Impact Wrestling is 13 days away from Bound for Glory! Deonna Purrazzo’s angle with Kylie Rae heats up as she tries to send Kimber Lee at the smiley one to do damage. Eric Young is hoping his handy work last is enough to quell the determination of his challenger.

We also get to wonder exactly what else develops with the return of Dangerous Ken Shamrock. Can Rosemary convince Havok to help he resurrect James Mitchell? Will Alisha ever learn how to speak English?

Find out tonight on Dragon Ba- no…this is Impact Wrestling. Watch the show.

.@TheMooseNation now knows where he needs to go on the hunt for @therealec3 and the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. #IMPACTonAXSTV pic.twitter.com/HSSV5Xqju6

— IMPACT (@IMPACTWRESTLING) October 14, 2020

Ratings:

• Rosemary & Taya vs Havok & Nevaeh vs Kiera Hogan & Tasha Steelz: Rosemary wins via Double Underhook Cradle Slam – ** ½
• Fallah Bahh vs Crazzy Steve: Steve wins via Roll-Up – **
• Cody Deaner, Tenille Dashwood, Johnny Swinger, Tommy Dreamer & Brian Myers vs Hernandez, Cousin Jake, Alisha Edwards, Heath & Rhino: Heath via Wake Up Call – **
• Kimber Lee w/Deonna Purrazzo vs Kylie Rae: Kylie wins via Crossface – *** ¼
• NoDQ Match: Madman Fulton w/Ace Austin vs Doc Gallows w/Karl Anderson: Double Count Out LG wins via Double Chokeslam – ***

Results:

Rosemary & Taya vs Havok & Nevaeh vs Kiera Hogan & Tasha Steelz

Nevaeh comes out on Rosemary with a few cradle variations, which has Rosemary looking for an exit. Rosemary manages to kick out and force Nevaeh back to her corner; cooperative moves gives Taya a pinfall chance, but then Nevaeh turns things around to bring in Havok. Kiera and Tasha are on the outside just talking smack and enjoying watching the other two teams beat on one another.

Taya starts fighting back and gets a small advantage until Tasha and Kiera distract Taya so Havok can lay into her in the Hogan/Steelz corner. Tasha tags herself in and we see some opportunistic attacks on Taya. Kiera gets caught with a German Suplex and Taya brings Rosemary back into the ring. The quick tags aren’t allowing for anyone to gain momentum, but interestingly, Rosemary pushes Kiera into the Nevaeh/Havok corner and extends her hand to Nevaeh. This is either a concerted effort to destroy Kiera and Tasha or Rosemary trying to play nice since she needs Havok to resurrect James Mitchell.

Kiera and Tasha get a little offense put together, but Nevaeh hits a Facebuster to disorient Tasha, and brings Havok in. Havok cleans house, Rosemary hits the blind tag on Havok, and goes at Tasha, but Tasha counters. Rosemary catches Tasha’s Crossbody attempt into a Fall Away Slam. This starts the domino effect of everyone hitting a few moves, pile up on the outside, Tasha feigns a dive then dances around that she’s too smart, Rosemary hits the spear and then then the Double Underhooker Cradle Slam for the finish.

.@steveofcrazzy is wondering if @FALLAH1 has anything to get off his chest. Like a large stack of money for example. #IMPACTonAXSTV pic.twitter.com/tYpsqkLR48

— IMPACT (@IMPACTWRESTLING) October 14, 2020

Aww…Jake just wants to dance…

The stakes are high next week – if @WeAreRosemary can defeat @FearHavok then Havok will assist in the resurrection of Father James Mitchell. #IMPACTonAXSTV pic.twitter.com/pxkYhJwlBf

— IMPACT (@IMPACTWRESTLING) October 14, 2020

Fallah Bahh vs Crazzy Steve

This is all brought on because Fallah seems to not want to part with the wad on money he stole from Hernandez. Steve called him out in the wedding party segment, and now we get to see if Gollum can beat Steve and defend his precious money.

Steve challenges Fallah to “monkey see monkey do” so he takes his shirt off stripper Johnny Swinger style, then tells Fallah to do it, and Fallah just says “I’m self-conscious”, trying to play the victim. Steve keeps urging Fallah to do the right thing, but Fallah goes full Gollum clutching the money and trying to fight off Steve like the money has a spell on him.

Fallah catches Steve, tries the Samoan Drop, Steve slips off, rips Fallah’s shirt and exposes the money around his neck. Fallah covers the money, Steve rolls him up and wins the match. So now everyone knows Fallah has money, including Hernandez.

Funny and effective for the story.

The stakes are insanely high at #BFG2020 – if either @HEATHXXII or @Rhyno313 win the Call Your Shot Gauntlet, Heath gets his IMPACT contract.

But if they lose, BOTH OF THEM are gone from IMPACT. #IMPACTonAXSTV @ScottDAmore pic.twitter.com/stvkSktsTo

— IMPACT (@IMPACTWRESTLING) October 14, 2020

Cody Deaner, Tenille Dashwood, Johnny Swinger, Tommy Dreamer & Brian Myers vs Hernandez, Cousin Jake, Alisha Edwards, Heath & Rhino

This match boils down to seeding in the Bound for Glory gauntlet. Winning team, faces each other next week in a 5 way, winner gets to enter at #20.

Swinger acts like he wants to start, tags in Tenille and Alisha begs Heath for the tag. Since the gauntlet is intergender, it makes sense that this could technically use intergender rules. Alisha puts up a decent fight against Tenille, but Tenille eventually brushes her off and tags in Cody. Cody checks on Alisha and Lish…well we get some character work. She says she remembers him from Wrestle House as Deaner…but she still doesn’t know which one. But she has a new friend she wants him to meet, Horrendez. Josh is befuddled and Madison explains that the locker room calls those “Lish-isms”. Josh has a great line of “So the fact that she doesn’t know names and can’t say words is a thing?” – he has such golden super dork lines sometimes.

Hernandez doesn’t care so he shakes Rhino’s hand and starts marking out. He chants ECW and gets excited before Rhino drops him with a shoulder tackle. Rhino tags in Jake and Jake says that was cool, so Cody stops him and tags in Dreamer so Jake gets his own ECW moment. This is great character work, I don’t mind the slower pace since it’s funny. Hernandez cheats, Cody comes in to yell at Jake and say “He cheats! And you’re a babyface!” So Jake tries to get the referee to disqualify him. This…this is just so god damn ridiculous I can’t be mad. It’s like watching a DDT halfway through a nice wine bottle.

Hernandez wipes out the apron standing enemy team, except Tenille, she’s checking out pictures on Kaleb’s phone. Dreamer tries to tag in Myers, Myers moves, but then Dreamer tags him with a punch and throws him in. Heath Slater tags in to face Curt Hawkins…wait…I mean…shuddup you know who. Heath takes a solid hot tag, Myers sweeps the leg, tries to get the win but Swinger tags himself in and gets caught by Heath with the Wake Up Call, for the pinfall victory.

Sami runs into Eddie Edwards, Eddie and Sami scuffle, and then Shamrock shows up to whoop Eddie’s ass while Sami takes video and cheers on Shamrock. Dangerous Ken is back, and I like it.

Kimber Lee w/Deonna Purrazzo vs Kylie Rae

Kimber and Kylie are fairly even through the beginning of the match, but Kylie strings a few moves together and gets the ball rolling. Kylie goes for an apron Frankensteiner, but Kimber catches her and Powerbombs her into the apron. After the Powerbomb, Kimber starts taking advantage of referee counts, choking Kylie in the ropes, pushing her around and just general heel bully tactics.

When Kylie starts getting angry, then we see the match start to turn. Kylie Special gives her an opening, and the look on her face is more of the serious expression we saw when she snapped on Kimber last week. Kimber tries to slow things down by catching Kylie with a Liger Bomb, but Kylie’s anger boils over. Deonna tries to distract her, but Kylie does the standing switch, Inside Cradle, but then transitions beautifully into the Smile to the Finish, but changes her submission to a Crossface, causing Kimber to tap out and Kylie is enraged, she doesn’t break the submission until Deonna interferes.

NoDQ Match: Madman Fulton w/Ace Austin vs Doc Gallows w/Karl Anderson

LG throws a boot in Fulton’s face, Fulton throws LG into the corner via some Snake Eyes. They go out to brawl and everyone loses track of the count, so initially it’s called a Double Count Out. After the commercial the match is restarted as a No DQ “Do what you want” match.

This goes exactly how you’d expect two big dudes with weapons to go. As soon as one got too full of themselves, the other caught them with a Boot through the chair to the face, or a well-placed strike to go on the offensive. Not a ton to take away from this match beyond the fact that it’s a fun brawl leading towards the 4 way tag match at Bound for Glory.

After the match we see Eric Young come out and demand answers on his Bound for Glory match. Scott D’Amore receives a phone call, comes out and there’s really solid back and forth between the two. Scott wonders where Eric went wrong, and Eric just wants to hear that Rich is too hurt to compete. After a bit of a slow roll, Scott says Rich is ahead of schedule and still slated to face EY. EY snaps, attacks Scott, Spinning Toe Hold, and the Rich makes the save.

Overall Score: 7/10

Given the fact we have one more Impact! before Slammiversary, this episode definitely felt like it. Lead ups partially told, partially sold, and just had an air of incoming redundancy. Plus the in-ring work wasn’t exactly mind blowing and really felt like setting the stage.

The best part of the show was the Rhino/Heath segment. After Heath called him out a bit last week, basically blaming the entire idea on Rhino saying the grass was greener; Rhino shows how much he cares about his friend. Putting his job on the line just for a chance to get Heath a job is a really nice story. It’s like all wholesome and what not, or whatever kids make sub Reddits for nowadays.

Everything else that happened will have another step next week, so that didn’t help in assisting this episode to feel overly relevant. Though ending on the cinematic bridge fight and a few old school TNA references popped me being the 16 year TNA fan that I am.

Not a bad episode by any stretch of the imagination, just probably unnecessary in the grand scheme of things.