Posted in: Sports, TV | Tagged: impact, recaps, victory road, wrestling

Victory Road Results – Eric Young Brings the Violence on Eddie Edwards

Impact Wrestling's big October PPV is Bound for Glory, but why have just one October PPV when you can have two? So Victory Road is an Impact Plus special, and the main event is Eddie Edwards vs. Eric Young for the Impact World Championship. Bleeding Cool has been covering Victory Road with live results and analysis all night, so if you want to see what happened earlier on the show, go check out the front page.

After a video package (this is the only match to get one), Eddie Edwards comes out. Eric Young comes out, and the main event of Victory Road gets started.

Victory Road Results Part 9 – Eddie Edwards vs. Eric Young – Impact World Championship Match

• The story here is that Eric Young made a surprise return at Slammiversary in a multi-man match as a total bastard. He broke Rich Swann's leg, forcing him into "retirement" until Swann came back because Young continued to try to end the careers of more Impact stars. But back to Slammiversary, Edwards won the match and won the vacant Impact World Championship. But Young beat him in September to take the championship. He tried to take out Eddie's leg too, and Eddie recently returned for revenge. So this is a grudge match as well as a championship match… the best kind!
• So obviously, these two hate each other, and it shows in their wrestling, which features quite a bit of extracurricular violence.
• Young gets busted open on the left side of his face. Because of the location, I don't think it's a blade job.
• At one point in the match, Young traps Eddie's foot in the steel guardrail and kicks it repeatedly. I love the new Eric Young!
• Despite the beating Eddie has taken at Victory Road tonight, he does have enough in the tank for a big comeback near the end of the match. He hits a Tiger Driver. He hits a Boston Knee Party, though commentary is sure to point out Young got his forearms up to block part of it. He even hits a Blue Thunder Bomb off the top rope. But he doesn't get the pin.
• After that, Young drops him knees-first off the top rope and then stands up with a shit-eating grin as Eddie sells like his knees are shattered.
• Young gets a leg lock on Young, but Eddie escapes by slipping out of his shoe! He hits another Boston Knee Party on a shocked Young, but they're near the ropes, and Young gets his foot on one.
• After that, it's a piledriver from Young and another leg lock and Eddie taps.

Like in many of the matches tonight at Victory Road, the outcome here was predictable. The big match is obviously Swann vs. Young, so Impact can't have Edwards be the one to get vengeance on Young. But it did serve the purpose of giving us a preview of the violence Young has in store for Rich Swann later this month, and it also served to put over Young as a sadistic monster, in case we hadn't gotten the point yet. It was also a great match, the best of the night, easily, with a good finish. My only gripe is Edwards didn't seem to have any trouble pulling off the Boston Knee Party twice despite all the damage his knees took.

Two keen observations from my 10-year-old son about this match:

• The ending was botched because Eddie Edwards tapped out, and he wouldn't do that.
• The ref just kept shouting "1 2 3 4 come on Eric!" when trying to get Young to break on the ropes, but instead of disqualifying him when he refused, he would just shout the same thing again. So Young should have been disqualified.

Hard to argue with that logic. Get it together, ref!

After the match, Young brings a steel chair in the ring with bad intentions for Edwards, but Rich Swann runs out and kicks him in the face. Young crawls backwards up the ramp as Swann holds up the belt. "You're not real!" Young shouts, "You're not here!" Victory Road goes off the air on that note.

The Verdict

Overall, Victory Road featured some good wrestling (and some average wrestling), but despite multiple titles being on the line, the stakes felt low. Perhaps that's to be expected from an Impact Plus special that isn't quite a PPV, and perhaps Impact has been spoiling us with great wrestling on their regular free TV show, but this felt like a double episode of Impact with no commercials. That's not to say it wasn't enjoyable… Impact is always enjoyable. But it is what it is. I also feel like Impact's special events and PPVs have an even more uphill climb to distinguish themselves from Impact due to the fact that Impact continues to have zero crowd noise during their shows.

Great main event, though.

Thanks for Reading Bleeding Cool's live results and analysis of Impact Wrestling's Victory Road. If you enjoyed it, we do this for all PPVs and specials by Impact, WWE, and AEW (usually with more than just me doing the coverage). We also have reports for Raw, Impact, Dynamite, NXT, and Smackdown that go live each morning after the shows, so consider giving those a try as well.

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