This webpage is still currently a work in progress. Please be patient as not all content is available nor accessible at this time. Thank you!

Bound For Glory (2021) -- Results & Afterthoughts

Bound for Glory (2021) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view event produced by Impact Wrestling. It took place on October 23, 2021 at Sam's Town Live in Sunrise Manor, Nevada. This was Impact Wrestling's first event to take place outside of Nashville, Tennessee since Sacrifice in February 2020. It was the 17th event under the Bound for Glory chronology and featured wrestlers from Impact's partner promotions All Elite Wrestling (AEW), Mexico's Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (AAA), and Japan's New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW).

10 matches were contested at the event, including one on the pre-show. In what had been the advertised main event, Josh Alexander defeated Christian Cage to win the Impact World Championship. However, Moose invoked his Call Your Shot Gauntlet championship match privilege (which he won earlier in the night) to immediately challenge and defeat Alexander, winning the World Championship to close the show.

In other prominent matches, Mickie James defeated Deonna Purrazzo to win the Impact Knockouts Championship, Trey Miguel defeated El Phantasmo and Steve Maclin in a tournament final three-way match to win the vacant Impact X Division Championship, and in the opening bout, the debuting The IInspiration (Cassie Lee and Jessica McKay) defeated Decay (Havok and Rosemary) to win the Impact Knockouts Tag Team Championship.

Match Results:

The full Countdown preshow and Kong's Hall of Fame induction can be viewed in its entirety below.

Tournament final intergender six-way match for the inaugural Impact Digital Media Championship

Jordynne Grace (with Rachael Ellering) defeated Chelsea Green, Crazzy Steve (with Black Taurus), Fallah Bahh, John Skyler, and Madison Rayne (with Kaleb with a K) by pinfall

Madison Rayne was announced as Tenille Dashwood's last minute replacement earlier Saturday morning after Tenille was announced that she was unable to make the show. I caught the tail end of this match before the finish that saw Jordynne Grace hit her finish to pick up the win. I think it was pretty interesting that they would introduce an intergender singles title of sorts. IMPACT is essentially the black sheep of the wrestling business to a lot of mainstream fans, so it's cool to see them adopt a new title that will more likely have a lot of fans pretty divisive about.

I honestly don't see the problem when they already had a woman (Tessa Blanchard) win the IMPACT World Championship and aren't strangers to intergender tag team and singles matches in the past, so this is a welcome addition.

Tag Team Match for the Impact Knockouts Tag Team Championship

The IInspiration (Cassie Lee and Jessica McKay) def. Decay (Havok and Rosemary) (c) by pinfall

I couldn't help but laugh at Harley Cameron lip syncing to The IInspiration's entrance music. For the record, I still wasn't a fan of having them face the IMPACT Knockout Tag Team Champions on their first night in the company either and even more so for this finish, but we'll get to that in a bit. For as much as I didn't care for the IIconics in WWE individually, I will admit that they were a guilty pleasure of mine to see their antics as team in both NXT and the main roster.

I was really happy to see them come to IMPACT as they would have easily gotten lost and forgotten about in AEW's women's division. McKay's facial expressions reacting to Decay coming to the ring was all that I needed to prove that fact. In terms of comedy, she made the comedy spots in this match work brillaintly. I almost choked on my dinner when she ran into Havok for a cross body and bounced off like she hit a brick wall. I never thought McKay was any good in the ring as a worker, but she's definitely great at bumping her ass off and feeding for the opposition.

As for the finish, I don't agree with them beating Decay for the Knockouts Tag titles on their first night BUT that was a thoroughly entertaining opener so I'm not mad. I doubt The IInspiration are going to keep those belts long anyway.

Tournament Final Three-way Match for the vacant Impact X Division Championship

Trey Miguel def. El Phantasmo and Steve Maclin by pinfall

ELP, Maclin, and Trey Miguel killed it in this match from bell to bell, firmly reminding people that X-Division ain't going anywhere while simultaneously keeping up the high standard of excellent X Division bouts at Bound For Glory. I was very happy to see Trey Miguel get the win here as he definitely deserved this moment, especially after taking a chance to break out on his own while the rest of his friends in The Rascalz went to NXT.

If he's serious about filling the shoes of being the "new" AJ Styles of sorts for the company going forward, then I'm all for it. The sky's the limit.

As for this match, go out of your way to watch this one, but there's some absolutely insane spots in this match that's well worth checking out.

Tag Team Match

Heath and Rhino def. Violent By Design (Deaner and Joe Doering) (with Eric Young) by pinfall

There's not much to talk about this match other than VBD beat the bricks off of Heath for 95% of this match until Rhino came out to his aid and hit The Gore on Deaner for the win.

20-wrestler Intergender Call Your Shot Gauntlet match

The winner receives a trophy and a contract they can invoke anytime within one year for a championship match of their choosing.

Moose won by last eliminating Matt Cardona

I'm not going to lie but the vast majority of this match was merely killing time and testing the fans' (whether you were watching live on PPV or in the audience) patience from how dull this was. I do give IMPACT props for introducing more intergender goodness here as both men and women were allowed to compete in this match. It made for a lot of awkward selling and isolated skirmishes between the men and the women who were dedicated to not engaging the other at certain points in this match.

I was happy to see Melina competing in an IMPACT ring again, especially following my disappointment that she wasn't the one to dethrone Deonna Purrazzo and win her first Knockouts Championship. With IMPACT and NWA seemingly working together a lot lately (at least on the women's wrestling end of the spectrum), I wouldn't rule that out as a possibility in the least for the near future though that she won't be holding either the Knockouts or NWA Women's Championship.

There was one hiccup in this match where the cameras cut away following Savannah Evans' elimination to capture Swinger's entrance, only to miss Rachael Ellering's elimination completely and just left the odd aftermath of Tasha Steelz gloating at both of them at ringside while she was left standing in the ring.

There were a few noteworthy surprises in this match, starting with Rocky Romero (who is lined up to appear at the next set of upcoming TV tapings) and the goddamn KISS Demon from WCW.

The best thing to come out of this match was Moose picking up the win and the right to Call Your Shot at a future title shot.

Three-way tag team match for the Impact World Tag Team Championship

The Good Brothers (Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson) (c) defeated FinJuice (David Finlay and Juice Robinson) and Bullet Club (Chris Bey and Hikuleo) by pinfall

The Good Bros. have go away heat with me at this point. These guys haven't been on IMPACT for what felt like over a month, playing around with The Elite over on AEW programming. FinJuice and Bullet Club (Chris Bey and Hikuleo) carried this match from bell to bell in its entirety while Gallows and Anderson contributed next to nothing of note here - as usual.

I wanted anyone but them to win here, but guess who won the pony? The Good Brothers retained. FML.

Singles match for the Impact Knockouts Championship

Matthew Rehwoldt was banned from ringside.

Mickie James defeated Deonna Purrazzo (c) by pinfall

I thought I had this match pegged for Deonna to retain against Mickie James, but boy was I wrong. They had me fooled with a lot of the near-falls here, but my jaw was hanging on the floor when Mickie actually got the three count on the Virtuosa.

To be fair though, Mickie had to get some sort of payback since Deonna came all the way out to Mickie's farm and had a brawl out there where she royally thrashed Mickie James from start to finish. This does make it very intriguing of how IMPACT is going to proceed forward with the fact that Mickie is in charge of the NWA women's division for that company and that Mercedes Martinez won the right to challenge the winner of this match since she won the Knockouts Knockdown tournament this year. As of this writing (10/27/21), Mickie James will be defending the title against Mercedes Martinez at Turning Point next month, so we'll see how that goes.

Singles match for the Impact World Championship

This was Alexander's Option C World Championship match.

Josh Alexander defeated Christian Cage (c) by submission

I thought this was a great match and definitely lived up to the hype going into it, especially with those excellent promotional packages and behind-the-scenes/making of documentary for Josh Alexander talking about humble beginnings and how he aspired to get to this spot after all of these years. Imagine how much more this moment would have meant for Alexander if he was the one to dethrone Kenny Omega for the IMPACT Championship instead of Christian Cage. We still had a Canadian vs Canadian main event, but I felt IMPACT drew the short straw overall when it came to this "forbidden door" partnership between them and AEW. The reports that were going around all day prior to this event was that the partnership between IMPACT and AEW was done after this show, so that all but guaranteed a title change here.

Even though I knew that going into this show, I was still pumped for this main event. I've been firmly behind this singles push for Alexander since The North split up prior to "All Ego" Ethan Page's departure to AEW and tonight was going to be his crowning moment. This match had a lot of great nods to Christian's previous opponents, such as Edge and Kurt Angle, while Alexander even tossed in a nod to Doug Williams (another prolific Canadian wrestler) with a Chaos Theory. I pop whenever I see that move to be quite honest, no matter who does it. Christian wasn't just phoning it in either. He made Alexander work for it until ultimately putting him over with the victory via submission in a standing Ankle Lock that would make Kurt Angle himself proud.

The post-match of this crowning achievement in Alexander's career here in IMPACT Wrestling was excellent with Alexander's wife, Jade Chung, and son (who were both watching at ringside) joining him in the ring.

Singles match for the Impact World Championship

Moose cashed in his Call Your Shot.

Moose defeated Josh Alexander (c) by pinfall

This cash-in of the trophy didn't sit well with me watching this transpire live at the end of this PPV. Alexander was sharing this moment with his wife and son, only for Moose to cash in his Call Your Shot opportunity and hit Alexander with a Spear while Jade Chung and their son was still in the ring. Moose promptly covered Alexander to force him to lose the title that he worked so hard for in less than five minutes. My feelings as this show went off the air were mixed.

On one hand, I was happy for Moose as he was one of MANY IMPACT's homegrown talents that were given the shaft when Kenny Omega beat Rich Swann for both IMPACT World Championships when they were unified. It felt like they were going to pull the trigger on Moose any given time in favor of him dethroning Swann for the title, but Swann bested Moose first, only to get beaten by Omega shortly thereafter. When Moose got beaten by Swann, I felt that was a bitter pill to swallow too until I realized that the booking was trying to protect Moose in the long run, especially from how strong Moose came off in the tag team match when he was in the ring with Omega at the same time. I was like "OK, maybe Moose is the one who will bring it back home after he gets to be the one who beats Omega." Months would pass and it would feel like Moose would be regulated to the back of the line when it came to the IMPACT World title when it seemed like everyone BUT him was clamoring for a title shot. THEN Christian Cage beat Kenny Omega for the title on AEW's own show no less and I was left with the impression of "OK Moose really isn't getting a shot anytime soon..."

Meanwhile, Josh Alexander kept rising above the ranks and having one hell of a X Division Championship run over the past few months until he announced that he was cashing in Option C to challenge Cage at BFG. It was making for the fairy tale ending to his rise to the top, building all up for this crowning achievement that he would be the World Champion going forward. The boyhood dream came true, only for Moose to remind us all that he wasn't stepping aside for anyone and took what he wanted and what he saw was rightfully his. To IMPACT's credit, they simultaneously put a MASSIVE amount of heel heat on Moose right off the bat while giving anyone who was merely checking the show out just to see Josh Alexander win the big one a reason to keep watching.

Like a good friend reminded me after the show went off the air, "every good babyface needs to be chasing something." Josh Alexander is going to want to fight through heaven and hell to get that title back and redeem himself for Moose embarrassing him in front of his family. That should definitely make for some good television to see how Alexander bounces back from this.

Afterthoughts:

I thought Bound For Glory was one of IMPACT's better PPVs of the year from start to finish. I didn't think anything on this card overstayed its welcome and the show left me anxious to see how events will play out next, so that's a great thing. I know some people may walk away from this show disappointed that the rumored debuts of ex-WWE talents, such as Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman, didn't show up on this show, but I thought what we got here was fine enough. Besides, IMPACT gets one of Minoru Suzuki's last appearances in the United States on his current tour before he heads back to Japan, so that's one more thing to look forward to on the upcoming TV tapings.

IMPACT Wrestling continues to be a guilty pleasure of mine that has a wealth of talent that a lot of so-called wrestling fans are sleeping on until they are picked up by their favorite promotion (either AEW or WWE), but part of the fun seeing them here in IMPACT is that feeling out process where they grow and flesh out their individual gimmicks/characters and their in-ring talents with the creative freedom that we wouldn't see them have elsewhere.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse