As we noted earlier, Wrestle-1 has announced that The Wolves and Bobby Lashley were pulled from this year’s Bound for Glory PPV in Japan. Gail Kim and Taryn Terrell won’t be making the trip either, and it’s likely Bobby Roode will not be featured despite being the current TNA World Heavyweight Champion.
The reason is that the Japanese audience reacts very differently to pre-taped title switches, a situation that caused some drama earlier in this year when Sanada had lost the X-Division title, but TNA still wanted Wrestle-1 to put him over as champion since the switch hadn’t yet made air in the U.S. Wrestle-1 announced it anyways, because they knew their audience would react poorly if he came out with the title.
Because of the way Impact Wrestling has been taped, TNA is now in a situation where they can’t feature the majority of their champions on the “biggest show of the year”, because the switches won’t be made until after Bound for Glory. James Storm will still be wrestling in the main event, against Great Muta and Tajiri, but he won’t be working with Abyss and simply won’t bring his belt to Japan. It’s basically a situation where TNA would have to spoil their own title changes, risk a terrible live reaction for most of their segments, or not make the title changes in the first place, which really wasn’t an option.
KILLAM: This is turning into a giant train wreck. It’s a tough situation though, because they don’t have any other Impact tapings left in 2014, and the title switches had to be done because of contractual issues. What was once their biggest PPV of the year won’t have half the talent most U.S. fans care about, it won’t be live, and it will have zero continuity with the Impact weekly product. If I didn’t have to do live coverage for Wrestlezone, there’s no way I’d spend good money on this show – and this is from a long-time fan that hasn’t missed a BFG since 2006.
