For years now, Impact Wrestling has been streaming their shows on Twitch.TV, which has been a major source of viewers as they get bounced around from cable channel to cable channel, often airing on networks that their fans don’t even get. But if you’ve gone to the Impact Wrestling Twitch channel since yesterday, you may have noticed something odd: It’s not there anymore.
According to StreamerBans, a website that apparently exists to keep up with who’s banned on Twitch, Impact was banned yesterday evening. No backstage info has come out on exactly why the ban was handed down, but if you look at Tuesday night’s episode of Impact, which streamed on Twitch as usual, it’s obviously which segment broke the website’s rules.
This week’s episode was basically just a clip show with a few new non-wrestling segments (which is why I’m not doing a Knockout Report for it), and one of those segments was a hotel room “celebration” featuring Rob Van Dam, his girlfriend Katie Forbes, and Katie’s girlfriend Jennifer Barlow. Both women were so scantily clad that blurring had to be used to avert nipple shots, and the sexuality was not subtle.
Considering that Twitch’s guidelines prohibit not just sexually explicit material but also sexually suggestive material, it would be hard to argue that the RVD segment would be okay there. However, it’s likely that this ban will be lifted before too long, as has apparently been the pattern with previous Twitch accounts that were suspended for sexual content.
This is the only thing Impact quantifiably got in trouble for during a week that started with a brutal intergender PPV main event ending with a woman credibly accused of racism and bullying becoming their top champion, which may not technically qualify irony, but it is very, very Impact.
