Rich Swann made his debut at the Impact tapings in Windsor earlier this month. Impact announced last night that he will be making his Impact debut next week. The former WWE Cruiserweight Champion mutually parted ways from the WWE in February after an incident with his wife (and current Knockouts Champion) Su Yung.
The following is scheduled for tonight’s Impact on Pop TV:
* Tonight is the final IMPACT Wrestling before we pack up and move north to Windsor, Ontario for the next 4 weeks. Tonight we will see the next step on the road to Slammiversary and so much more.
* Impact Tag Team Championship: (C) Z&E vs. LAX
* Madison Rayne vs. Taya Valkyrie
* See what happened between Impact Champion Austin Aries and Moose at the Slammiversary Press Conference!
* We will also hear from the man who has been causing chaos on IMPACT Wrestling for months. The Mystery Attacker who has taken out a slew of IMPACT employees and Roster Members. Killer Kross speaks for the first time tonight.
* oVe vs. Pentagon Jr. and Fantasma
The following is scheduled for tonight’s Impact on Pop TV:
* X-Division Championship: (C) Matt Sydal vs. Brian Cage
* Will the mystery attacker come forward?
* No DQ: Tessa Blanchard vs. Kiera Hogan
* Eli Drake vs. Mosse (winner faces Austin Aries in the main event at Slammiversary for the Impact world title)
* Jake Crist vs. El Hijo Del Fantasma
* Fallout from “The Fight in the Woods”
Impact Wrestling announced the hiring of Alicia Atout this week as their new backstage interviewer, officially replacing McKenzie Mitchell.
Mitchell was quietly released earlier this week after two years with Impact.
Atout commented on her hiring, while Mitchell commented on her departure via Twitter.
With Impact becoming more centered in Canada under the ownership of Anthem and more PPVs and TV tapings taking place in Canada, the hiring of Atout continues down that path as she is from Canada.
Prior to her hiring, Atout has done backstage interviewing for the Canadian independent promotion SMASH Wrestling and also hosts interviews with several performers in the wrestling and music fields on her website entitled AMBY.
Source: WrestleView
Tonight’s Impact on Pop TV:
* Will the mystery attacker come forward?
* A glimpse of the Undead Bride
* Madison Rayne discusses her career
* Austin Aries taking Impact Vacation after regaining the Impact World Title last week, but he will join Impact via FaceTime for an interview with Josh Mathews.
* LAX vs. Cult of Lee
* Eli Drake’s Fact of Life
* Brian Cage in action
Eli Drake is not booked for the July 22nd Impact Slammiversary pay-per-view in Toronto because he still has not committed to staying with the company, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Drake’s deal reportedly expired this past weekend but he did work the Impact Wrestling TV tapings, to lose a match. The two sides continue to talk but there is no word on a new contract being signed.
Regarding a possible return to WWE, The Observer confirms that there is interest as there has been talk of signing Drake within WWE in recent months.
Following a stint on The Rock’s TNT reality series The Hero in 2013, Drake signed a WWE developmental deal in mid-2013 but was released on August 1, 2014. He joined Impact in the spring of 2014.
Drake spoke with The Mirror back in April and recalled an October 2013 dark match plus his run in WWE NXT, saying NXT was “great and terrible” at the same time.
“Ah no, that was when I was already with WWE actually, my dark match in 2008 was me and [Gene] Snitsky against Cryme Tyme [in WWE’s ECW]. The Yoshi Tatsu thing was just kind of thrown on me last minute and that was a hell of an experience,” Drake said. “At the time – I think they were just messing with us half the time. Bill DeMott [former head coach of WWE’s Performance Center] came back and grabbed me five minutes before the match was supposed to happen. He said ‘are you ready?’ and I was like ‘yeah’ and he said ‘alright, it’s you and Yoshi, hurry up’. ‘Okay’. Ha ha. I put my stuff on and went out there and had a match. And believe me, it was a stinker. It was terrible.
“That whole run at NXT, it was great and terrible at the same time. I enjoyed it, I made a lot of friends from it, I actually liked being on some of the workout programmes they had us doing there, you’re able to stay crisp by staying in the ring four or five days a week, but at the same time, it was a lot of BS, especially with Bill DeMott there. But from what I gather now with him out of the picture, it sounds like things have changed for the better there. Hopefully the guys are enjoying it more.”
Drake also commented on if he sees himself staying with Impact or going to WWE, or elsewhere.
“It really depends. I am looking at all my options. I am very grateful for the opportunities Impact have given me and putting me on the stage they have put me on. I also have grown my bank account enormously! I’m doing well on that front. So I’m very grateful for it,” Drake said. “But at the same time, I am a businessman, I am going to look into any opportunities that are afforded to me and anybody who wants to talk and wants to throw numbers my way and anything like that, of course I am open to that. Will I stay with Impact? That’s a definite possibility. It could be a likelihood, I really don’t know. It really depends on what else is out there. But I am interested in any opportunity that comes my way, that’s for sure.”
Source: WrestlingINC
On the latest episode of the Killing The Town podcast, hosts Paul Lazenby and Impact Wrestling Vice President discussed IMPACT Wrestling accepting Chris Jericho’s invitation on his cruise in October and possibly challenging ROH. You can listen to the podcast here, below are some highlights courtesy of Wrestling Inc. reader Himanshu D:
“So we’re doing the press conference and Austin Aries is there, Moose, Madison Rayne, Gail Kim, and then Scott D’Amore, Ed Nordholm and myself were up on stage as the executive team and interestingly I figured most of the questions if not all would be about Slammiversary but we did get one question about Sami’s comments, and I guess there were more but after the one person asked then the others kinda let it go but they wanted to talk to me afterwards about it because I kinda hung around and talked to about 50 reporters there. The question was ‘What do you make of Sami’s comments?’ and I hadn’t had a lot of time to think about it because I was just real busy with TV but I basically said, ‘I think for once I kinda find myself agreeing with Sami.’
“I’ve never really talked to Chris about it because I haven’t had time the last few months but it’s like, ‘yeah, why isn’t IMPACT Wrestling on there?’. Forget my nearly 30 year friendship with Jericho, you’ve got Ring Of Honor and no one else and we know that sometimes those guys like to do things on their own and I’m sure there’s a reason for that but that’s not IMPACT’s kinda thing so I was like, ‘yeah that is interesting’ and so I kinda said at the press conference that I felt like maybe there was something to Sami’s comments and we may have to investigate that further and then Ed Nordholm, the president of IMPACT Wrestling, basically just piped up and said, ‘Well I think you guys are being too politically correct here. Yeah Sami’s right, we should be there and by the way we’re going.’ So I don’t know what that means other than I guess IMPACT Wrestling in some form or fashion is going on this cruise as Ed’s the boss and he says we’re going so I don’t know what form that’s gonna take. I assume that means Callihan is going which is disturbing. Just what you didn’t want. He worked himself into a shoot to apparently but with Sami, you shot yourself into a shoot.”
What other talent will be going:
“I don’t know what other talent. We haven’t had discussions about it but I see Jericho’s been tweeting about it. Well I’m used to dealing with Chris so I’m sure that’s gonna be fine. We’re not gonna buy our own cabins.”
The possibility of Impact vs. ROH on the cruise:
“I think, to use Sami’s language, ‘If Chris and Ring Of Honor have the intestinal fortitude to step up and say, ‘Yeah we’ll accept that challenge’, I think it’s what’s best for the Jericho Cruise and it’s definitely what’s best for the fans because you can see people love interpromotional, we’ve been doing Lucha Underground, we’ve got IMPACT vs UK coming up, so we’ve already been doing that stuff, breaking those paradigms of professional wrestling, that whole insular mentality of ‘we only work with who we work with’ etc. I think that we’re in a position now with this where there are some really cool stuff for the fans. IMPACT vs Ring Of Honor could be very interesting and I’ll be interested to have some internal discussions about who we might take on that cruise ’cause I don’t know other than Callihan and who knows whether he’s available or allowed to travel internationally.”
“I think that it’s an interesting thing that it’ll be the first time that you’ve really got Ring Of Honor in kind of the same… very enclosed space, I guess you’d say, with IMPACT Wrestling. Who knows exactly what is gonna happen with that. Should be interesting, we’ll see what happens.”
Source: WrestlingINC
Chris Jericho has announced on his official Instagram account that active members of the Impact Wrestling roster will be apart of his inaugural Chris Jericho’s Rock ‘N’ Wrestling Rager at Sea cruise this October. The cruise is scheduled to run from October 27-31.
Jericho announced the cruise last year and has been gradually announcing who will be part of the event over the past year. There was speculation in recent weeks a deal between Jericho and Impact may be in the works, as Jericho has been posting cryptic social media posts. To book your reservation, you may do so here.
Source: WrestleView
Impact Press Conference Notes from their Slammiversary Press Conference that took place on Monday in Toronto.
* Impact Champion Austin Aries vs. MOOSE for the IMPACT Championship was announced as the main event for the Slammiversary PPV on July 22 in Toronto.
* It was announced that the Impact Championship and the Impact Grand Championship, both currently held by Austin Aries, will be merged into one undisputed Impact Championship. This ends the lineage of the Impact Grand Championship that was created in 2016 and was initially part of a 3-round, judging system for all title matches under the short-lived Billy Corgan regime.
* Former Impact X-Division Champion and current NJPW star “Bone Soldier” Taiji Ishimori will be returning to Impact at Slammiversary.
Interesting to note that Ishimori’s recent time in New Japan as part of the Best of the Super Juniors tournament, where Ishimori lost in the Finals on Monday to Hiromu Takahashi, was referenced by Impact, along with his new “Bone Soldier” moniker that Ishimori has taken since joining Bullet Club upon his New Japan return in May.
This looks to be another move by Impact in an attempt to reforge a working relationship with New Japan, as Impact executive Don Callis also does English color commentary for major New Japan events.
The full press conference aired live on Facebook and can be viewed by clicking here.
Source: WrestleView
New Japan Pro Wrestling is continuing to gain popularity as a promotion. Although the company has been in operation since 1972, it has only been the past few years that they have made such a strong American presence. For years, NJPW has partnered with American promotions such as the NWA and Ring of Honor, even featuring these promotions and the NWA and ROH World Championships on their annual Wrestle Kingdom pay-per-view.
However, due to the ongoing western popularity, New Japan had their first American independent event last year, G1 Special in USA, which crowned Kenny Omega as the inaugural IWGP United States Champion after winning an eight-man tournament. Since then, the promotion announced two more U.S. events, Strong Style Evolved which occurred on March 25, and G1 Special in San Francisco, scheduled for July 7.
With the influx of gaijin (non-Japanese, or “foreign”) wrestlers now frequently competing in New Japan, such as Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, Cody, Will Ospreay, Marty Scurll, Juice Robinson, Michael Elgin, Zack Sabre, Jr., Jay White, Bad Luck Fale, Killer Elite Squad, Beretta, and more, other names have become interested in joining the promotion. According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, former Intercontinental Champion John Morrison has inquired to New Japan to compete for the company.
Morrison, 38, left WWE in 2011. Since then, he has competed for a number of promotions, primarily Impact Wrestling, Lucha Underground, and AAA. According to the Observer, Morrison’s relationship with AAA may cause a snag in being able to join New Japan. There had been some interest previously, but this same issue kept him from joining the New Japan roster. New Japan typically does not use anyone from the AAA roster, due to their working relationship with CMLL. However, New Japan executives have seemingly softened their restrictions on the AAA ban, since Rey Mysterio is competing for both promotions.
Source: WrestlingINC
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