IMPACT! Wrestling Review - June 7, 2018

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Impact Tag Team Champions Z & E def. Aerostar and Drago

Z & E have been the saving grace of what has been a rather depleted tag team division in IMPACT over the last month. They weren't doing anything in singles competition, anyway, so putting them together as a team was smart on the company's part. They always bring the best out of their opponents and that was the case here as well. These four received enough time to contest a very entertaining opening match and kick off the night on a high note.

LAX def. Cult of Lee

While I found the first tag team match of the show to be superior to this, I still liked this bout and thought it was well-wrestled. The story with LAX has been that they have lost their edge without Konnan, but now that King (f.k.a. Eddie Kingston) has joined up with the group, they seem to have gotten their groove back, resulting in a victory here for them. I'm interested to see where this angle ultimately leads, because it appears King has something up his sleeve and shouldn't be trusted.

Eli Drake Attacked Moose on Fact of Life

Drake is one of the best talkers in the game today, so I relish any opportunity to hear him speak in a setting like this. His promo started out slow without any real direction, but then he took aim at Moose and it started to pick up. I appreciated how he brought up his win over Moose from a few months ago that gave Drake the world title Feast or Fired briefcase to begin with. The subsequent attack from Drake on Moose was also well done and effective in building toward their match for next week.

Brian Cage def. Rohit Raju

Needless to say, Cage has been on an absolute tear lately and no one has been able to put a stop to his destruction. He just became the No. 1 contender to the Impact X-Division Championship at last week's Under Pressure event, so this was merely designed to serve as a showcase for him ahead of that championship clash. Matt Sydal got in his face afterward by bringing up his "third eye" (or something weird like that), only for Cage to lay him out.

Eddie Edwards and Sami Callihan Fought in an Unsanctioned Street Fight

While this was far from an actual match, I loved how this was shot and felt like a fight in a movie. Most of it was over-the-top, mind you, but the same can be said about this entire feud and it has worked for them so far. Taking their bad blood to the forest was the only way for their score to be settled, though this didn't last long before Edwards' wife Alisha and Tommy Dreamer arrived to prevent him from basically killing Callihan. Callihan got away and Edwards hit Dreamer in the stomach out of anger. I could certainly see a storyline between Edwards and Dreamer stemming from this.

Overall Show

Once again, IMPACT put together a real solid show where the two hours flew by and everything served a purpose. The Unsanctioned Street Fight was the focal point of the episode, but there was plenty of hype for next week's two big matchups (Moose vs. Drake and Sydal vs. Cage) and the two tag team matches were very good. If you're still sleeping on IMPACT, there is something seriously wrong, because this company is quietly creating a cohesive and coherent string of shows that I now look forward to weekly.