Impact Wrestling: Tessa Blanchard vs. Joey Ryan Announced for United We Stand

As the day of WrestleMania 35 nears, so does every other wrestling event taking place that week. Impact Wrestling will be part of the WrestleMania week fanfare again this year, as they’re towards an event on Thursday, April 4 called United We Stand. Yet another big match has been announced, but the news has also done away with a previously announced match.

Impact Wrestling continues to build the hype for United We Stand, which will take place on April 4 and air live at 11 p.m. ET on Impact’s Twitch channel. The show will be headlined by an “Extreme Dream Match,” but it’s actually the rest of the card that really makes this a must-see event.

Today, we got another announcement as Impact Wrestling revealed former Knockouts Champion Tessa Blanchard will be competing in an intergender match against indie veteran Joey Ryan.

As exciting as this announcement is, it’s even more interesting that this confirms the cancellation of a match Impact Wrestling revealed back in February. The company had originally advertised Tessa Blanchard would be taking on former Impact Wrestling World Champion Eli Drake.

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I’ve attempted to locate the original tweet from Impact Wrestling announcing that match, but it appears to have been deleted. You can find a cached version of the Tweet prior to deletion at this link.

At first glance it may just look like a change of plans, but it’s important to remember that Eli Drake himself stated on Twitter he refused to compete in an intergender match. You can see that tweet below, but a cached version is available at this link in case Eli Drake does decide to delete it.

As noted by Fightful, Impact Wrestling had pulled Eli Drake vs. Tessa Blanchard from their official announcement after Drake’s refusal was posted on Twitter. A few weeks after Drake’s tweet, we saw independent wrestling veteran Joey Ryan, a man who is no stranger to intergender wrestling, tweet an offer to face Tessa Blanchard in a one-on-one intergender match.

Impact Wrestling appears to have accepted the offer by Joey Ryan, and we will now see him face off against “Undeniable” Tessa Blanchard in less than one month at United We Stand.

Blanchard and Ryan have some history and have teamed together on the independent scene, but this will be a fresh match some fans are already very excited to see. The currently confirmed card for United We Stand is as follows.

Impact Wrestling United We Stand (April 4, 2019)

• Intergender Match: Joey Ryan vs. Tessa Blanchard
• Team Impact vs. Team Lucha Underground: Brian Cage, Moose, Eddie Edwards, and Johnny Impact vs. Drago, Daga, Aerostar, and Cuerno
• Ultimate X Match: Jake Crist vs. Dante Fox vs. Pat Buck vs. Kotto Brazil vs. Jack Evans
• Monster’s Ball Match: Sami Callihan vs. Jimmy Havoc
• X Division Championship Match: Rich Swann (c) vs. Yamato
• Knockouts Championship Fatal 4-Way Match: Taya Valkyrie (c) vs. Rosemary vs. Jordynne Grace vs. Katie Forbes
• Extreme Dream Match: Pentagon Jr. and Fenix vs. Rob Van Dam and Sabu