Wow! This is by far Impact wrestling’s boldest move ever, and may actually be a stroke of genius.
Yesterday it was announced on Impact Wrestling’s twitter that their Hardcore Justice event would take place on Saturday April 10th, which is the same night as WrestleMania 37 Night 1.
On the surface of things this seems like a crazy move by Impact, but may not be as bad a move as some may think.
In 2010 Impact Wrestling, formally known as TNA Total Non-stop Action Wrestling made a bold step towards bringing back the rating wars in wrestling when they put their weekly Impact show on Monday nights against WWE’s long running flagship show Monday Night Raw.
For long time we’ll remember that this was a very shorted lived endeavour by TNA, where they made many mistakes, and were in over their heads.
Impact’s big move was the signing of Hulk Hogan, but this was Hulk Hogan in 2010 and not the Hulk Hogan who had helped WCW combat WWE in 1994. Although he would eventually wrestle in TNA, his role was to be the figure head of the company in the Vince McMahon position, and this could have made an impact, but from the very first episode of Hogan coming in so did a lot of others with him which isn’t seen as a good thing.
The same debut episode of Impact on Monday night’s brought in Jeff Hardy which was a huge get for TNA, although his intro was a fairly underwhelming way to bring him in, with him coming in during the big red cage match that TNA did at the time. Other than that we got Hall and Nash and Eric Bischoff, Ric Flair the Nasty Boys and for TNA fans this was too much change to be WCW 2.0 aka Hogan and his friends suddenly overnight.
Within a couple of weeks we also lost the signature 6 sided TNA ring, which although wrestlers will say was tougher to work on, was the main thing that made TNA different. It instantly told viewers this is a different show, and for anyone checking out the Monday Night Impact show for the first time it must have baffled people that it was suddenly changed after a couple of weeks.
WWE fought back in 2010 with the return of Bret Hart to the WWE for the first time in 13 years going head to head with Hogan, and the Hitman was the clear talking point and ratings winner.
Spike TV which aired Impact at the time didn’t help matters when they quickly started adding a replay of Impact in their old mid week slot after just a couple of episodes, and then a couple of weeks later TNA had to admit that they were listening to fans’ and going back off of Monday nights.
This meant that the attempt at a second Monday Night War ended with a whimper, and almost was a non starter. Where as TNA had been the hopes of many fans to be the company to challenge the WWE and with competition bring out the best in all companies, it was instead just the beginning of the downward trend that TNA went on for the next 8 to 9 years.
But that was then and now Impact wrestling is a very different company and in a very different position to what they were in before. Impact wrestling is on something of a small upwards swing which came about when their current owners Anthem bought AXS, the channel they currently air on.
This meant that unlike when TNA was on Spike, it really doesn’t matter what Impact does in the ratings. Of course they want them to do well, but they also don’t need to worry if they have a down patch or an off week as they won’t be cancelled.
It’s also true that Impact’s viewers are usually in the 100-200K viewers range which is a far cry from their height of 1.5 Million viewers from that first stab at the TNA-WWE Monday Night war. Of course the WWE is also in a position where 1-2 million is the usual rating and way down from the 3-4 million they had several years ago.
Lower ratings can be viewed as a result of the pandemic and that the atmosphere of wrestling without the crowd is partly to blame, but it is what it is and Impact have probably looks at the situation and realise that they currently cannot hope to possibly be any kind of a threat to the WWE unless there was dramatic change.
So in one sense, if you can’t possibly compete against Raw on a Monday night…why not just do a one night war and compete against Wrestlemania? Not even WCW would go head to head with Wrestlemania back when Nitro was crushing Raw in the ratings, so this is literally the boldest move Impact could make.
Will they succeed? No of course not. At least not if their aim is to out draw the WWE with the biggest show if the year. But if their goal is to draw headlines and suddenly make Impact vs WWE an actual conversation that people are having in 2021 then they have already succeeded. This article alone is evidence of that.
Impact was long seen as the main rival to WWE, but that all went away with the launch of AEW in 2019. Tony Khan’s company with it’s Wednesday night timeslot on TNT has been the focus of wrestling fans wanting an alternative for the last couple of years and things won’t change as AEW has the funds, and star power to actually be in that conversation of competition that Impact can’t stack up to.
So, what have Impact got going for them to make this a success in other ways and why choose to do it now?
Well fortunately for Impact they have the strongest position to challenge the WWE that they have ever had. With new working relationships with AEW and NJPW, they can potentially dip into their rosters to get a few more names onto Hardcore Justice if they wanted to. I don’t think they will do too much of this and I’ll get into why shortly, but it is at least an option.
And why choose to do it now? Well there is a knock on effect happening in the wrestling world. With NXT being slated to move to Tuesday nights after WrestleMania in one sense it can be said that AEW has won the Wednesday Night War. The downside for Impact is that with NXT moving to Tuesdays the show will now be up against Impact for a Tuesday Night War and it will actually be the WWE bringing the war to Impact in a role reversal from the 2010 Monday Night Wars.
So, with Impact aware that WWE is bringing the war to them, this move by Impact is a way for them to say we’re ready for a war and we’ll actually draw the first blood…even if it is just a scratch.
Without a doubt there now will be fans who supported AEW against NXT who will now jump on the Impact band wagon and watch that show to be defiant against WWE and it’s not impossible that NXT rivalling Impact may see the support and ratings for Impact go up.
The other factor here is that AEW has just started their AEW Dark Elevation show on a Monday night on their YouTube Channel. Being a YouTube show will mean this flies under the radar for many, but it was actually a very soft step by AEW to bring the Monday Night War to the WWE by putting a rival first run show on a Monday. It’s not their flagship show, but just a little way for them to say ‘hey we’re here and we can do shows on any night we please’.
So where will this lead? It’s a bold prediction here, which I admit is a long shot, but if they wanted to engineer things this way, I could see that next year WrestleMania may find it has a much bigger show up against it then Hardcore Justice. These moves by Impact and AEW is just a way to let WWE know that they are coming for them, and imagine if AEW and Impact and NJPW were to hold a combined All In style event head to head with WWE Wreslemania 38 next year?
Another year to build their campaign. Another year to rally fans. And imagine if at Hardcore Justice it was announced or hinted at that this time next year there would be a bigger show and this was just a warning shot to Vince McMahon that the war is coming.
Time will tell what happens, but we may be at the dawn for a great new era of competition in wrestling.
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