On the most recent episode of Impact Wrestling, Sami Callihan hit Eddie Edwards in the head with a baseball bat in a spot gone horribly wrong. Since the incident, Callihan has been trying to get “heat” on Twitter and even in an interview with a media outlet. This needs to stop immediately.
Impact Wrestling enjoyed a major spike in viewership this past week, and, well, it was well-deserved. Laurel Van Ness’s faux wedding segment was tremendous, the showdown between Rosemary and Taya Valkyrie killed, Konnan scared the hell out of me (again), and Matt Sydal continues to be hilarious.
But even though last week’s Impact featured a few entertaining segments, the only real talking point after the show was Eddie Edwards’s injury.
Edwards and Sami Callihan put on an exceptionally good match in the main event of the show, which is no surprise. These are two of the best wrestlers in Impact, and Callihan, in particular, is a star, having wrestled standout matches in places like PWG for years.
Unfortunately, after the match, Callihan hit Edwards in the head with a baseball bat. You can view the gruesome incident below, and it’s obvious that Callihan made a grave mistake.
I can guess what was supposed to happen. Callihan was supposed to hit the chair and have the bat miss Edwards on the rebound. The camera is set so that Callihan can miss with the bat behind Edwards, and if the spot happened as planned, we would have all went on our merry way.
Instead, Callihan hits the chair, but the tip of the bat comes down hard on Edwards’s face. This is entirely on Callihan. As you can see in the video above (check the screenshot before pressing “play”), Callihan starts at a horrendous angle. Where else is the bat going to go after you hit the chair if you are standing out there and above Edwards’s head? Stupid. Absolutely idiotic.
And you know what Impact did after this incident? They doubled down. They released another video showing Edwards after the attack.
I can deal with Impact turning this into an angle. That’s fine. WWE did something like this when Rey Mysterio accidentally broke Cody Rhodes’s nose, giving us the intriguing “Undashing” iteration of Rhodes’s character.
What I’m 100% not OK with is this. Callihan did an interview with TMZ Sports after the incident, and he said this:
"“Impact management told me it would be in my best interests to go out of my way to just address what went down last night on Impact on Pop. I hit this man in the face with a baseball bat, and in the last 24 hours I’ve been getting all this hate and negativity online. And Impact says, ‘Yo you have to go out of your way to make this right.’ People are saying we crossed the line. So from the bottom of my heart I have to tell each and every single one of you I’m not sorry for a single thing that happened. Look at me and tell me that I am not being serious. I do not feel bad. TMZ is messaging and interviewing Eddie Edwards when they should be interviewing me – the most dangerous man in professional wrestling today. Oh yeah and Jim Cornette, you can kiss my ass, too.”"
So let me tell you what I think went down, based on the interview. I think Impact told Callihan to take this interview with TMZ and do all of this in character to make a storyline out of it.
To me, this is an absolute embarrassment on the part of Impact Wrestling, which, you know, isn’t as surprise. Although the product itself is quite good and the company is ostensibly on the rise, it’s decisions like this that make me resent Impact’s incompetence that has always existed on a frustratingly fundamental level.
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One of your wrestlers was hit in the face with a baseball bat. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t an angle. You aren’t fooling anyone, and you should be extremely thankful that nothing worse came to Eddie Edwards.
Nobody who watched that incident needs to see Callihan cutting a worked/shoot promo on TMZ of all places! If you want to do that, just do an exclusive video to your YouTube channel. You know, like what normal, functional promos like WWE do!
Callihan is one of the most talented performers in your company. He doesn’t need to go on TMZ or Twitter to generate cheap “heat” from a very real incident in which he acted recklessly and hurt a fellow wrestler.
It is a wrestler’s responsibility to make sure that everyone they are in the ring with is safe. He breached that on Impact, and it’s totally unnecessary to work this into some sort of story. Callihan can get ‘heat” during the show, in videos on your YouTube channel, or in any other way that a talented performer is supposed to build heat.
Look no further than Cody Rhodes, Alexa Bliss, and The Miz as examples of heels who are able to get heat within the context of a wrestling show. They don’t need to actually hurt people and then cut promos about being remorseless in order to be effective villains.
This is 100-percent on Impact Wrestling, an organization desperate to return to relevance. And this isn’t the way to do it. Wrestling fans aren’t stupid, and they can see past this desperate attempt to draw interest. Quite frankly, many fans are either disgusted or uninterested.
I enjoy Impact and would like to see the promotion succeed, because many of the best characters in wrestling are showcased on Thursday nights. But it’s hard to have faith in a promotion that pulls stunts like this.
There’s “heat”, which operates in the context of a wrestling show and is earned by a talented heel. And there’s this, which is simply “reckless idiocy”. I get that Impact wants to try to do something different to gain traction, but pulling a stunt like this after a pre-taped show no less is in poor taste. They had plenty of time to think this through, yet they decided this would be both effective.
To be honest with you, the fact that I’m writing about this might make it seem like this was the right decision on their part. After all, people are “buzzing”.
But shouldn’t they be “buzzing” about Rosemary and Taya Valkyrie? Or Laurel Van Ness and Allie? Or Matt Sydal and Ishimori?
Instead, we’re talking about this stupid incident instead of all the interesting storylines taking place on an above-average show. And if they wanted to work a “Callihan is crazy” angle, they could have done it without kayfabing a real, dangerous accident.
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All they had to do was put more faith in Callihan’s ability to draw heat in the context of the show itself. The executives at Impact spoke about helping their talent build a brand, and that all starts with putting more trust in their performers, especially someone as gifted as Callihan, so they don’t have to go out and do something outlandish like this instead.