11 Ups & 5 Downs From Impact Wrestling (May 12)

1. Missed Opportunity, Part Two

Talking of missed opportunities with this tournament: Rohit Raju. What happened? It was just last week when he was being built up as a credible contender to perhaps win the whole thing, but here he is being eliminated in the opening round. Granted, this loss wasn't quite as bad as Madman Fulton's seeing as Raju lost to Trey, a current day roster member. However, at least Fulton is already classed as a top-tier Impact star.

While the end result wasn't what we had hoped for, Raju still got in some decent flurries of offence, most notably a pouncing knee strike that caught the Rascalz member mid-flight. Sadly, 'The Desi Hitman' can partly blamed himself for the loss due to his own cockiness. He connected with a neckbreaker and looked to follow it up with some sort of suplex, which was countered into a match-ending small package. An understandable temper tantrum came for both Rohit and your writer following the bell.

Now, we could focus on the fact that Raju's loss could be classed as a fluke as it was a surprise rollup, but it's a Down for a reason. Like with Fulton's loss, this was a chance to establish Rohit Raju as a believable singles wrestler that could get on just fine without anyone by his side. Yes, this could be just the beginning of a new path for the striker as opposed to him just being Moose's replacement, which would be the ideal option. On the other hand though, there's also the possibility this was indeed a one and done deal for Gama Singh's disciple.