Impact Wrestling Rebellion 2021

You know... I ought to be talking about Blood & Guts. But... tomorrow.

In the meantime, we've got Rebellion from two weeks ago; the biggest show of the year for Impact Wrestling featuring the biggest match in the history of the wrestling business, a once-in-a-lifetime moment that seldom gets witnessed by wrestling fans around the world and of all ages. I am, of course, referring to the highly anticipated match-up between Brian Myers and Matt Cardonas.

Oh... and Kenny Omega defends his title against some jobber who is also TNA World Champion or something.

So, for the second time this year, I'm taking time to watch an Impact Wrestling PPV and with a big time hook like Myers vs. Cardonas (or, you know, the other thing) as a big hook, I'm fairly certain this show is going to do big PPV numbers... by TNA standards, at least.

Aw, let's forget that noise and revisit the show, which I will admit only saw the replay this past weekend as I had better things to do on the night of the show. No doubt Don Callis is losing no sleep over this revelation. Also, not much to say in general, so forgive the somewhat skimmy nature of these musings.

Josh Alexander defeated X-Division Champion Ace Austin and TJP to win the title in what I thought was a nice action-packed opener. Nice to see Ethan Page's former partner rise up to higher standings while the man who was killed by the Karate Man is paired up with Scorpio Sky, who also wanted to break away from a pack or something... I'm off track there, but this was a good opener and a nice way to kick off the show.

Former long-reigning Knockouts Tag-Team Champion Eric Young (no,really) got (legit) injured during tapings, so he got a replacement in the man formerly known as Big Cass, who looks like a very tall Edge. No, seriously, look at that guy's face in the image above and tell me he doesn't look like Edge. It's almost uncanny. He looked good for the most part, though I think the name is somewhat awkward, as he's going by "W. Morrissey." Really? That's the best you could come up with? Why the W? Why not just use his real name, William Morrisey? Or just Bill Morris if that's too long? Did Impact have too many guys named William on their roster and they reached that quota to necessitate an awkward name change? Or did they run out of space on their name tag?

Shit, we got Brian Myers, we got Matt Cardona, they're using their real full names, but we cross the line at William?

Brian Myers defeated Matt Cardona in a WWE-style match minus the finish where Cardona looked to have tweaked his leg and Myers just punches him in the face. Honestly, I don't mind that.

Jordynne Grace and Rachael Ellering defeated Knockouts Tag-Team Champions Fire N Flava (Keira Hogan and some other lady whose name I forgot, sorry) to win the titles. This was alright, I guess. Not much to say here.

Trey Miguel defeated Sami Callihan in a Last Man Standing match where Trey finished him with a Cutter for the ten-count... even though you had more than enough more impressive looking spots that would've been better finishes, but no, let's go with a simple RKO Ace Crushing wrestling move. I guess somebody saw that Randy Orton/Bray Wyatt match and thought "Cutters cut everything." By the way, did you know that Trey Miguel has heart and passion? That was the big takeaway I got from this... if I were to believe Matt Striker, who hasn't exactly been on top of his game here... but he haz duh hart, I tell ye.

Tag-Champs FinJuice (David "Son Of Fit" Finlay and Juice Robinson) defeated The Good Jobbers to retain the titles. Probably would've liked this match a little more if I was a regular viewer of New Japan stuff, but for what it was, it was perfectly acceptable tag-team wrestling.

Knockouts Champion Deonna Purrazzo defeated Tenille Dashwood to retain the title in what I  would charitably call a perfectly acceptable wrestling. I say that because I'll admit that I zoned out a couple times and this was doing anything, but from what I saw, it was a perfectly fine match. No complaints, otherwise.

There's a commercial for a bunch of Impact shows, including their big Slammiversary show where they tease potential returns of Samoa Joe and Mickie James... I'd imagine none of them actually shows up and we get someone with less impressive notoriety, but whatever they can do to attract people, I suppose.

So out comes Mauro Ranallo to do commentary for the main event of the show and right off the bat, the first thing that comes to mind is how incredibly tiny he is compared to D'Lo and Striker. Like it's almost like a twelve year old sharing the table with the bigger bullies. That's how tiny Mauro is comparatively.

And in the main event, AEW World Champion Kenny Omega defeated Impact World Jobberweight champion Rich Swann to win all the belts. And if you're wondering why Rich Swann is being called a jobberweight champion, you can thank Matt Striker for letting us all know that Kenny Omega is the man to beat, thereby making Rich Swann - the top champion of the promotion that Mr. Striker works for, mind you - the biggest geek in the history of the universe and killing off any belief that Swann has even one iota of a shot of winning.

Then again, that's the story of this whole feud, isn't it? Rich Swann, despite being the top champion in Impact, is no match for Kenny Omega and nothing has been done to convince us otherwise. I suppose that in the grand scheme of things, it makes sense to NOT try and go against the grain, but a little effort in trying to make things seem credible would've been nice.

Now, all that aside, this was a good main event. A fine back-and-forth match between Swann and Omega that slowed down a bit towards the end despite a ref bump that eventually saw Aubrey Edwards come in to block Kenny from using a chair, which she would follow by climbing a bus on Dynamite later that week. Not as heavy on the Good Jobber run ins, which is nice, but this was great stuff even with the very obvious ending.

And so that was Rebellion. A good opening match and a great main event bookending what was an otherwise okay show. Nothing stuck with me beyond those two matches, which makes for a more than adequate PPV offering, so no real complaints. I enjoyed this one for the most part.