IMPACT! Wrestling Review - May 10, 2018

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Z & E def. LAX

Yes, DJZ and Andrew Everett are a bit of a random tandem, not to mention DJZ has a great redemption story coming off his recent injury and I feel that will be overlooked/ignored if he's teaming with Everett. That said, I guess it's better than them floundering in the X-Division. They worked well together and produced a nice opening match with LAX. I was slightly surprised LAX lost clean, but I suppose Z & E are being groomed for an eventual tag title shot.

Grado def. Rohit Raju

Grado has been off IMPACT TV for some time, but it looks like he's being repacked with the former Katie Lea Burchill/Winter as his valet/girlfriend. She's now going by the name of Katrina (not to be confused with Lucha Underground's Catrina). This was a pretty basic bout that featured some fine comedic relief and gave Grado a victory in the reintroduction of his character.

AAA Latin American Champion El Hijo del Fantasma def. Aerostar, Drago and Taiji Ishimori in an Impact X-Division Championship No. 1 Contender's Four-Way Match

It was announced that this would be contested under lucha libre rules, though I didn't notice anything that made it different from your typical four-way. Nevertheless, this was a very fun match. They received plenty of time, and although the audience wasn't too invested in the action (probably because they didn't have an incentive to want to see any of the four win over the others), they came alive at certain spots. I'm looking forward to Fantasma vs. Matt Sydal for the X-Division title.

Moose def. Kongo Kong by Disqualification

This was one of those matches that was taped at another promotion's event, this time House of Hardcore. And good god, was it boring. I tend to expect that from most of Kong's matches, but this was more mundane than usual. Kong spent a majority of the match on offense and the crowd couldn't have cared less as a result. The cheap disqualification finish with Jimmy Jacobs confirms that this feud will continue, and I am not thrilled about that at all.

Impact World Champion Pentagon Jr. def. Impact World Tag Team Champion Eli Drake

I knew as the episode quickly came to a close that this would be a short main event, and I was definitely disappointed by that. It was a good match, but it could have been so much more if allowed to go longer than it did. This was a real waste of the Feast or Fired briefcase. If Drake was a true heel, why wouldn't he simply cash in the contract on the spot and not advertise it ahead of time?

Overall Show

I'd like to note that footage of a match Cage had against Takashi Sugiura in Pro Wrestling NOAH from last year (?) was shown, though I didn't dedicate a paragraph to it because it didn't air in its entirety and wasn't recent. That said, what I did catch of it was excellent, and you can watch the full matchup on YouTube here. As for the rest of this edition of IMPACT! Wrestling, it was a solid show on the whole. Nothing stood out as special, but a few steps were taken in furthering feuds and bringing back some familiar faces in Grado and Katrina as well as getting the team of Z & E off to a strong start.