Impact Wrestling: All April shows cancelled due to spread of COVID-19

Impact Wrestling has announced several events have been cancelled due to the ongoing spread and threat of COVID-19, but are looking for alternative ways to produce the shows.

Impact Wrestling is continuing to face fallout due to the spread of COVID-19. Their first events to be affected were Lockdown, originally scheduled for Mar. 28 in Windsor, ON, and Breakdown, originally scheduled for March 29 in Belleville, MI. That was all announced back on March 16, 2020.

At the time, they were still monitoring the situation and making decisions about future events, but those calls have now been made. Impact Wrestling, like several other companies initially hosting events during WrestleMania weekend, saw their show in Tampa cancelled.

They were set to present “TNA – There’s No Place Like Home,” a throwback show to their days as Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, which was heavily pushed for by current Impact Tag Team Champion “All Ego” Ethan Page.

Unfortunately, with the cancellation of WrestleCon, which their show was associated with, they didn’t have much choice in the matter. Impact Wrestling stated on Mar. 17, 2020 that “all refunds will be sent out in the next 7 days” for that event.

Now, as of today, Mar. 24, 2020, they’ve released another update that confirms the cancellation of Against All Odds, Rebellion, and two days of television tapings, but they may still try to create that content in a different manner. The following was posted on ImpactWrestling.com earlier today:

"MARCH 24, 2020 UPDATE:As a result of the Coronavirus outbreak, IMPACT Wrestling will not be hosting “Against All Odds” on April 17th in Toronto, the April 19th “Rebellion” pay-per-view event at New York City’s Terminal 5 and the April 24th & 25th TV tapings in Columbus, Ohio. We are monitoring the situation closely and are looking at alternative ways that we can produce the events. All tickets will be fully refunded from point of purchase.The safety of our fans, talent and staff is of utmost importance and we will continue to adjust plans as necessary while still delivering as much IMPACT Wrestling as possible."

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The only two matches set for Rebellion were a three-way for the Impact World Championship that would’ve seen Tessa Blanchard defending against Eddie Edwards and Michael Elgin, and Sami Callihan was also expected to face Ken Shamrock in a singles match.

With Impact Wrestling’s history of using alternative production methods, most notably with the original Final Deletion matches and segments featuring “Broken” Matt Hardy and the more recent Undead Realm content with Rosemary, Su Yung, and others, it wouldn’t be farfetched to see them go outside the box in this situation.

Even WWE is reportedly changing things up, with some matches for the crowd-free WrestleMania 36 event potentially taking place on a closed set.

While it’s understandable that companies like WWE and Impact Wrestling may hope to mitigate risk with small crews and still produce content, as the pandemic continues to threaten the country and the world, more may reach the point of having to cancel or postpone all events indefinitely for the safety of their talent and staff as well.