What’s the story?
On last night's episode of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer talked about the bizarre story of how Impact Wrestling will have to blur out a referee during a match on the episode of the show this week.
It all boils down to Lucha Underground sending a cease and desist order to Impact Wrestling, as one of LU’s referees is in charge of a match which will be broadcast on an episode of Impact on US Television, something which goes against their contracts.
In case you didn’t know...
The problem occurs during a match pitting Broken Matt Hardy and Brother Nero against Super Crazy and Psicosis, a match which took place in the Crash Wrestling promotion in Mexico. It is all part of the Hardys “Expedition for the Gold”, where they are going to teleport to different wrestling companies around the world to battle for their tag team gold.
The fact that the referee is contracted to Lucha Underground means that he cannot appear on any other promotion which will be shown on US television. It’s hard to believe that nobody was aware of this being an issue when the match was first booked, and then filmed.
The heart of the matter
Lucha Underground and AAA wrestling in Mexico are currently in the middle of a battle with the Crash wrestling promotion. AAA was unhappy when their former stars Pentagon Jr, Daga and Garza Jr showed up on a Crash wrestling show.
All three men then announced they had left AAA to move to the Crash promotion, something which did not go down well with their former bosses. Since then, the man formerly known as Pentagon Jr has had to change his name several times.
AAA owned the rights to the names Pentagon Jr and Pentagon Dark, so each time he has announced his new name, AAA has gone ahead and trade-marked that new name as well, leaving him with no choice but to make another name change. It all seems to be a mess on a large scale, with a lot of ill feeling between all parties.
What’s next?
With the show set to air on Thursday night, it is hard to see how viewing it will be anything more than a strange spectacle. If Impact Wrestling has to actually blur the referee out it will take a lot of work to make that possible.
There is also the possibility of the match being edited in such a way that the referee is hardly ever visible, that in itself could cause a whole host of problems of its own.
SportsKeeda’s take
This match could be one of the most bizarre matches you will ever watch on TV. There’s also the chance that it will give Impact Wrestling a whole host of new viewers, people eager to see what exactly the whole spectacle may look like.
AAA and Lucha Underground can seemingly only come out of this whole debacle looking a little petty, but at the end of the day, someone at Impact Wrestling should have realised that the referee couldn’t appear on their TV show. One thing is for sure though, this will be one of the most interesting (and weird) things you’ll see on wrestling TV in 2017.
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