RISE of the Knockouts Brings the Best of IMPACT to RISE

Credit: RISE-wrestling.com

The night took a hard swerve from technical achievement to hardcore terror. Saraya vs Su Yung in a falls count anywhere match for the Knockouts Championship was one of the most ridiculous, low-key terrifying wrestling matches I have ever been present for. These two ladies have had a blood feud going since Yung turned heel in SHINE, and every time they meet in a ring it is basically a massacre.

I don’t typically like death matches and bloody stuff — yes, I have seen Samoa Joe vs Necro Butcher and I never want to see it again — but that’s what you’re in for when hardcore wrestler and general chaos element Saraya Knight shows up. Don’t get me wrong: I am a huge fan. Still, every time she wrestles I assume there’s a 10% chance she’s actually going to murder her opponent.

I knew her and Su Yung were going to go for it, but I didn’t expect the action to get that intense. However, it only took a few minutes for Saraya to propel Yung out of the ring and start hurling her into walls and barricades. At one point Saraya hustled Su Yung up a ladder, found a rope, and literally hung her from a platform. I have no idea how they pulled that off, mostly because I ended up watching most of the match through my fingers.

Su Yung retained, just barely, but Saraya won over the crowd. I hope more IMPACT fans check out SHIMMER and RISE to see her work, because there’s nobody quite like her.

Credit: RISE-wrestling.com

The second-to-last match was a tag team fatal four way to find the first ever tag team champions of RISE, the Guardians of RISE. The teams were fan favorites the Wiley Smileys (Miranda Alize and Kylie Rae, who just presented RISE at Stardom — congrats Kylie!), Blue Nation (Charli Evans and Jessica Troy), Fire and Nice (Britt Baker and Chelsea Greene), and of course Rosemary’s fearsome tag team stable Paradise Lost (Ash and Dust).

Since the beginning of RISE, Rosemary has been threatening to destroy the promotion and remake it in her own dark image, and she’s been “mentoring” Ash and Dust for this specific task. The team has taken on and triumphed over all comers since the addition of Ash. The question was less who would be taking the tag team titles home, and more who would survive the encounter.

As it turned out, the biggest surprise of the night wasn’t Paradise Lost’s win (though I genuinely thought the Smileys had it in the bag towards the end thanks to Alize’s beautiful drop kick). Instead it was the dramatic mid-match betrayal of Chelsea Greene by Britt Baker, who was so angry they were eliminated that she turned on her partner in the middle of the ring. Being the mayor of Brittsburgh might be driving her mad with power.

Looking at the wrestling side of things, I would submit that based on fundamentals alone, Blue Nation is probably the best tag team in RISE. They are perfectly in sync, and watching Evans and Troy implement their agenda of cheeky cheating alongside blistering wrestling was a lot of fun. The Smileys were great as always, and I think if RISE didn’t seem to have plans for them as singles competitors they’d probably has walked out with those belts.

But in the end, Rosemary’s evil plan came to fruition, and Ash and Dust won. The first Guardians of RISE, in sway to the evil Rosemary and ready to cut a swath of destruction through the tag team division. Now that’s how you build a plotline!