Andrew’s Impact Wrestling Ratings & Review 3/1/2019

Andrew dropping in more IMPACT coverage! Is team Johnny/Cage a Friendship…or a Fatality?

A tenuous teaming of Johnny and Brian Cage try to take out Killer Kross and Moose. Rosemary prepares for the Dark War, and Tessa continues to make an Undeniable statement.

Oh and Glenn keeps trying to navigate the building. Poor Disco…people messing with him is very disrespectful.

Let’s get to IMPACT!

Ratings:

• Willie Mack vs Jake Crist: Mack wins via DQ – *1/2
• Tommy Dreamer & Willie Mack vs oVe: Mack wins via Frog Splash – ***
• Fallah Bahh & KM vs Reno Scum: Fallah wins via Rocket Launcher/Samoan Drop combo – ** 1/4
• Delilah Doom vs Tessa Blanchard: Tessa wins via Buzzsaw DDT – * 3/4
• Ethan Page vs Wentz: Wentz wins via UFO Cutter – ** 1/2
• Johnny Impact & Brian Cage vs Moose & Killer Kross: Kross wins via Kross-Jacket Choke – ***

Review:

We come out of the last week’s highlights with a match! And a solid match as well! Jake Crist looks great here, Willie looks really good too. Dave Crist interferes and causes the DQ, but it was really building towards a decent match. Both guys looked good. Tommy Dreamer comes out to make the save and challenge oVe to a tag match.

Cool little Rosemary bumper pimping the Twitch ending with Join the Hive going into commercial/Twitch interaction time. Another week of Melissa Santos on the Skype interaction time!

Coming out of the break, the brawl is already happening. Dreamer hits the Crists with a plate of Chicken & Waffles and spits beer in Dave’s face. Dreamer gets beat on for a while, but a Superplex gives him the opening to get Willie Mack in the ring. Mack comes in fired up and knocks both Crists around. A good ole Spicolli Driver, into Mack’s Frog Splash gives the new tag team a win! Fun match.

Rolando Melendez Investigative reporter segment in the back with Johnny. Saying he’s just handing out title shots to people who help him.

Melissa on the break, and poor girl is really not good with technology. Ring tone goes off before she says back to the show and then she leaves her mic on so she’s talking over the preamble before the Reno Scum vs Panda-monium match. Didn’t hurt anything, just amusing how she always seems to have something goofy go on with technology.

Wait, Fallah won? Reno Scum beats the hell out of Fallah and KM to stand tall and solidify themselves as heels. Not a bad match. Reno Scum did do a Pit Stop so that was a fun throwback.

.@FALLAH1 used Rest.

It was Super Effective. #IMPACT

WATCH NOW – https://t.co/jyZYT6QL46 pic.twitter.com/kWFrNgHRts

— IMPACT (@IMPACTWRESTLING) March 2, 2019

Glenn Gilbertti shows up again and bumps into Ethan Page. Page actually shows him to correct door, DLo Brown walks out and says he’s a new producer. Then when Disco goes in, they roast him about Bill Ding the Evil Architect, Reverse Battle Royals, Tarzan Vines and when he says he wrote TV with Vince, someone yells “Wrong Vince”. Great segment.

Fallah and KM have a ranting promo after getting jumped and Fallah is pissed. KM’s face when he understands Fallah but no one else does is always great. It’s a tremendous gimmick.

After hyping United We Stand, we go to the Flashback Moment and it’s the Monster’s Ball match between Rosemary and Jade (Mia Yim).

Flashback over, we get this Eli Drake and Eddie Edwards interaction:

.@TheEddieEdwards has his tag team partner – Kenny! He doesn't need @TheEliDrake. #IMPACT

WATCH NOW – https://t.co/jyZYT6QL46 pic.twitter.com/4UPlmf1Odp

— IMPACT (@IMPACTWRESTLING) March 2, 2019

Scarlett looking all different kinds of sexy hyping her in-ring debut. Declaring she’ll make her choice of opponent next week.

Tessa and Delilah’s match is next! Delilah came in hot, got cut off by Tessa, had a small opening, but this match ended how we all expected. We got a little more of Delilah’s Goonie-esque personality since I think she said “Doomies Never Say Die” before a top rope move. But yeah, Tessa wasn’t losing this.

Brian Cage interview with Melissa about the tag match. Brian doesn’t seem to trust Johnny, but he sees some logic in his words. So he’s game to team since he’s got a guarantee in writing.

Rosemary promo where she’s talking to herself about the match and Jordynne and Kiera show up to offer their services. Rosemary says no, but Kiera stands up for her position and Rosemary begrudgingly accepts the alliance.

Decent match that saw Ethan start to overpower Wentz. But Ethan starts jawing with Morlon Greenwood, shoves him but gets shoved back. The only thing I didn’t like about this was security stopped Morlon from coming across the barricade, yet there was no security at Homecoming during the Brian Cage debacle. So with the events so close, it just looks a little stupid. Good match, but I’m nit picking on continuity from show to show.

Glenn finds Tommy Dreamer, Dreamer says talent is being difficult. Glenn says the boys love him so he can help, but it turns out the Anthem Owl is behind the door. It’s good comedy. Glenn is a fantastic high point of the show.

Ace Austin hype package, he’ll be appearing next week.

Sami Callihan clarifies his position to Rich Swann. Great promo.

"I love Rich Swann." @TheSamiCallihan feels after all he's given to @GottaGetSwann, Swann should return home to the oVe family. #IMPACT

WATCH NOW – https://t.co/jyZYT6QL46 pic.twitter.com/3jhMO80IXo

— IMPACT (@IMPACTWRESTLING) March 2, 2019

Kross and Moose interview, Kross is pissed and Moose looks like he went through Adrian Adonis and Velveteen Dream’s trash. But the way Kross plays off of his goofy crap is beautiful. They are a great duo and Kross’ subtleties are tremendous.

Konnan tries to keep LAX in check, but Santana and Ortiz don’t seem to be on the same page.

Johnny and Cage actually start working well together, a few early tandem moves give them all of the advantage heading into the last break. Coming back Johnny is get beat on a little and apparently develops a stinger or some kind of neck issue. Kross chuckles in the corner and allows a struggling Johnny to tag in Cage and begin the feeding frenzy. The ref is distracted tending to Johnny, eventually throws up the X – and at the same time Kross busts Cage open with the Impact World title. Cage tries to fight back, hits an F5 on Moose and screams for Johnny. He tries to go to the side to find out what’s going on, but Kross catches him with a Doomsday Saito, followed by the Kross-jacket. Cage passes out as Johnny is helped to the back.

Overall Score: 7.5/10

With the way the main event ended, it adds layers to World title picture. Cage and Johnny tried to team up to take Kross and Moose out of the picture, but now with Johnny’s ‘injury’, Cage was on the receiving end of punishment and still keeps that roadblock in the way of the World Championship. We saw more forward movement for Tessa’s story to get her rematch, Rosemary’s Dark War team is taking shape and we see a whole new side to Fallah Bahh.

Impact has introduced their newer wrestlers well the last few weeks, and I like how they’re keeping Ethan Page very relevant on the show, especially after signing his Monster Mafia buddy Josh Alexander (somewhere Greg DeMarco rejoices).

The overall in-ring work was a little short and lacking, but it made complete sense for stories being told. That doesn’t take away from the fact the show was still pretty entertaining and packed a lot of little stories into 2 hours. Definitely has more of that 90s wrestling feel since even the lower card stories get a few minutes on nearly every episode.

Twitch Views:

• Week 1: High – 10,350 / Low – 8,500
• Week 2: High – 8,000 / Low – 6,500 
• Week 3: High – 8,500 / Low – 7,900  
• Week 4: High – 7,100 / Low – 5,300
• Week 5: High – 7,450 / Low – 5,650
• Uncaged: High – 9,000/ Low – 8,000
• Week 6: High – 8,025/ Low – 5,300
• Week 7: High – 14,400/Low – 9,800

Umm…what!? I don’t know what happened this week, but the numbers exploded early and after eclipsing 11k it never dropped below that. Not sure if word of mouth talking about how good of a product Impact is, finally started paying off, or 3 straight weeks of extra Melissa Santos keeps people coming back. So we get a new Twitch record high for Impact and the average was the best it’s been since moving to Twitch.

So yeah, all positive notes for Impact this week. Good show, spike in Twitch viewers and stories getting deeper. Oh, and Disco…err…Glenn, he’s tremendous.