10 Worrying Signs From TNA Impact Wrestling's Reboot Episode
5. The Main Event
Impact Wrestling’s main event pitted Bobby Lashley against Alberto El Patron with the Heavyweight Championship on the line. There’s nothing wrong with this on-paper: they’re both outstanding wrestlers, and easily the two biggest names that the company had at their disposal on the show. As with everything else on Impact’s reboot, however, the execution was nothing short of destructive.
Patron and Lashley wrestled an overlong, slow-paced match that wasn’t particularly exciting, but wasn’t objectively bad either. Things got incredibly convoluted after the commercial break, however: the match saw not one, but two separate referee bumps, before Patron, the apparent babyface, blasted Lashley with the title to take the win.
It was an overbooked mess of a finish that closed Impact on the worst note possible. Furthermore, it continued the company’s longstanding problem of ex-WWE guys joining the promotion and receiving an immediate push at the expense of pre-established stars. It seems like Impact are destined to repeat the same mistakes forever, and while Patron could make a fantastic champion at some point down the line, putting him over Lashley under such contrived circumstances only weakens a man who should be the company’s biggest asset.