IMPACT Wrestling presents its Rebellion pay-per-view on Sunday night and announced its schedule of major events for the next three months.
During a promo segment, it was revealed that the next two IMPACT Plus specials will be “Under Siege” on Saturday, May 15th followed by “Against All Odds” on Saturday, June 12th.
Both dates coincide with the UFC’s next two pay-per-view events with UFC 262 on May 15th featuring Michael Chandler vs. Charles Oliveira and Nate Diaz vs. Leon Edwards. The June 12th date falls on the same one as UFC 263 featuring Israel Adesanya vs. Marvin Vettori for the Middleweight Championship.
IMPACT’s next major pay-per-view will be in July with its annual Slammiversary event. While no date was mentioned they did air a promo teasing several past TNA talents with brief shots of Samoa Joe, Mickie James, and Chelsea Green who were just released by WWE. They also included archived TNA footage of Kazuchika Okada and Tetsuya Naito when the pair wrestled in TNA, and a shot of Keiji Muto.
There were also images of the Mexican and Australian flags, which people will naturally connect with Andrade and The IIconics. IMPACT used the same campaign of teasing several arrivals for last year’s Slammiversary event after the 2020 cuts by WWE.
The promo includes the tagline, “Our World Changes Again”.
Regarding the talents recently cut by WWE, they are all believed to have 90-day no-compete clauses, which would mean they would be eligible to appear elsewhere beginning Wednesday, July 14th.
Thought this worked well last year at a time they really needed attention (unlike now with Omega fully integrated), but going back to the well (especially if they don’t actually wind up with any of the bigger names) just reminds people of all the stars they aren’t big enough to get. And using the word “again” suggests that we didn’t just see Eric Young and the Major Brothers being their WWE main roster gains last year.
In some ways, its too bad this didnt happen months ago. Imagine how big that match yesterday would have felt if it was TNA Champion Samoa Joe vs AEW Champion Kenny Omega. Nothing against Swan, but he isnt Samoa Joe.
Of course this is all under the assumption that Joe is cleared, who knows his medical status.
It’s just funny to me how Impact is still so obsessed with getting WWE talent and not making any big character changes to them. Plus they get time on big shows.
Why the hell did Ryder and Hawkins get a match last night and Chris Bey wasn’t on the show?
More people know Ryder & Hawkins than the rest of Impact’s roster. And all promotions will go after ex-WWE wrestlers simply because they’re more recognisable. Name value goes a long way in wrestling with every promotion. It’s not confusing at all.