into a match that totally makes sense given the two people fighting. Blanchard never overpowers Callihan, and is constantly on the defensive because he’s stronger and because he targets her knee. But he’s sloppy and arrogant, which Blanchard uses to pick away at him over the course of the second ten minutes of the match. And then the moment that Callihan starts getting worried because the momentum is shifting, it’s already too late. Blanchard is on a roll. She nails him with a Canadian Destroyer and a Panama Sunrise (Callihan blatantly getting into position for it was the only thing I didn’t like about the finish), and then finishes Callihan off with the Buzzsaw DDT at 23:50. ****¼
As I’ve written for so many of these title histories, the COVID-19 pandemic took its toll on Impact as well. The company was forced to begin doing taping marathons for shows in an empty studio. Meanwhile, Blanchard’s notoriously bad attitude flared up. She spent the pandemic in her Mexico home, unable to compete in person. Problem was (reportedly) that Blanchard was unresponsive when asked to send promos to the company for them to play on TV. She was fired and stripped of the title, so Impact was forced to crowd a new champion for the empty arena era. Luckily for Impact, WWE had recently fired a ton of lower-level guys, and pretty much everyone who’d wrestled for Impact before got snapped up by the company.
July 18, 2020 – Nashville, Tennessee
Eddie Edwards def. Ace Austin, Eric Young, Trey, and Rich Swann {Impact World Championship Elimination Match}
From Slammiversary XVI. The match was originally set to be Blanchard vs. Edwards, Austin, and Trey. Swann pretty much replaced Blanchard and then Young was added during the great WWE influx of 2020. Edwards looks weird, wrestling with braids in his hair, a shirt on, and mom capri jeans. The strongest story going into this match was the issue between Trey and Austin, which makes it puzzling that Young eliminated Trey first. The match came to a grinding halt after Swann eliminated Young and then Young attacked Swann’s leg. Austin eliminated Swann moments later. Austin and Edwards have a little scrap as the commentators tell us about the feud they had a year earlier before Edwards hits the Boston Knee Party and the Die Hard Flowsion for the win at 24:26. This was alright, and it was probably good to have a multi-man main event since there were no fans. But it wasn’t mind-blowing and I think they missed out on not having Trey be involved in the finish. ***¼
September 1, 2020 – Nashville, Tennessee
Eric Young def. Eddie Edwards {Impact World Championship Match}
From Impact. This company has two PPVs coming up in October (which to my understanding cost $40 each), but they felt the need to move the title on Impact. I don’t get that from a financial perspective. Why would I order a PPV (which are delayed by months before showing up on Impact +Plus) if I can just watch Impact and see title changes there for way less. Josh Matthews and Madison Rayne are on commentary, making them I think the first husband and wife commentary team I’ve heard. This match was pretty basic, and didn’t have the main event vibe you hope for when you’re going to move a title. Some of that is because there’s crowd, but some is also because the match was on the short side and the finish was lame. Young distracted the referee with the title belt, then hit Edwards with his hockey mask before hitting a piledriver for the win at 12:41 (shown). **¾
October 24, 2020 – Nashville, Tennessee
Rich Swann def. Eric Young {Impact World Championship Match}
From Bound for Glory XVI. I was feeling the lack of a crowd here. Young injured Swann’s neck early on and that’s the story they went with throughout the match. It was a little weird, given that Swann’s storyline injury was to his leg, but I guess they wanted to build drama around Young hitting the piledriver. But then the piledriver was never really a factor, and the match was quite boring until Swann’s mid-match comeback. From there it was a perfectly good midcard match, but the quiet building and the guys involved didn’t give the gravity it needed to be the main event of the biggest show of the year. Swann hit the Phoenix Splash for the win at 21:31. ***¼
It’s been baffling to many that TNA/Impact has survived since 2002, five years longer than WCW and twice as long as ECW. Part of it is the company’s ability to be whatever it needs to be to survive, be that anything from a southern alternative to WWE to a much glorified indie company. If it can make it through the rest of the pandemic, I’m not sure what it’d take to put it down.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
