Like most other things associated with professional wrestling, Impact wrestling’s streaming addition has had a volatile, tumultuous history. It’s a fascinating media story, one that follows the transition of pro wrestling from traditional cable outlets to their streaming cousins, the idea being to get control of the revenue stream while continuing to build the audience and the brand. And it’s worked.

Let’s start at the beginning. That would be May of 2019 for all intents and purposes, when Impact announced the beginning of its Impact Plus streaming service, which was priced at $7.99 a month. The move coincided with Impact leaving Pop TV to shift over to an outdoor network called Pursuit Channel. More important, there was a partnership with the streaming channel Twitch, which was followed several months later with another shift to ASX TV several months later in September.

Confusing? Maybe, but it turns out that the folks at Impact knew what they were doing. The price point for Impact Plus may have been a bit steep, but there was plenty to like about the initial 3,000 hours of on-demand content that also included monthly network specials.

The content spanned nearly two decades of Impact history, with the list of stars including the likes of Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, Booker T, Sting and Rick Flair, among others, so there was plenty to appeal to the classics audience.

The specials included a nifty roster of current stars, with the names including Eddie Edwards and Alisha Edwards, Willie Mack, and so on. The four annual pay-per view events weren’t included, but they were available as an ongoing series of separate purchases, and they included both Bound for Glory and Slammiversary.

Overall, the results have been excellent. Impact has grown it roster and gathered momentum ever since, and Impact’s credibility has improved as a result.

But there has been controversy. This, of course, is part of the package with any wrestling outlet, and some of it has been spectacularly entertaining.

Start with the Twitch ban. This happened in back in January of 2020 due to a “wardrobe malfunction,” a phrase that has become a perpetual eye-roller.

In this case, the victim—or the perpetrator, depending on your point of view—was Rob Van Dam, who “celebrated” a win in a snippet scene with his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s girlfriend that featured whipped cream along with the inevitable blurred nudity.

Shocking right? Maybe, but the ban lasted all of a week. After supposedly violating Twitch’s terms regarding nudity and sexual content, the streaming channel changed course in mid-stream, so to speak, and announced that Impact was back on the air.

Impact’s announcement, meanwhile, added that the up-and-coming wrestling company’s Twitch channel was one of a lot of things that was “hard to kill.” And so are prearranged controversies, which have been a staple of pro wrestling for decades.

Tag Team Management

At this point in the story, it would be negligent not to mention the Impact team that’s been in charge of all the mayhem. Enter Don Callis and Scott D’Amore, the company’s executive VPs.

Neither has been with Impact long, but they have made a huge impact (sorry). They were appointed to their positions in December of 2017, shortly after Anthem purchased a majority stake in Impact, and one of the first things they did was to eliminate that clunky hexagonal ring and go back to the four-sided square that wrestling fans know and love.

That was just the start. Call it luck, brilliant timing or savvy business sense, but the addition of a streaming service with pay-per-view buys has worked out incredibly well, too.

The best evidence of this would be this year’s Slammiversary back in July. Impact teased the names of some major names prior to the event, including the Good Brothers, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson. The roster got bigger and better shortly thereafter, when heavy hitters such as Heath, EC3, the Motor City Machine Guns and Eric Young were added.

Another title change quickly followed, with the Motor City Machine Guns toppling The North from the top spot. The icing on the cake was another roster-add on the media side, with Brian Myers, aka Curt Hawkins, appearing on that broadcast.

On paper, Covid-19 might have stopped Impact in its tracks, but the company’s response to the novel coronavirus has more or less been “what pandemic?”

Impact has basically conducted business as usual since March, and having the Impact PLUS streaming service in place at a time when many viewers have been stuck at home under lockdown has been a textbook case of perfect timing.

Moreover, Impact has been careful about staying up and running during the pandemic. The company has taped multiple episodes simultaneously, which gives the talent the opportunity to stay at home and rest up after arduous matches that feature plenty of close contact.

Impact has also asked wrestlers to self-isolate in separate hotel rooms when they are called in to compete, with constant tests run on the talent and social distance standards imposed and followed wherever possible.

The Pushback

As for the industry as a whole, suffice to say that Impact’s impact has been noticed, particularly when it comes to the talent. The morale of the existing base of wrestlers has been incredibly high, and the wrestlers definitely see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that Impact is poised to cash in on.

Not surprisingly, the WWE has pushed back. Historically, the WWE has dominated wrestling by controlling the contracts of many of the top wrestlers. A recent news story had the WWE banning superstars and talent under contract from using third-party platforms like Twitch, YouTube and Cameo.

Cue the wrestler’s outrage. A number of high-profile wrestlers have pushed back against the pushback, including Mick Foley and Kevin Nash, and even the likes of former presidential candidate Andrew Lang have gotten into the act by commenting about the unfairness of this tactic.

The move seems strange, at the very least. These private platforms are here to stay, and their viability is likely going to expand, not contract or stay the same.

Impact seems to get that, and it’s not hard to imagine a wrestling future where these platforms are incorporated into the media package as a way to generate more revenue and give fans a wider array of choices.

It’s easy to groan at the bad jokes about Impact being Bound for Glory, but at the moment Impact is laughing all the way to the bank.

And you definitely know it if you’re a fan of tag team wrestling—along with his real-life brother Jeff, Hardy was one half of the Hardy Boyz tag team, which won a string of championships starting back in the 1990s.

Along the way, Hardy has proven himself to be a master of various wrestling gimmicks and character shifts. When he started his WWE solo career in 2002, he created his “Version 1” persona, which put him on the map as a creative force of sorts.

That led to a string of different characters, and in 2016 Hardy created the character of “Broken Matt,” adding a supernatural touch that wrestling critics loved. The character featured bleached blond hair, a bizarre accent, and ongoing references to eliminating his brother Jeff, whom he referred to as “Brother Nero.”

The success of the Broken gimmick eventually led to a furious legal battle, with the Hardy clan claiming ownership of the concept and eventually going to war with TNA before it became Impact Wrestling.

Legal battles aside, Hardy’s singles match career was every bit as successful as his tag team ventures, as he copped title after title while entertaining WWE fans with his antics along the way.

But Hardy has been in the news lately for an altogether different reason. He recently allowed his WWE contract to expire, and his character was seemingly written out of the WWE script after Hardy was attacked by Randy Orton.

The WWE reportedly offered Hardy a new contract that included some brand work, which is understandable given that Hardy turned 45 this year.

But Hardy has insisted that he’s not done in the ring, and he wants creative control of his character while he can still compete.

He’s referred to this transition as a “creative renaissance,” and apparently he’ll be taking his creative talents to All Elite Wresting. Rumors abound about Hardy’s new character, the “Exalted One.” Hardy has already tweeted about his new character, and All Elite Wrestling fueled the rumor fire by tweeting out a mention of the Exalted One just moments after Hardy released his video.

Hardy hasn’t ruled out a return to the WWE, but he’s clearly evaluating all his options.

All of this coincides with a dramatic transition over the last few years in Hardy’s personal life. After years of battling problems with alcohol and steroids, he married Rebecca “Reby Sky” Reyes, and Hardy has become a family man with a growing brood. Hardy and Reyes welcomed their third son into the world last year, and they seem to have reconciled the differences that let to a hotel arrest after a domestic fight in 2014. He’s credited Reyes with helping him get clean and sober, and obviously wrestling fans hope the colorful Hardy will continue to keep it together.

It’s obviously impossible to predict what the future holds for a character like Matt Hardy, but one thing seems certain—whatever it is, it’s sure to be entertaining.

We’ll give it a brief shot, though, focusing on the various leagues where Edwards made his rep. The now 36- year old Edwards made his debut in 20002, competing mostly in an ongoing series of independent promotions. The following year, he became first Millennium Wrestling Federation Television Champion.

In 2007, he began wrestling for Squared Circle Wrestling, where he made a name for himself and was eventually part of a tag team championship outfit.

After that the titles came fast and furious. Edwards spent eight years with Pro Wrestling Noah, where he honed his skills and turned some early losses into an ongoing series of victories. In 2017, he became the first American to win the GHC Heavyweight Championship in Japan.

Edwards also competed in parallel in the Ring of Honor from 2006-2013. He became a member of the American Wolves, but during the end of that stretch he began to focus on singles competition, which also led to a string of successes.

The following decade, Edwards became a staple in Pro Wrestling Guerrilla matches, and he also appeared briefly in the WWE in 2013.

He returned to tag team wrestling with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling/Impact Wrestling, and several years after that he began racking up singles championships, winning his first in the TNA X Division.

There is plenty of tarnish on the trophies, however, depending on how you look at Edwards’ persona and the antics that come with it.
For better or worse, many wrestling fans know Edwards for his more recent, over-the-top gimmick of using barbed baseball bat and then a kendo stick. This started on Sami Callahan, who sent Edwards to the hospital during a post-match Impact Wrestling brawl when a baseball bat accidentally struck Edwards in the head.

The kendo stick, which Edwards named “Kenny,” became a staple of Edwards wrestling repertoire, with various staged feuds with the likes of

Davey Richards that invariably led to all kinds of unsightly mayhem.

He accidentally hurt his wife, Alisha, during a House of Hardcore episode, and Edwards’ act became part of the plots and subplots that were at the heart of many Impact Wrestling matches.

His stage persona eventually paid off, though. In 2019, Edwards signed a multi-year deal with Impact, and this summer he repeated as the winner of the renamed Impact title.

Edwards may have taken on the personality of a madman, but it clearly hasn’t hurt him financially. He’s used his supposed loss of sanity as a lucrative trick that will clearly keep him smiling all the way to the bank.