TNA utilized one of its newest imports, Moose, to hype Lashley and Bound For Glory ...
It seems likely coming out of this week's episode of Impact Wrestling that TNA sticks with the Lashley-ECIII and Bennett-Moose matches at Bound for Glory, but it wouldn’t be shocking to see them book a tag-team main event for Impact either Sept. 22 or Sept. 29, ahead of the pay-per-view on Oct. 2.
ECIII was, for the most part, held off this show. He was referenced and coming back from the beating he took last week showed some good resilience in the final segment when he saved Moose from a 2-on-1 against Bennett and Lashley.
On this show, Moose essentially challenged Lashley to a fight in the main-event slot, and that segment closed this broadcast.
The Lashley-Moose heat has been building for a while, but it seemed somewhat odd that the boiling point came tonight. It just felt out of nowhere. Moose and Lashley crossed paths when Moose first came into the company, and they had some backstage interactions a few weeks ago when Lashley tried to lure Moose away from Bennett, but to all of sudden pick this show as the one where Moose wanted to fight Lashley seemed to come out of nowhere.
Bound for Glory is really starting to come together at this point. The card projects to look something like this:
– Lashley vs. ECIII for the World Title
– Matt & Jeff Hardy vs. Decay for the Tag Titles
– Aron Rex vs. Drew Galloway for the Grand Championship
– Maria vs. Gail Kim for the Knockouts Title
– D.J. Z defending the X Division Title?
– Rockstar Spud vs. Braxton Sutter in a gimmick match?
Elsewhere on the show, after building up the X Division a few weeks ago and featuring D.J. Z winning the X Division Title, this marks the second week in a row the division isn’t seen on Impact.
Despite taking some good steps in this episode, TNA has two more weeks to hype its biggest pay-per-view of the year, and they should do it making Bound for Glory feel like a bigger show. It runs the risk of feeling like an episode of Impact you have to pay money for, especially with the event taking place in Orlando. If TNA is only running two pay-per-views, major storylines need to be paid off here. This can’t just be a show to forward stories. Certain things need to end at Bound for Glory. With only two pay-per-views, Bound for Glory needs to be a night where several things culminate.
1. Aron Rex beat Trevor Lee via pin in Round 2 of a Grand Championship tournament match
This was a good showing for Rex in his first match with the company. Lee looked good in spurts and was able to get in some offense, but Rex won the first round and then won the round round via pin. He had most of the offense in the match and the result was never really in doubt.
2. Braxton Sutter beat Rockstar Spud in an empty-arena match
Between the Hardy videos and matches like this, TNA is doing a good job of incorporating content on every episode that can’t be spoiled before the show. You can’t run an empty arena mach every week or it kills the concept, but they’re finding different ways to make sure they run some content that can’t be spoiled prior to its original airing. That’s smart, although it isn’t impacting the ratings immediately, it seems.
It was clunky trying to believe Mathews when he said the crowd was emptied out of the arena “for their safety.” It’s not as if Sutter and Spud endangered a fan prior to this. They should have had a plant fan get injured in their brawl last week, which would have helped better explain why this was an empty-arena match. I also would have preferred they just admit that it was taped earlier in the day and not try to convince the crowd that they emptied an entire arena during a commercial break, and there wasn’t one bag of popcorn or one soda cup left in the aisles. … They had no problem admitting the Lashley-ECIII press conference last week was held earlier in the day.
3. Gail Kim won a gauntlet match to become No. 1 contender of the Knockouts Title
Gail was very good here, as you would expect. TNA also debuted Laurel Van Ness, who is Chelsea Green on the independents, and she was aligned with Maria, almost replacing Allie but she's being booked as a much better wrestling threat than Allie.
4. Eddie Edwards beat Mahabali Shera via submission in Round 3 of a Grand Championship tournament match
Good storytelling here. It seems odd that in the four first-round matches, none of them went to decision. I would have figured TNA would use at least one decision to set up the idea that decisions are possible.
The semifinals will now feature Aron Rex, Eli Drake, Eddie Edwards, and Drew Galloway, as they seem to be headed towards a Rex-Galloway match in the final at Bound for Glory.