Impact Wrestling live results: The aftermath of Against All Odds

New World Champion Alex Shelley and new X-Division Champion Chris Sabin will kick off tonight’s Against All Odds fallout edition of Impact Wrestling on AXS.

Shelley defeated Steve Maclin to begin his first World title reign while Sabin defeated Trey Miguel to start his ninth run with the X-Division title at last Friday’s streaming special. 

In the follow-up from last Friday’s first-ever 8-4-1 match, Moose will take on Rich Swann in a clash of former Impact World Champions.

After getting thwarted by a steel chair shot from the returning Scott D’Amore in the 8-4-1 match, Bully Ray will address the Impact Zone. Ray put the Impact president through a flaming table at Under Siege to put him out of action.

After defending the titles against The Good Hands, Impact Tag Team Champions Ace Austin & Chris Bey will face Decay’s Crazzy Steve & Black Taurus in non-title action.

Laredo Kid & Jack Price will take on Champagne Singh & Shera on the BTI pre-show.

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BTI Preshow

According to George Iceman, Bully Ray has complained to Anthem management about Scott D’Amore hitting him with a chair at Against All Odds.

Champagne Singh & Shera defeated Jack Price & Laredo Kid

Singh got the win in a decent match here, with the champagne pop DDT. Heath ran out after the match and attacked Singh and Shera from behind, hitting a wake up call on Singh.

Main Card

The Motor City Machine Guns made their way out to celebrate their title wins at Against All Odds. Sabin talked about how this was a dream come true for both of them, and Shelley talked about how he was always the guy that helped mentor world champions, like Kazuchika Okada, The Young Bucks, Seth Rollins, and others, but he was never the champ. At Against All Odds he finally became the World champion, and he called this the Machine Gun era of Impact Wrestling.

Nick Aldis came down to the ring to face off against his future opponent at Slammiversary. Aldis noted that all 3 of them called their shots, and did exactly what they said they were going to do, with Aldis becoming #1 contender, and the other two winning their titles. Aldis gave Shelley credit, saying that when he first became a wrestler in Impact, he had no idea what he was doing, and Alex Shelley was one of the guys that taught him how to wrestle. Aldis then said, as Shelley’s friend, he was going to do everything he could to win the title at Slammiversary.

Trey Miguel came out onto the ramp, saying they forgot to show him respect. Kenny King came out with Sheldon Jean. I sense a 6-man tag in the near future. Gisele Shaw, Savanah Evans, and Jai Vidal made their way out. Shaw said the red carpet was rolled out for Trinity and Alids, and that the Machine Guns didn’t deserve the titles. Trinity came out and now I sense an 8-person tag match. Trinity confronted Shaw, but Deonna Purrazzo came out and now I have no idea what I am sensing.

Santino came out, I assume to make a match. This segment has gone on way too long and added way too many people to it. Simple is better. Santino announced a 10-person tag main event with Aldis, MCMG, Trinity, and Purrazzo against King, Miguel, Jean, Evans, and Shaw.

–Steve Maclin was backstage and cut a great promo about how the two years it took him to become champion, and now he wasn’t, and he should still be champ. The intensity here was great.

–A recap of OVE defeating The Design. Deaner looked to blame Angels for the job not getting done. Angels blamed Deaner for the loss, and Kon screamed “Stop!” saying this is what Callihan wanted them to be doing. Kon said they needed to claim what was theirs.

We are well over 30 minutes into the show before the first match started, which I am not a fan of, as a lot of the promos could have been cut down or placed differently. Regardless, we got Rich Swann and Moose to open the wrestling portion of the show.

Rich Swann defeated Moose

If you are going to make us wait 30 minutes for the first match, you need to make sure the first match is a good one. This was a good one. Not even close to the best match I’ve seen this week, but it was a very good opening match.

Swann was a fair bit faster than Moose in the first part of the match, but eventually got powerbombed onto the apron before they went to an ad break. Moose hit a giant uranage on Swann for a 2-count when they came back from break. Moose chopped Swann against the posts on the floor twice, but Swann ducked the third Moose chopped the post. Swann ended up on the top rope after another ad break and Moose ran up the ropes and hit a superplex.

Moose then tried the same run and went for a crossbody, but Swann countered with a cutter and got a 2-count. This match has been quite good. Swann missed a middle rope 450 and ate a discus clothesline and a powerbomb for a 2-count from Moose. Moose went for the spear, but Swann rolled him up and floated over into a jackknife pin for the 3-count.

–Heath was backstage and talked about his history in Impact, talking about what is next for him. He said he was about to let everyone in Impact know who he is. This was a good promo.

–Moose was walking backstage and almost got hit by a door that Brian Myers kicked open. Myers talked about how Moose had a rough night at Against All Odds and another one tonight, and Moose did not take kindly to the lecture. Myers assured him that he made a mistake too, as he failed to lead the Good Hands to the tag championship, but Moose & Myers would be able to beat them.

–Bully Ray came out with an official complaint to the Anthem management about Scott D’Amore. Scott D’Amore came out and said that he did go before the Anthem board, and they did decide it was behaviour unbecoming of a company president. D’Amore also said the board recommended he take a leave of absence.

Ray insisted that he leave the ring and admit that he was wrong. D’Amore said that he wouldn’t be able to “Do this” if he was still president, and he tackled Ray and started punching him. Steve Maclin came out and attacked D’Amore from behind. Maclin and Ray grabbed chairs and Ray put a chair across the throat of D’Amore and invited Maclin to hit the legs of the chair with his own chair to drive it into D’Amore’s throat. As he was about to do it, the lights went out, and PCO made the save.

D’Amore then announced that he was coming out of retirement to wrestle Bully Ray & Steve Maclin at Slammiversary with PCO as his tag team partner.

–Maclin and Ray were backstage and Maclin was telling Ray that he was worried about PCO because there is nothing that can ever keep him down. Ray told Maclin to act like a Marine, and that he was just a man. Kazarian said, “He was just a man who took you both out.” Maclin and Ray went to get in the face of Kazarian, but Eddie Edwards walked up to even the odds, saying that since they shared the same trainer in Killer Kowalski, he would have Kazarian’s back, even though they don’t see eye-to-eye. Alisha Edwards was surprised that they were suddenly making peace, but it seems like Kazarian and Edwards might be on the same side for now.

ABC (Ace Austin & Chris Bey) defeated The Decay in a non-title match

Crazzy Steve yelled, “Do you want me to bite his fingers?!” to the fans as he pointed at Chris Bey. Chris Bey did not like this prospect and attacked, soon tagging out to Austin, but Black Taurus came in and the Decay soon had control. Bey and Austin picked up Steve, but he bit them both. He ate a double sole butt from ABC and then a 1-2-sweet for the win.

–The Motor City Machine Guns were backstage to greet Austin & Bey, and they said they were glad those two were the Impact World Tag Team Champions, as the division was in good hands. Bey & Austin said they were happy that MCMG were the X-Division and World champions.

–Bhupinder Gujjar was backstage with Gia Miller, and they talked about his upcoming episode of Diary where they highlight his journey in wrestling. Dirty Dango walked up and said, “Who would want to watch that?” insisting that, insisting that Gujjar was like everyone else in the locker room, simply being passive and not becoming a star, “Except for that bull head guy, because he gets it.” I laughed at him putting over Black Taurus. Looks like we’ll see Gujjar beating Dango sometime in the near future. Gujjar’s story is a good one, and they could use it well to promote him.

–NJPW on AXS this week featured The Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley & Claudio Castagnoli) & Shota Umino vs. CHAOS (Kazuchika Okada & Tomohiro Ishii) & Hiroshi Tanahashi for the NEVER Openweight Six-Man Tag Team Championship and Will Ospreay vs. Lance Archer, both excellent matches.

The Motor City Machine Guns (Chris Sabin & Alex Shelley), Nick Aldis, Deonna Purrazzo, & Trinity defeated Kenny King, Sheldon Jean, Trey Miguel, Gisele Shaw, & Savannah Evans

Good multi-person tag match, with Shelley getting the win at the end to highlight his new title reign.

Purrazzo and Shaw started the match, but as soon as Shaw seemed to have an advantage, Trinity tagged in and attacked. Shaw was able to block a bulldog attempt and send Trinity crashing intho the turnbuckle before tagging out to Evans. When the came back from the break, Kenny King was getting the heat on Nick Aldis.

This continued with the team getting heat on Chris Sabin after Aldis tagged out. Jean hit several 12 to 6 elbows on Sabin before tagging back out to King. This continued for several minutes until Sabin got a got up in a corner charge and hit a tornado DDT before tagging out to Alex Shelley. Miguel tagged in and Shelly ran wild on him, King, Sheldon Jean, and even Jai Vidal on the floor.

Miguel cut Shelley off on the top rope, so Shelley hit a top rope Manhattan Drop on Miguel, which looked unpleasant. Shelley locked on the Border City Stretch, but everyone crashed the ring and a brawl ensued. Sheldon Jean hit a flying leg lariat on Sabin, and King accidentally hit an enziguri on Jean, leading to Aldis taking out King and Shelley hitting Shell Shock on Jean for the pin.

–Nick Aldis grabbed the world title and went to hand it to Alex Shelley. Aldis then turned heel, nailing Shelley with the title. This is a much better fit for Aldis, and he will make a strong heel contender to Alex Shelley as the babyface champion going into Impact Slammiversary.

Final Thoughts

This was a decent episode of Impact, with a ton of angles, and not much wrestling. I would have preferred to cut down on the opening segment by 5-10 minutes and add another match in the middle, but with that said, the wrestling we did get was mostly good. Moose and Swann was good, and the main event was very good. The ABC squash of the Decay was fine. The real story of the show will be the closing angle with Aldis turning heel, a role he is much stronger in than being a babyface.

Impact Wrestling – June 22, 2023

OVE vs. Brian Myers & The Good Hands

The Design vs. Jonathan Gresham & Mike Bailey

Taylor Wilde vs. Killer Kelly

Bully Ray & Steve Maclin vs. Eddie Edwards & Frankie Kazarian

Impact Down Under Tour – June 30, 2023

Impact World Championship: Alex Shelley (c) vs. Steve Maclin

Impact Down Under Tour – July 1, 2023

Impact Knockouts World Championship: Deonna Purrazo (c) vs. Gisele Shaw

Impact Slammiversary – July 15, 2023

Bully Ray & Steve Maclin vs. PCO & Scott D’Amore

Impact Knockouts World Championship: Deonna Purrazzo (c) vs. Trinity

Impact World Championship: Alex Shelley (c) vs. Nick Aldis