impact pro wrestling: ultimate glory
attended impact pro wrestling's ultimate glory event at the start of the month! it was so good. i took a lot of notes to write a full play-by-play report but TBH in the end it really is just guys beating each other up back and forth over made up championship titles. let's have fun!
fanart of horus, undisputed star of the show. i already thought the part where he tossed james shaw into the crowd of onlooking wrestlers was too cool, but then he followed it up with the out-of-the-ring table setup and table slam, and then crawled out behind the audience, climbed on top of the venue's inaccessible entrance landing, and jumped down to keep fighting the other guys. audience participation element aside, i think it's such a strong benefit of having a small venue that you can do stuff like this. this is a hall that's mainly used for stuff like book fairs and toy collector shows so seeing its very architecture be transformed into part of a pro wrestling match was insane.
i was really excited to see liger! i've seen him at other IPW events previously but after finding out who he was i assumed he lived in america for some reason. this time he wore a whole palestine flag-themed fit, looked super dope. benny keen also wore a watermelon-patterned shirt. speaking of him, i love sleazy characters and while IPW is full of those for heels, it's pretty fun to get a sleazy character who's on the good guy's side as well.
the only characters that i felt came off a bit weak (outside of the dudes who just had no gimmick) were probably the alphas of auckland. i don't think it's their fault— they played the shitty privileged scumbag character role really well— but IPW already has the young nats and james shaw who fill the same niche and focus more precisely on tropes that aucklanders would recognize in real life. i don't think varsity culture is very common here, so maybe private school uniform (like king's college) would do better. though those are like, literal children so maybe not.