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Tessa Blanchard Becomes IMPACT World Champion After Beating Sami Callihan At Hard To Kill

Wrestling
Carlos Toro Jan 12, 2020 11:14PM

For the first time in IMPACT's history, a woman is the promotion's world champion. 

After hitting at least four Magnums, getting hit with a Cactus Driver 97 at the start of the match and having her left leg constantly punished, Tessa Blanchard was able to defeat Sami Callihan to become the new IMPACT World Champion. The title bout was the main event of IMPACT's "Hard To Kill" pay-per-view.

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The match was the latest chapter in the long feud between Callihan and Blanchard with Blanchard chasing him for the championship ever since he won the IMPACT title against Brian Cage all the way back in October.

Below is the ending of the match, from Fightful's live coverage of the show:

Sami chops Tessa and kicks her knee out before Tessa hits a Samoan drop and a Magnum in the corner for two. Sami dodges Tessa coming off of the top and hits the Get out of Here for two before they exchange forearms until Sami hits a snap dragon suplex. Tessa gets right back up and hits Sami with a cutter for a near fall before they get to their feet at the count of seven and Sami grabs his belt. The referee takes the belt away and Sami goes to hit Tessa with brass knuckles before she low blows him and hits a Magnum off of the top for two. Sami gets to his feet to get free of a submission when he bites Tessa before hitting a piledriver for a near fall before Tessa gets a near fall off of a jack knife cover. Tessa then hits two Canadian destroyers into the Buzzsaw DDT for the pin and the win.

Winner: Tessa Blanchard defeats Sami Callihan via pinfall with the Buzzsaw DDT to become the new IMPACT World champion and the first female champion in the history of the promotion.

The past 48 hours have been filled with controversy surrounding Blanchard as several wrestlers came out on social media and accused Blanchard of bullying among other alleged transgressions. Nothing about what Blanchard was accused of was mentioned during the broadcast and Blanchard had previously denied those allegations.

You can check full results of Hard To Kill on Fightful's live coverage of the event and you can check out the post-show podcast here.

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