We all know what happened at Bound For Glory last year, the tears of joy turning into tears of rage for Josh Alexander who just defeated Christian Cage to become the IMPACT World Champion. Moose cashed in his Gauntlet for Glory opportunity, won earlier in the night, and Speared Alexander to become Champion. Six months after, the match between Moose and Alexander will finally take place.

Whoever wins the title on Saturday, it’s a dream match for IMPACT fans, who will be the big winners. Moose and Alexander are both excellent wrestlers, unable to deliver a bad match mostly on PPV. They have represented the company with their own interpretation of pride. They have pushed themselves to their ultimate limits, playing the mind-games symphony like never before in the Impact Zone.

Yesterday, Gail Kim hosted a press pass with the Champion and the Challenger. The mind games continued, for the pleasure of the media.

@IMPACTWRESTLING #Rebellion! is LIVE April 23rd, from the MJN Convention Center in Poughkeepsie, NY!@Walking_Weapon @TheMooseNation

Tickets are on-sale now at : https://t.co/kt2dTzdRSi

Order on Fite: https://t.co/XmK2ds6uKNhttps://t.co/7hRk6wA79h: https://t.co/vlzaoJyQd2 pic.twitter.com/X6HUzVx7s4

— IMPACT (@IMPACTWRESTLING) April 15, 2022

• What matters the most? Revenge or Championship?

Moose: “Like I said, I had no beef with Josh. So, I don’t hate him. I actually respect him. I think he’s one of the best wrestlers in the world. What I’m doing and what I’ve been doing is just business. So, being the Impact World Champion is more important than beating Josh because, like I said, Josh is just another good talent that’s on the Impact Wrestling roster.”

Josh Alexander: “I think they go hand in hand. I think the World Championship comes with revenge, and it’s all around that because the only thing that Moose cares about in this world is that World Championship. Unlike myself, I have a wife and children. All these other people that I care about. Moose says he doesn’t have any of that. That’s why I’ve said that I’m going to take the one thing that matters most to him because he’s taken the thing that matters to me, a certain amount of like my children looking up to me as a father and a wrestler and all this stuff. I need to defeat Moose to have a certain amount of pride around my kids and my wife again because they saw the lowest lows at Bound for Glory and everything that they’ve been involved with since. So, yes, the revenge comes by taking that World Championship for Moose because it means so much to him. It means everything to him.”

• Emotions, the fuel to the fire?

Moose: “The match I had with EC3 was definitely a turning point. It definitely did change something on how I perceived wrestling and how I perceive getting ready for wrestling. Some might say I’m a little bit darker now, and some might say I’m a little bit more venison now. That’s what it took to create whatever narrative they want to create about me. But it definitely did change something about me. I can’t tell you what it is. I can’t give away that secret because then everybody will want to be like me or try to be like me. But it definitely did change something about me. And that’s why I’ve been Impact World Champion like the last person said, for over 200 days now, and going to be longer after Saturday night, unfortunately for Josh Alexander.”

Josh Alexander: “I can’t say I know how it’s going to affect me at Rebellion on April 23rd because I’ve honestly never been pushed to a point where I’ve had all the things come into factor and come into play leading into a match before. So, I have no idea how I’m going to react and how it’s going to affect me, but all the emotions and all the anger and all that stuff, I’ve felt that kind of things before and never to this extent, they’ve always been something that has motivated me and carried me through, and I can’t say whether or not it’s going to do me a disservice or not, but hopefully, it doesn’t, and hopefully, cooler heads will prevail by the end of the match and I can keep focused. So, I can bring that world Championship home for not just me, but for every fan that supported me and my wife and kids as well.”

• Can motivation become a distraction?

Moose: “Your motivations tend to be your distractions. That’s why I don’t have any motivation. I motivate myself because I know I won’t distract myself.”

Josh Alexander: “Moose has stated that I have a lot of distractions behind me. I have said they’re motivating factors. Everything to do with my wife and my son seeing me at the lowest low of my career, being in the ring with you when that championship was ripped into my hands by Moose was a motivating factor enough, and then you add on everything else after that. I think that’s all going to be motivating. It could be not wanting to stay down when others would. So, I think it’s going to work to my benefit. Moose calls that distraction, but if I go into this match with all these distractions around and I still am somehow able to beat the Wrestling God, what does that say about those distractions? What does that say about me?”

• An opposition of match strategy

Josh Alexander: “I can’t really say what my strategy is going to be going into the match specifically, but I can say that throughout my entire 17-year career, no matter who I’ve been in the ring with, over 1,500 matches, I’ve yet to meet a single-competitor that has a bigger gas tank than me in that ring. So I don’t care how much of a Division One football player athlete Moose was in his heyday, when it comes to being a professional wrestler in that 20 by 20 squared circle, I don’t think he can match me as time keeps going. So I think that works to my advantage, yes.”

Moose: “I haven’t needed to go thirty or forty minutes. I don’t need thirty. That’s why you haven’t seen it. You want a game plan? I’m going to hit Josh very hard. That’s my game plan.”

• Admiration or hate for the other?

Moose: “I actually don’t hate Josh. I think Josh is a swell guy. He’s obviously a family man, who will hate that. This is the thing. Everybody thinks I hate Josh. I don’t hate Josh. If Josh was Jesus Christ, I would have done the exact same thing that I have been doing. That’s just who I am. Like, it’s not hatred. It’s not I don’t despise them. It’s just business, and that’s what I do when it comes down to keeping my world title. So, it’s just bad that Josh is the guy that’s getting all the things that I’m doing. But it could’ve been anybody. It’s just I have no conscience. It doesn’t matter who’s in front of me. I’m going to do what I need to do to keep what I have.”

Josh Alexander: “Any respect I would have had for or did have for Moose over the past decade of knowing him as a professional wrestler as a gifted athlete has gone out the window in the last few months seeing how desperate he is to keep his World Championship. So, no.”

• Choose an opponent for your opponent

Moose: “If I was to pick somebody to wrestle Josh, I think I would pick Alex Shelley because, in my opinion, he’s a great technical wrestler and he’s in the same alley and the same style as Josh, and I think he can soften Josh up a little bit. But I don’t need him to soften Josh. I want Josh to come to that pay-per-view 110% because when I beat him, it just shows how great I am.”

Josh Alexander: “Over the course of the past 6 months from when Moose cashed in and became Impact World Champion all the way till now, everybody saw Suzuki, JONAH, Charlie Haas. Everybody came out and challenged me. And it was like a Mortal Kombat stage of me having to beat different people to get back to this World Championship thing. But the thing is along the way with each and everyone I learned something new about myself that I could apply to my wrestling game and stuff. Like Suzuki with just like the strikes and the forearms and stuff like that. Specifically, I’m going to highlight JONAH here. I would pick Jonah for Moose because in my time here in Impact Wrestling and probably my entire career, I’ve never been in the ring with someone quite like JONAH. He’s big, he’s fast, he’s strong, he’s imposing, and even more than that, he has a certain level of heart that I can respect, regardless of how vicious and violent he might be. I can respect what he does not ring, and I think that he would have Moose’s number if he got the opportunity. So, I would like to see that.”

.@IMPACTWRESTLING #Rebellion! is LIVE April 23rd, from the MJN Convention Center in Poughkeepsie, NY!@Walking_Weapon @TheMooseNation

Tickets are on-sale now at : https://t.co/kt2dTzdRSi

Order on Fite: https://t.co/XmK2ds6uKNhttps://t.co/7hRk6wA79h: https://t.co/vlzaoJyQd2 pic.twitter.com/mdYKNftyHd

— IMPACT (@IMPACTWRESTLING) April 15, 2022

You can listen to the full press pass here.
Follow Josh Alexander and Moose on Twitter @Walking_Weapon and @TheMooseNation.

“Rebellion” will air live from Poughkeepsie, NY, this Saturday at 8 PM EST (3 AM BST) on Pay-Per-View in North America and around the world digitally via FITE TV. IMPACT Wrestling is airing on Thursday at 8/7c on AXS TV in the USA and around the world on IMPACT Wrestling’s new YouTube membership Impact Insiders.

All pics, screencaps, and videos courtesy of Impact Wrestling, AXS TV and Fight TV.