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Impact Wrestling 6/16/2020 Report Part 1 – A Paycheck for Rhino

It's Tuesday night, which means it's time for dozens of fans around the world to gather around their televisions and tune into Impact Wrestling! Impact opens with a recap of last week's arrival of Deonna Purrazzo, the Knockouts Championship match between Jordynne Grace and Taya Valkyrie, and Purrazzo's subsequent attack on Grace after the match. Now it's time for the action! Cue the theme song. Why does Impact have the word "Dynamite" in their theme song? Haven't they learned anything from the Jeff Jarrett lawsuit?

Impact officially starts with The Rascalz backstage ahead of their match against The North. Is there still tension between Trey, Wentz, and Dez? Of course not. Stoners have really poor memories. The Rascalz head to the ring sans Trey and The North follow. Josh Matthews and Madison Rayne extoll the virtues of The North, who are the longest-reigning Impact tag champs. Could their reign end tonight? Probably not.

Wentz and Dez dominate the early part of the match, too fast for Josh Alexander to keep up, but eventually, Ethan Page interferes, which allows The North to take control. That leaves Wentz to take a beating for a while until Dez tags in and gets some offense. Dez gets a good run of flippy @#$% in before he too falls prey to The North's superior power and tag team tactics. It's pretty typical, but well-executed stuff.

It also goes on a little too long. Straight through the first commercial break, in fact. When it comes back from commercial, it looks like we missed a hot tag, as Wentz is whooping ass on both members of The North. The second half of this match is faster-paced, with lots of big moves, near-falls, and quick tags. Things go wrong for The Rascalz when Dez gets caught in a dive and tossed over the guardrail into the empty crowd. Wentz gets crouched on the top rope, and The North gets the pin off a Torture Rack combo.

Backstage after the match, The North are upset to find nobody backstage was watching the match. Not nobody, guys. Impact is in the top 200 in Cable ratings. Okay, maybe the top 300.

Matthews and Rayne argue about the legitimacy of Moose's TNA Championship when Matthews pretends to get an alert in his earpiece. He sends us backstage, where The Rascals find Trey once again laid out by a mystery attacker. Is it possible he's just doing it for attention? We're given the opportunity to ponder this mystery over some commercials.

Backstage, Ace Austin denies being the one behind the attack on Trey. Eddie Edwards attempts to assault Ace, but he's held back by security guards. They'll meet in a street fight later.

Kimber Lee comes out now. She's fighting Nevaeh, who comes to the ring with Havok. Neveah is looking for revenge on Lee on behalf of Havok. Tasha Steelz and Kiera Hogan come to ringside to eat popcorn and watch the match. On the one hand, I don't think Impact understands how the whole using wrestlers as a crowd thing works yet. First of all, you need more than two of them. Second, they need to be there for more than just one match.

Neveah gets the win in this unremarkable match with a DDT. After the match, Havok wants to attack Steelz and Hogan, but Neveah holds her back, Steelz and Havok toss their popcorn into Havok's face and run away.

After the match, The North comes across some people watching an iPad backstage. When it turns out to be a Ken Shamrock compilation instead of their match from earlier, Page breaks the iPad. That's the difference in budget between Impact and WWE. WWE will have Braun Strowman flip over a car for a backstage skit, and it's no big deal. Impact smashes an iPad, and then Josh Matthews has to watch porn on his phone for the next three months.

After some commercials, we see a video package for #CancelCulture and then a nonsensical promo from Crazzy Steve. He might have challenged them to a match. It was hard to follow.

Rhino heads to the ring but is attacked by Rohit Raju before the bell. Raju kicks Rhino's ass inside and outside of the ring. Josh Matthew interrupts to talk about how he plays with his Rhino microbrawler all day long. That's oversharing, Matthews.

As Raju continues the beatdown in the ring, Matthews and Rayne talk about Slammiversary and wonder which fired WWE Superstars will be in the Impact Zone. In a trailer park in Wenatchee, Washington, Don West pitches a tent, and he hasn't even taken his viagra today.

This match has been all Raju, which means we're about due for a gore and surprise win. Sure enough, Rhino dodges a top-rope attack from Raju gets the three-count. That was literally the only move Rhino hit all match. Raju throws a temper tantrum in the ring as Rhino, still living off his ECW heydey two decades ago, heads backstage to collect his paycheck.

The Impact Plus Flashback Moment of the Week is EC3 winning the World Championship from Kurt Angle. Will EC3 be at Slammiversary? Does he have anything better to do? Backstage, Michael Elgin talks with the mystery Canadian on the phone when he's interrupted by a guy whose name I don't know, so I am going to call Vince Russo Jr., who accuses him of being behind the attack on Trey earlier. Elgin says he doesn't jump people from behind, and also, he sends people to the hospital when he beats them up, and then he spazzes out for three days on Twitter about how soft everyone is and did Russo Jr. see a meltdown on Twitter, no, so it couldn't have possibly been him. And now: commercials.

Suzie tells Kylie Rae that she likes to be good, but when she's good, people walk all over her. Kylie tries to reassure her, but Taya Valkerie interrupts. She says only losers talk like that. Suzie says Taya didn't talk like that when she lost last week. Taya storms off.

Check back shortly for part two of our Impact Wrestling report, featuring a TNA World Championship match and a hardcore… okay, more like softcore street fight!

The official logo of Impact Wrestling.
The official logo of Impact Wrestling.

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Jude TerrorAbout Jude Terror

A prophecy once said that in the comic book industry's darkest days, a hero would come to lead the people through a plague of overpriced floppies, incentive variant covers, #1 issue reboots, and super-mega-crossover events. Sadly, that prophecy was wrong. Oh, Jude Terror was right. For ten years. About everything. But nobody listened. And so, Jude Terror has moved on to a more important mission: turning Bleeding Cool into a pro wrestling dirt sheet!
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