IMPACT Bound For Glory

Overall Rating: ★★★●★★☆

I was really looking forward to seeing the Iinspiration, and I'm glad they were right at the start so I could enjoy that and not be distracted waiting for it. Because the rest of the show was also very good. Especially the X-Division championship, but really almost the entire show. A couple of low points, but honestly nothing terrible. I definitely recommend watching this one.

1. Knockouts Tag Championship (The Iinspiration vs. Decay)
   ★★★●★★☆
   McKay and Lee's weird beige costumes were a bad look, but their new music is decent and I just loved seeing them back in wrestling. Their double-team finisher seemed a little awkward, but it's not bad and they did plenty of good tag teaming. It was a good match and I'm looking forward to seeing more.
2. X-Division Championship (Steve Maclin vs. El Phantasmo vs. Trey Miguel)
   ★★★●★★★
   All three of these guys were doing crazy moves the whole way through. This is a triple threat done right; not just an awkward match with too many people involved but an opportunity to show off and do stuff that you can't do one-on-one. So fucking good.
3. Tag Team (Violent by Design vs. Heath & ???)
   ★★★●★☆☆
   We all knew what was going to happen, we were just waiting for it. And it was quite satisfying. But it wasn't much of a match.
4. Call Your Shot Gauntlet
   ★★★●★★☆
   When Matt Striker said "As the ring starts to fill up, your imagination begins to run away with you and you start to imagine what each wrestler would look like" and then paused for a second, I immediately thought "naked". Weirdly, that wasn't where he was going with that though.
   Anyway, this wasn't really a gauntlet (where participants come in only after the previous one is eliminated and it's basically a series of standard matches), it was basically a renamed Royal Rumble, except not gender-segregated and once it gets down to the final two it switches to a regular match, which is a neat twist. Gauntlet matches are dumb. This is cool.
   As is always the case with this kind of match, it's more about seeing who's in it than what happens in the ring, but that's not to say the actual wrestling wasn't good. It's just such a good match type, and kept fresh by not being overused. Unfortunate that Rich Swann and W Morrissey had to be involved, but at least they were only two participants out of twenty here.
5. Men's Tag Championship (Bullet Club vs. FinJuice vs. Good Brothers)
   ★★★●☆☆☆
   They're still doing tag triple threats by the dumb "only two legal competitors at a time" rule here, which is annoying. But the Bullet Club vs. former Bullet Club angle added a bit of extra interest. But it couldn't make up for the fact that Bullet Club and FinJuice have just been fighting each other and no one else in the lead up to this, and the Triple Threat rules are dumb. I just didn't have any enthusiasm for this or any belief that the outcome could be in doubt.
6. Knockouts Championship (Mickie James vs. Deonna Purrazzo)
   ★★★●★★☆
   Not much to say about this other than that it was a very good match. No crazy shenanigans or anything, just good wrestling. 
7. Men's Championship (Christian Cage vs. Josh Alexander)
   ★★★●★★☆
   Same deal as the women's match, really. Just very good.