RISE of the Knockouts Brings the Best of IMPACT to RISE

The last match of the night was the thirty-minute iron man match that would determine the new Phoenix of RISE. Given that this match had been affected by last minute talent shuffles and some honest to god bad luck, I was cautiously hopeful for a good show but ready to forgive if it didn’t work out. Luckily RISE made a great call by handing the new match to two of their strongest wrestlers: Tessa Blanchard and Mercedes Martinez. They had about seven hours (if that) to put the match together and honestly that would be very difficult to do with less experienced talent.

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Martinez and Blanchard absolutely knocked it out of the park. It’s easy to see how the match could have gone wrong — both play very similar overconfident heels, and the match could have descended into gimmicky cheating or a straight-up squash. Instead, both Martinez and Blanchard had one of the best matches I have ever seen them participate in live. The pace never slowed, and you could see them get increasingly desperate as they pulled out all the stops to try to defeat each other.

Martinez was amazing, but this match was a thesis statement for Blanchard’s championship runs. Blanchard tends to collect gold wherever she goes, and watching a match like this live shows you why. Blanchard is the kind of wrestler who wins over crowds despite her arrogant persona just from working at the highest level possible, and she absolutely brought her A-game to this match.

Consider the fact that Blanchard had wrestled a tough singles match with Wolf a little over an hour before, I was amazed at the energy in her performance. I know people complain about Blanchard’s attitude, but you can’t deny how hard she works to put on a good show. I think that Blanchard is at her best in those high-stakes matches and she absolutely earned the pop when she won that belt. It says a lot for RISE — and Blanchard and Martinez — that they were able to take a difficult and potentially disappointing situation and turn it into an absolutely incredible match.

RISE of the Knockouts was a surprisingly short program, perhaps due to the last-minute roster shifts, or maybe just because everybody wanted to get a good night’s sleep before the RISE ASCENT tapings the next day. I believe it went about two hours, bell-to-bell. Even with it’s brevity, it was an awesome experience to see my favorite women’s wrestlers take on an ambitious event and crush it despite every obstacle in their way.

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It also did an incredible job setting up the next series of plotlines for RISE ASCENT. I hope this review has gotten you at least a little interested in checking out my favorite American promotion. If it has, come back on Thursdays to follow ASCENT along with me. Will Blanchard keep her title? Will Paradise Lost manage to take out the rest of the tag division to Rosemary’s satisfaction? Will the Bones of Contention ever squash their differences and become the champions we hope they can be? Only one way to find out!