When you look back in wrestling history, you’ll find many stories about wrestlers getting legitimately injured at the hands of their “opponents”. In all my years of watching this product, I’ve seen it happen countless times. Most of the time, it’s because of either carelessness, or simply a freak accident. This incident I would have to place as one of the most brutal I’ve seen, at least in a major promotion.
So where do I place my feelings regarding this latest in ring injury. Was it an accident? Was it carelessness? Is there blame to be had? Well in my opinion, it’s all three.
Now of course this was accidental. I don’t think anyone believes that Callihan purposely went out that night and said to himself, “Hmm, I feel like knocking this guy into tomorrow with the swing of my bat”. If anyone ever had that mentality in this business, they wouldn’t be working for long. Especially for a major promotion that has weekly television. HOWEVER, I do believe Callihan was extremely careless in his actions. The way he just swung that bat was as though he was imitating Mickey Mantle trying to beat his 643 feet home run distance record.
To me that spot should have never even been attempted. There are so many other spots that can be done. But it seems more and more we are seeing these high risk, high reward spots, and it’s becoming more and more dangerous. And why is that? Is it simply to hear the crowd chant “Holy S***”? I’ll never understand why so many wrestlers take such high risks, as the one I saw here. I'm not just pointing the finger at Sami either. Eddie also has a place in this mess. Could he have positioned the chair properly?
Yes he could have. Could he have just said "Oh hell no, I don't want to do this spot? Yes he could have. So there is blame enough to go around here. Especially when the slightest mistake, can ultimately cost you your life. Eddie Edwards could have very easily been killed in this stunt, and that leads me to who I blame most for this. It’s Impact Wrestling. They are the ones who ultimately allowed this to happen. Someone in creative thought to themselves that this would make for great television. Now I don’t know if the wrestlers practiced this spot over and over before performing it for TV.
Maybe they did and it came off great every time. But again I ask, why do the spot in the way they did? To me, swinging a bat to the head should never be an option. Hit him in the side, the leg, the back. None the less, Impact allowed this spot to go forward, and the outcome ended badly. Should Sami be fired like so many have said he should? No he shouldn’t be. But my hope is that a valuable lesson was learned from this. There’s really no need to do over the top spots just to get a reaction from the crowd. This is a very dangerous profession, and though outcomes are choreographed, injuries can be very real.
Now with all that being said. One thing I will agree with is how Impact and both wrestlers are handling the situation. This incident brought many eyes (No pun intended) to Impact wrestling’s product, and when you’re getting new eyes on your product because of this situation, you’d be stupid not to try and take advantage of it. And that’s what they are doing by having Sami play up what happened. But keep in mind, two outcomes can come from this. Sami will either become a bigger star because of it, or he will crash and burn. Only to be left in Indie purgatory. It seems like it’s a gamble both Sami and Impact Wrestling are willing to take.
Johnny Wrestling V2 @JWrestlingV2
So where do I place my feelings regarding this latest in ring injury. Was it an accident? Was it carelessness? Is there blame to be had? Well in my opinion, it’s all three.
Now of course this was accidental. I don’t think anyone believes that Callihan purposely went out that night and said to himself, “Hmm, I feel like knocking this guy into tomorrow with the swing of my bat”. If anyone ever had that mentality in this business, they wouldn’t be working for long. Especially for a major promotion that has weekly television. HOWEVER, I do believe Callihan was extremely careless in his actions. The way he just swung that bat was as though he was imitating Mickey Mantle trying to beat his 643 feet home run distance record.
To me that spot should have never even been attempted. There are so many other spots that can be done. But it seems more and more we are seeing these high risk, high reward spots, and it’s becoming more and more dangerous. And why is that? Is it simply to hear the crowd chant “Holy S***”? I’ll never understand why so many wrestlers take such high risks, as the one I saw here. I'm not just pointing the finger at Sami either. Eddie also has a place in this mess. Could he have positioned the chair properly?
Yes he could have. Could he have just said "Oh hell no, I don't want to do this spot? Yes he could have. So there is blame enough to go around here. Especially when the slightest mistake, can ultimately cost you your life. Eddie Edwards could have very easily been killed in this stunt, and that leads me to who I blame most for this. It’s Impact Wrestling. They are the ones who ultimately allowed this to happen. Someone in creative thought to themselves that this would make for great television. Now I don’t know if the wrestlers practiced this spot over and over before performing it for TV.
Maybe they did and it came off great every time. But again I ask, why do the spot in the way they did? To me, swinging a bat to the head should never be an option. Hit him in the side, the leg, the back. None the less, Impact allowed this spot to go forward, and the outcome ended badly. Should Sami be fired like so many have said he should? No he shouldn’t be. But my hope is that a valuable lesson was learned from this. There’s really no need to do over the top spots just to get a reaction from the crowd. This is a very dangerous profession, and though outcomes are choreographed, injuries can be very real.
Now with all that being said. One thing I will agree with is how Impact and both wrestlers are handling the situation. This incident brought many eyes (No pun intended) to Impact wrestling’s product, and when you’re getting new eyes on your product because of this situation, you’d be stupid not to try and take advantage of it. And that’s what they are doing by having Sami play up what happened. But keep in mind, two outcomes can come from this. Sami will either become a bigger star because of it, or he will crash and burn. Only to be left in Indie purgatory. It seems like it’s a gamble both Sami and Impact Wrestling are willing to take.
Johnny Wrestling V2 @JWrestlingV2
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