As Bound For Glory 2020 approaches this October I feel like it’s around the time of year where I should be making a wishlist for IMPACT Wrestling’s year ahead. I know it might be a little early but BFG season makes me feel like a kid at Christmas and I personally just can’t wait to get my letter written up and off to Santa so he can start putting the elfs to work. We are already on the road to the big event TV wise so why not, join me @ChatChatterson as I run down all my wants for IMPACT Wrestling between Bound For Glory 2020 and Bound For Glory 2021, are you ready Wrestling Santa? Let’s go!
Kurt Angle vs. Ken Shamrock
Now that Kurt Angle is a free agent and going by his Twitter, still training like an animal, how could you not want to see this match? I know for all intents and purposes Kurt has hung up his boots but really your last match in wrestling is only until your next one. Ken Shamrock returned to IMPACT Wrestling in 2019 and has had a great run, feuding most notably with Sami Callihan. and being inducted into the IMPACT Wrestling Hall of Fame. After he and Callihan failed to pick up the IMPACT Tag Championships at Slammiversary it seems as though Shamrock has taken a hiatus from the company. What better way to bring the World’s Most Dangerous Man back than setting him on a collision course with a fellow legend in Kurt Angle? Both men are masters of the Ankle Lock and are as legit as it gets, let’s see them throw down and find out who can pop the others’ ankle first. Mmmh-Mmmh bone crunching goodness.
Suicide Comes Alive
This is a personal one and I talk about it a lot on my Twitter, I want a newfound focus on the Suicide character. Suicide is cool, his look is cool and his theme is cool. He’s a video game character come to life that is very reminiscent of Todd McFarlane comic book characters such as Spawn, Haunt and even Venom. In the coming year I’d like to see IMPACT Wrestling explore that marketability with the character and look to producing comic books, animated series and other entertainment mediums with the property, perhaps even working with McFarlane himself to make it happen. If anyone would know how to make dark comic heroes work it’s him. With all of that you’d of course need a dedicated push behind the character, in the year ahead let’s make that happen. If Japan can make magic with characters like Tiger Mask and Jushin Liger in those mediums then surely IMPACT can do similar with Suicide?
TNA: There’s No Place Like Home
In early 2020, across WrestleMania weekend no less, IMPACT Wrestling was set to bring us a TNA tribute show. A stacked and well anticipated nod to the company’s past that was highly anticipated by wrestling enthusiasts from all corners of the fandom. Aces and Eights were coming back, Ultimate X and King of the Mountain were announced, Vince Russo was rumoured to make an appearance and Shark Boy was on the poster! Who doesn’t love Shark Boy?! I certainly do. Then? The Coronavirus Nation attacked. We all know what happened next so I don’t have to go into all of that but here’s the deal, 2021? WrestleMania weekend? Let’s run the event. There’s no need to shelve the idea for good because the idea itself is HYPE AF and I think we all want to see it. So, I beg of IMPACT Wrestling, give us what we want. There really is no place like home, especially for IMPACT fans who have been watching since TNA Weekly PPV 1 like me.
Ethan Page, Main Eventer
Right now it seems like IMPACT Wrestling are reshuffling their upper-card as recently we’ve seen Trey Miguel and Rich Swann make their way to the top of the billing. With EC3 and Eric Young coming back to the company it’s starting to look like the main event scene might be a little busy but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be room for talent that IMPACT fans naturally connect with. Specifically dastardly yet loveable rogue “All Ego” Ethan Page. He clearly loves working for IMPACT, he is a well known fan of everything the company is and was, he’s dedicated and he’s talented. If there’s anyone you should be focused on building a brand around it’s someone who is invested in it as much as Ethan Page is. While best suited as a baddy “All Ego” is funny, dorky and really endearing so could easily fill a role as a babyface too, heck maybe we could even see Karate Man kicking ass at the top of the card? No matter how it happens I want to see it and I want to see it soon, Wrestling Santa, you know what to do.
WrestleHouse Season 2
While WrestleHouse “Season 1” was a weekly TV segment based in a weird Rosemary induced demon realm and I’m not quite sure how we’d get back to that so quickly, WrestleHouse Season 2 is much needed and very welcomed by the fanbase. Everything about WrestleHouse was great, from the comedy to the character development to how it was used as a storytelling platform. With fans across the internet calling for WrestleHouse to become a stand alone reality show perhaps that could be something the company could explore but either way I want to see a whole new cast of characters finding themselves in the zany world where Tommy Dreamer reigns supreme and all conflicts are resolved by one iconic catchphrase…MAAAAATTCCHHHH TIIIIIMMMEEEE!!
As far as my choices for the next cast of contestants? Tommy Dreamer, Ethan Page, The Motor City Machine Guns, The Good Brothers as Sex Ferguson and Chad 2 Badd, Suicide, Rohit Raju, Tasha Steelz and Kiera Hogan, Tenille Dashwood and Kaleb with a K and Hernandez. Sounds like a fun bunch to me.
IMPACT vs. ROH
Finally it seems as though we’re coming out of the COVID era and the wrestling landscape looks very different. Some promotions have taken a big hit and missed out on lots of exciting moments that they had planned for the year ahead. One of those promotions is ROH which right now is just getting round to taping their first shows since the world shut down. With IMPACT Wrestling star EC3 working those tapings and currently embroiled in a mind-game fuelled feud with Moose over the TNA Championship it’s easy to imagine a partnership forming between the two promotions, each giving the other a leg up and breeding some excitement within the wrestling world. How cool would it be to see IMPACT Wrestling creating a WrestleMania weekend of their own with Bound For Glory and featuring a IMPACT vs. ROH supercard over that weekend? Any wrestling fan worth their salt would be down for that and the talent pool between the two promotions is so deep and diverse that there’s no shortage of interesting and entertaining matchups. The Rascalz vs. Mexa Squad? Sami Callihan vs. PCO? Rush vs. Eddie Edwards? Lethal and Gresham vs. The North? The possible matches are endless. Come on, you know you want it.
Beautiful Hall of Famers
The IMPACT Hall of Fame is one filled with diversity, we’ve had Women’s Wrestlers, Tag Teams, Referees, TNA Originals and Industry Legends. One thing it doesn’t have yet however is an iconic IMPACT Wrestling stable. My nomination and group of talent I’d like to see return to IMPACT, at the very least for a Hall of Fame induction, is the Beautiful People. The pretty mean pugilists are iconic with the glory years of IMPACT and were a huge ratings draw for the show, their segments always doing well with fans for one reason or another, I personally couldn’t comment. Regardless, Velvet Sky, Angelina Love and Madison Rayne not only have so many accolades together as a group but as individuals that as Hall of Famers they would be some of the most accomplished among their peers. While Angelina and Velvet are still currently under contract with ROH and paired with Mandy Leon as The Allure if we get our IMPACT/ROH pairing around Bound For Glory time perhaps the two companies would be nice enough to work something out to allow this to happen. These women deserve recognition for all of their contributions to the company and the year ahead just seems like the perfect time to make it happen, it’s about time the IMPACT HoF got a massive injection of girl power!
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