7 Ups & 5 Downs From IMPACT Slammiversary 2023 (Review)

1. Oh, Canada

Everything was working against the originally-planned Bully Ray and Maclin vs. Scott D'Amore and PCO match - and then the match itself sucked.

Turned into Ray and Deaner vs. D'Amore and Eric Young, the match was slow and plodding, stodgy almost, with the Ray and D'Amore interactions between sterile and lacking the fire expected of such an apparently heated feud. As for Deaner - a strange replacement who tried his best to make it make sense - he added nothing to the match. Eric Young was the bout's only redeeming asset.

Special guest enforcer Darren McCarty - again, strange - got involved, too, aiding Scott in driving Bully Ray through a table, because of course he did, but this only came after the assigned referee walked out mid-match(!).

That wasn't the worst part of it, though; that, instead, would be when Eric Young pinned Deaner for the win, in spite of neither man being a part of this eternal saga until the week of the feud-ender.

Scott D'Amore is a prodigious promoter and booker. He's rebuilt IMPACT Wrestling back from the ground up, reaffirming it as a real alternative to wrestling fans disinterested in WWE and AEW in the same vein as ECW did in the '90s while the WWF and WCW were waging war. A prodigious pro wrestler, he is not. Let's hope this is the last we see of him in that God-awful lycra.