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Hard To Kill (2022) -- Results & Afterthoughts

Hard To Kill (2022) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by Impact Wrestling. It took place on January 8, 2022 at The Bomb Factory in Dallas, Texas. It was the third event under the Hard To Kill chronology.

9 matches were contested at the event, with two matches contested on the pre-show. In the main event, Mickie James defeated Deonna Purrazzo in a Texas Deathmatch to retain the Impact Knockouts Championship. In other prominent matches, Moose defeated Matt Cardona and W. Morrissey in a three-way match to retain the Impact World Championship, Trey Miguel defeated Steve Maclin to retain the Impact X Division Championship, Jonathan Gresham defeated Chris Sabin to retain the ROH World Championship, and Josh Alexander defeated Jonah.

The event was notable for the appearance of several notable Ring of Honor (ROH) talents and personnel; including Matt Taven, Rok-C, and Vincent, and the returns of Jonathan Gresham, Maria Kanellis, Mike Bennett, and PCO to Impact. Hard to Kill was also notable for the debut of Tom Hannifan (formerly known as Tom Phillips in WWE) as Impact's play-by-play commentator.

Match Results:

Countdown to Hard To Kill Matches:

Singles Match

Jake Something defeated Madman Fulton by pinfall

Four-Way Match

Mike Bailey defeated Ace Austin, Chris Bey, and Laredo Kid by pinfall

I came in towards the end of this match, but from the little that I did see of this match, it was some great stuff from all involved. Smart of IMPACT to make use of Laredo Kid since he's free of commitments to ROH at the moment. Bailey is someone who I have always heard good things about but never had a chance to see any of his in-ring work. Glad to see IMPACT is giving him a chance here. Some people might call this a downgrade for Bey and Austin, but I don't. Those guys will shine in any spot on the card that you put them in. Plus, I see them elevating back up the ladder this year anyway.

The entire preshow is linked in the embedded video below.

Inaugural Knockouts Ultimate X Match

Tasha Steelz defeated Alisha Edwards, Chelsea Green, Jordynne Grace, Lady Frost, and Rosemary

Winner became the number one contender for the Impact Knockouts Championship.

Alisha was a last minute replacement for this match since Rachael Ellering had to bow out of this match. I thought all of the Knockouts involved with this match definitely made this first ever Knockouts Ultimate X Match one for the ages. They definitely brought it as much as the guys did back in the day for those older Ultimate X Matches, even though I cringed at some of the bumps off the ropes for these ladies. I was even happier for Tasha Steelz to pick up the win at the end as I was convinced at one point that Chelsea Green was winning yet another multi-woman match for a random title shot in another promotion. Steelz has been killing it since splitting up Fire N Flava and coming out on her own. I would love to see a Knockouts title reign in her future sooner more than later.

Take a bow, ladies. You deserve it.

Singles Match for the Impact X Division Championship

Trey Miguel (c) defeated Steve Maclin by pinfall

Since Maclin lost, he can no longer challenge for the title as long as Trey Miguel is champion.

With the added stipulation, I thought Maclin was pegged to unseat Trey Miguel as X-Division Champion after the tear that he has been on with his undefeated streak. This match had me guessing from bell-to-bell as they beat the holy hell out of each other with the winner constantly in doubt here concerning who would walk away as the X-Division Champion. Trey Miguel has been on a new lease on life since splitting away from The Rascalz after their departure to NXT and has been knocking it out of the park as this "next generation" AJ Styles role that he has reinvented himself as in the company. You can't sell Maclin short either as he has been doing his best work of his career since reinventing himself following his WWE departure as Steve Cutler. This was arguably one of the better matches on this entire show.

That sell from that dropkick. *Chef's kiss*

Pure Rules Match for the ROH World Championship

Jonathan Gresham (c) defeated Chris Sabin by pinfall

I've always adored the Pure rules stipulation in Ring of Honor and I love that they are enforcing it now for these ROH World Championship matches. Gresham has been turning heads left and right over the past year in ROH until he achieved his crowning moment to win the vacant ROH World Championship at Final Battle last month after defeating Jay Lethal. This match would be his first defense of the title following the start of ROH's current hiatus/inactivity until April 2022. This would be another great match on this show to follow the previous one. As good as this match was, I can say that I was convinced that Sabin would take the ROH World title from Gresham, despite being a former ROH alumni and veteran. That was one of the titles that he never captured, but I don't think anyone's stopping Gresham from keeping that title until after ROH resumes operations in April.

I should note that I thought it was pretty awesome for them to bring on Ian Riccaboni on to do commentary with the commentary team for this match. That dude is criminally underrated when it comes to wrestling commentators.

Singles Match

Josh Alexander defeated Jonah by submission

Is it just me or does Jonah give young (ROH/early TNA-IMPACT) Samoa Joe vibes? That's exactly what I was thinking when I was listening to him talk in the backstage promo before this match. This was the third really good match in a row and I can't complain about this at all. Alexander going over made the most logical sense to me as it seem like he's had a string of bad luck since winning and instantly losing the IMPACT World Championship to Moose back at Bound For Glory. I hope he's going to move his way back towards Moose as the longer he keeps avoiding getting payback it's starting to look bad after that embarrassment Moose inflicted upon him in front of his wife Jade Chung and his kid.

10-man Hardcore War

Eddie Edwards, Rich Swann, Willie Mack, Heath and Rhino defeated The Good Brothers (Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson) and Violent By Design (Eric Young, Deaner, and Joe Doering) by pinfall

I felt that this was the cooldown match after the previous three matches being really good. I can't say that I care for majority of this match, especially with the Good Brothers involved. I do like the guys in Violent By Design, but almost everyone on the babyface side just felt like they were in this match just to have something to do on this show. Can't say that this was a bad match, but I felt it was fine for what they were going for. I did laugh at the finish where Rhino hit one of the most tired/exhausted/gassed-looking Gores I have ever seen him do. My grandma could've hit a better one than that.

Fortunately, the biggest takeaway of this match wasn't the match itself, but what followed as ROH's own Matt Taven, Mike Bennett (w/ Maria Kanellis), PCO, and Vincent jumped the rails and laid out the babyfaces. I thought this was a VERY interesting turn of events to setup an invasion angle of sorts with Ring of Honor. That's one smart way to keep ROH's name in the conversation within the wrestling bubble until they restart back in April. Let's be realistic here too. There's no conceiveable way that AEW is going to hire EVERYONE that's floating around on the free agent market right now in terms of WWE releases AND ROH talent becoming free agents during their current hiatus. I think this is cool to see both IMPACT and ROH are working together, especially with their shared history together from their early years.

Ring of Honor's OGK (Matt Taven & Mike Bennett, w/ Maria Kanellis), PCO, and Vincent laid out the members of the IMPACT roster left laying in the ring following the Hardcore War match.

Three-Way Match for the Impact World Championship

Moose (c) defeated Matt Cardona and W. Morrissey by pinfall

When I saw this match on the card going into this show, I said to myself, "There's absolutely no way that Moose is losing to either of those guys." Boy, by the end of this match, they definitely made me a believer with the near-falls and refereer bumps. Cardona's wife, Chelsea Green, even came back out and gave her husband the assist on numerous occasions, despite already bumping her ass off in the Ultimate X Match earlier in the show. W. Morrissey (the former Big Cass from WWE) held his own as well, even coming close to dethroning the current IMPACT World Champion if it wasn't for the referee bump(s) prior. I wasn't ever a fan of his solo run in WWE (in NXT nor on the main roster), but I'll admit that he's doing some of his best in-ring work on IMPACT lately. As for Cardona, you don't know what to expect from him with his "belt collecting" antics going on over the past year, namely participating in the deathmatches over in GCW and dethroning Nick Gage for their World title for a few months. By the end of this match, I was questioning everything as I had no idea who was going to win. That's rare for matches to have me that invested to make me consider all of the great narrative options all three men would have following this match depending on who walked away as the new or retaining champion. Moose managed to dodge a bullet and retained the title though.

I have to think that Moose isn't losing that title until Josh Alexander climbs his way back up the ladder for a rematch. Time will tell though.

Texas Deathmatch for the Impact Knockouts Championship

Mickie James (c) defeated Deonna Purrazzo

Had Matthew Rehwoldt interfered during the match, Deonna Purrazzo would have been disqualified and Rehwoldt would have been fired.

For the last few months, Deonna and Mickie have been busting their asses to keep this feud between them fresh and interesting and this match was no different. I'm split on deciding whether or not I liked this match more than their previous one at Bound For Glory though. I'm up in the air on that. Mickie and Deonna definitely earned the main event spot on this card, especially with the extra eyes on the fact whether or not Mickie would be walking into the Royal Rumble as the IMPACT Westling Knockouts Champion. It made for an interesting dynamic to question whether or not that Mickie would lose the title here or not, especially when they showed reigning Ring of Honor Women's Champion Rok-C watching the match from the front row with great interest. Deonna could have easily walked away as a double champion after this match with the potential of collecting a third if things had turned out differently.

My only complaint from this match was the finish where it looked like Mickie botched the hell out of her Mickie-DDT from Deonna collapsing (possibly from exhaustion) prematurely during the execution. I wouldn't have ended this off that poorly executed maneuver, but whatever. The rest of the match was great stuff though so I can give them a pass in that regard.

I honestly busted out laughing at this spot. That HAD to be a reference back to WrestleMania 22 between Mickie James and Trish Stratus.

Oof. In my eyes, this was only sore spot in this match.

As of IMPACT Wrestling's 1/13/22 episode, Deonna Purrazzo is your NEW ROH Women's Champion and AAA Reina de Reinas Champion. I think she bounced back from her loss at Hard To Kill rather nicely, amirite?

Afterthoughts:

The former WWE commentator Tom Phillips, now known as Tom Hannifan, joined the IMPACT commentary team with D'Lo Brown as Matt Striker has quietly departed from the company. I thought Tom did a great job here tonight as it seemed like he was a lot more comfortable calling the action here than he did on WWE programming at times.

It should be noted that the current IMPACT Knockout Tag Team Champions, The IInspiration (Cassie Lee & Jessica McKay), were pulled from this show due to COVID exposure as a safety precaution. Their title defense against The Influence (Madison Rayne & Tenille Dashwood) has been postponed until January 27 on the next set of TV tapings.

As for this show itself, I honestly told myself that I wasn't going to do a write-up on this event, but thought better of it as it was the better of the several wrestling shows I watched over the past week and I feel IMPACT deserved a pat on the back when they do something good since their programming is off the radar for most wrestling fans nowadays for one reason or another.

As of this posting (1/14/22), reigning AAA Reina de Reinas Champion Deonna Purrazzo has defeated reigning Ring of Honor Women's Champion Rok-C in a winner takes all match on the previous night's episode of IMPACT Wrestling to capture that title in the main event. I have to wonder if Rok-C is WWE bound since she was spotted at the last set of their open tryouts. It would explain why IMPACT were quick to do this match so quickly without any build-up to it outside of Rok-C sitting in the crowd during Hard To Kill's main event. As for Deonna's AAA Reina de Reinas title, I'm sure she's dropping that to Taya Valkyrie once her no-compete with WWE is over since she already threw down the gauntlet at one of their recent shows.

On that same show, ROH's invaders returned to lay out D'Lo Brown at the start of the show while Jonathan Gresham accepted the challenge of Steve Maclin to defend the ROH World Championship in one week. If tonight's show was any measuring stick to go by then I think we have another banger on our hands with that title defense.

I have to give IMPACT Wrestling credit where it's due. They are definitely holding my interest more than most when it comes to weekly wrestling. Hard To Kill was definitely the shot of adrenaline in the arm that they needed to start off 2022 on a strong note.

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