10 Best Impact Face/Heel Turns Vol.1
Photo Credit: IMPACT Wrestling
Outside Impact Wrestling. A long time "Jerichoholic", Mick Foley, Kurt Angle & Hardys fan, pop open a little bit of the Bubbly, read what's being written by me with an open perspective & enjoy.
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Since watching Impact Wrestling there’s been stars that had come & gone, leaving behind a legacy of legendary matches, rivalries & shifts in character from the traditional Baby Face to “Love to Hate” Heel roles. Below is my top 10 Face/Heel turns, some voted for by my Twitter followers*, others are a matter of personal opinion, mostly overlooked, forgotten or who just perfectly transitioned you wouldn’t have guessed they were going on that new path thanks to Impact‘s fantastic investment into character development & long term building & storytelling. We will be looking at what brought them up to the chosen path & what it did do to better the talent’s impact afterwards, so be prepared for a lot of reading…
*Apologies that all suggestions couldn’t be added, this is a subject that will be revisited frequently, they will be covered.
10. Josh Alexander (Rise of The Walking Weapon)
Arriving at Impact in February 2019, after 13 years working in professional wrestling, dominating every promotion he’d go to, Josh Alexander was quickly repackaged from starting as the advertised single’s competitor, to joining Ethan Page (his tag partner outside of Impact Wrestling formed at Alpha-1 in Canada & making appearances as the Monster Mafia at AAW & ROH). Josh Alexander & Ethan Page quickly rose up the ranks as a technically savage tag team facing any team who stood in their way including TJP & Fallah Bahh, The Deaners, The Rascalz & eventually beating LAX for the tag team titles at Bash at The Brewery on July 5th. Josh Alexander’s character was mostly built around Ethan Page for a very large amount of time, keeping Alexander as the guy who will just decimate you, while slowly building up his presence on the mic & backstage. After breaking LAX’s record of longest reigning tag team champions, Josh’s attitude really shone through more, he was more vocal, more intimidating & you could tell, should the time come for a change in direction, he’d be ready for it. After losing the Tag titles again at Bound For Glory 2020, The North quickly started to break down, Ethan Page consistently making getting that 3rd run almost impossible & by December 2020, The North was gone, still getting voted Tag Team of the year for the 2nd time but come Hard To Kill 2021, Ethan Page’s contract expired & Josh Alexander was already asking the fans where they wanted him to go next now that he intends to avoid going into Tag Team wrestling (Title chasing) in the foreseeable future.
Photo credit – Impact Wrestling.
Shared to Wikipedia by Brandon Oliver – https://www.flickr.com/photos/rcwforever/48236298042/
The X-Division championship would be next, after a brief stint in building Brian Myers & Matt Cardona, which in turn built Josh Alexander up more as a Face rather than a Heel character, losing to Brian Myers & (reluctantly) teaming with Cardona to beat some respect into the newly signed talent. Come March 2021 Josh Alexander has been in into some of the greatest matches of 2021, if not all time, week after week between TJP & Ace Austin building up to a huge victory against both of them at Rebellion, taking the title from Ace Austin & his run as the X-Division champion has already left fans blown away with (what is right now match of the year for me) a show stealing clash of styles & technical brilliance between NJPW Star El Phantasmo. Bringing the X-Division back to the roots & standard he’d seen it, growing up & watching TNA over 10 years ago
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