Posted in: Sports, TV | Tagged: impact, impact wrestling, Moose, sports, tessa blanchard, tv, wrestling

Can a #1 Contender Tournament Fix Impact's Championship Problem?

Impact Wrestling has a significant problem going on in its world championship main event scene. Instead of one World Championship, they've got two of them. Tessa Blanchard is the official Impact World Champion, having won the title from Sami Callahan in a match at Hard to Kill in January. Though it was just a few months ago, it seems like much longer. In the time since Blanchard became champion, the world has become afflicted by the coronavirus pandemic. Blanchard was unable to appear at Revolution to defend her championship as scheduled last week, and Eddie Edwards, one of her challengers in a triple threat match that also included Michael Elgin, wasn't able to attend either.

Impact did have a solution to that problem, though it may have created more in the long term. At the show last week, as Elgin was demanding he be crowned Impact World Champion by forfeit, Moose appeared, and he had the old TNA Championship with him. Impact was formerly known as TNA before rebranding amidst a half dozen ownership changes or so. Moose defeated Elgin and Hernandez to "win" the championship he revived. And now there are two world champions.

On last night's episode of Impact Wrestling, the show started as many wrestling shows do with several wrestlers insisting they should be the number one contenders. Following a street fight at Revolution, Ken Shamrock congratulated Sami Callahan on being tougher than The Big Show, Bas Rutten, and The Rock, all of whom tapped out to Shamrock's ankle lock. Callahan, on the other hand, tapped out. Shamrock suggested the two put their differences aside and go on in pursuit of their ultimate goal: winning the Impact World Championship. That was a cue for Michael Elgin to insert himself, though his claims of deserving the number one contender spot were a little spurious considering he lost to Moose at Revolution.

Nevertheless, the fact is Impact does need to decide a new number one contender to face Blanchard when she returns, which won't be until at least next month since Impact has already filmed the next several weeks of shows. They have a solution, too: a tournament to decide the number one contender, just the thing to get us through the next few weeks and create logical, structured booking scenarios. Impact announced Moose, Trey Miguel,  Sami Callihan, Michael Elgin, Hernandez, Mad Man Fulton, Rhino, and Ken Shamrock for the tournament.

But there's one problem. Moose insisted that his TNA World Championship is already more important than the Impact World Championship and dropped out of the tournament. Rohit Raju happily took his place, and the first set of matches will take place next week. When all is said and done, Tessa Blanchard will have a new number one contender, but that doesn't help with the fact that Impact will still have two belts. That's alright though because that just means that Impact has a built-in feud ready for Blanchard or the winner of the tournament after their match is done (though, let's be real, probably Blanchard). Long term booking? Who knew it could work?

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