Impact Wrestling slams down at Lansdowne Park for action packed week

Impact Wrestling is a Canadian professional wrestling promotion based in Toronto. Impact is viewed as the second-largest professional wrestling promotion in the United States after WWE. Catching a live Impact Wrestling event is sure to entertain everyone as it did last night in Ottawa. From bright lights to dramatic musical entrances and colorful costumes, the young and the young at heart were kept on the edge of their seats throughout the bouts.

Professional wrestling can sometimes be criticized as being spandex-filled, brainless, obnoxious entertainment but there is a reason that fans have been coming back for more for well over thirty years. The wrestlers are not only professional entertainers who obviously put tremendous effort into accurately portraying their outlandish characters in the ring. They are professional athletes, pure and simple, and the amount of training and preparation that must be put into their routines is impressive. One has to wonder what would happen if EC3 or Moose made one wrong move during a back-breaker or a pile-driver. These accidents must happen. People must be badly injured. Still the show must go on and so it does, much to the delight of their loyal fans.

I decided to take my family to see the show while I snapped some shots (at very high shutter speeds to freeze the motion as much as possible). My boys are 11 and 14 and have never really been exposed to wrestling the way that we were as kids. We would delight in Randy Macho Man Savage’s “Ohhhhhh Yeaaaaahhh”, Rested in Peace with The Undertaker, and knew that Bret Hart was “the best there is, the best there was, and the best there will ever be”. My kids are more in touch with the latest YouTube sensation and are experts at playing video game with their buddies. Nothing could have prepared them for the sheer physicality of what they were about to witness. The first time one of the wrestlers was thrown out of the ring, onto his head right in front of the fans my youngest shot out of his chair and erupted into giggles. “What just happened?!?”

The surprise attacks, the slamming of tables over the bad guys, the cat fights, and the double teaming all added to the drama. Are the punches real? No. Is it all a little absurd? Sure, but in a world of political correctness and growing political tensions, sometimes its nice to just cheer and boo for your favorites even though their fates have already been sealed by the Gods of the ring. That’s what makes you feel like a kid without a care in the world again.

Overall though, it is the fans  who help make these types of events special and the Impact Wrestling family knows that. Last night they invited some special guests from the Children’s Wish Foundation to be in attendance, ring the bell to start the evening off, and to be the guest of honor at ringside. Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada, which is the largest of all Canadian wish-granting charities, is dedicated to granting wishes to Canadian children between the ages of 3 and 17 who are diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.  For more than 30 years, Children’s Wish has granted wishes to nearly 25,000 children and their families and last night was no exception. The kids and their parents were obviously very grateful for the opportunity to catch the action live and in person.

You can catch all the Impact action by tuning in to Pop TV every Thursday at 8PM to catch favorites including Lashley, EC3, Eddie Edwards, James Storm, Johnny IMPACT and the high-flying X-Division, plus the lovely and lethal Knockouts. IMPACT broadcasts in more than 120 countries around the world and you can follow @IMPACTWrestling on social media or visit them online at www.impactwrestling.com to stay up to date on the latest.

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