IMPACT Wrestling: Too Late to Say Sorry

In 1961, You’re in the Picture premiered on CBS. It was a game show in which celebrities would stick their face in a cardboard cutout and guess what the picture was by asking “yes or no” questions. After starring in The Honeymooners and his own variety series, national comedic treasure Jackie Gleason was asked to moderate the show.

The first episode was so bad that Gleason spent the next episode apologizing to viewers.

During the first episode of IMPACT Wrestling’s new era, another rotund, legendary entertainer apologized to viewers: “Dirty” Dutch Mantell.

Last seen on WWE TV as Donald Trump’s inspiration Zeb Colter, the 40-year ring veteran entered the IMPACT Zone for the first time on camera, chronicling his experience in the business before touching on his previous time working in creative for TNA. Mantell explained that he was brought back to the company to help make IMPACT great because he was there when times were good. He mentioned now-WWE stars AJ Styles, Samoa Joe and Bobby Roode as well as WWE Hall of Famers Sting, Kurt Angle and Kevin Nash as pillars of the company’s past greatness.

When they left the company, they told Mantell that there was a lack of leadership, vision and respect. Mantell said the fans left, too. So in order to make IMPACT great again, Mantell told new majority owner Anthem Sports to “Bring the people back.”

Although Mantell didn’t take blame for the company’s downward spiral over much of this decade, he appeared to be offering a mea culpa to the fans. The entire episode served the same purpose as Jeremy Borash joined the commentary team to honor past stars and bash Dixie Carter’s proxy, Josh Matthews. Another former executive Bruce Prichard returned to praise the company’s past and promote current top star Bobby Lashley as part of the campaign to make IMPACT great.

The phrase was repeated ad nauseum, basically claiming that TNA reached its peak under Jeff Jarrett’s control. While I enjoyed the early days of Fox Sports Net and X-Division action, I also enjoyed the past year of IMPACT under Matt Hardy’s broken brilliance. He single-handedly made IMPACT relevant again. His concepts of Final Deletion, Delete or Decay and Total Nonstop Deletion increased ratings, the inaugural groundbreaking event drawing 410,000 viewers (90,000 more than the prior week). For the first time in several years, social media was abuzz about IMPACT in a positive way.

Aside from a few new faces, the budding romance between Allie and Braxton Sutter, and Alberto El Patron’s intense battles with Lashley and EC3, the first two editions of “new IMPACT” failed to inspire the same intrigue I felt in 2016. Matthews bickering with Borash felt too similar to Michael Cole’s godawful heel run in 2011. The X-Division fatal four ways failed to develop the identities of the performers sacrificing their lives, also similar to WWE’s issue with the cruiserweights. Lengthy promos, championship controversies, reliance upon nostalgia…are they trying to make IMPACT great or IMPACT Raw?

Hopefully management feels they’ve gotten the apologies out of their system, and can now work on developing IMPACT into an exciting alternative to the horde of WWE content available.