10 Most Over-Pushed TNA Wrestlers Ever
10. Rhino
ImpactWrestling.com
Rhino was the last ECW Heavyweight Champion, though more by default than anything else. With most of the company’s top stars abandoning ship at that point, someone had to be champ. So why not Rhino?
He also had a decent run in WWE, but by the end of his run there, he was basically a jobber. TNA picked him up in 2005, and made him a big player by aligning him with Jeff Jarrett. He found himself in multiple main-events, including beating Jarrett for the World Title at their biggest show of the year at Bound For Glory. It was way too much.
In Unbreakable that year, Raven fought Rhino in a World Title match, whereas four years earlier the two fought each other on the second match on the card at Backlash. It defined TNA down as a place where former WWE mid-carders went to earn a living, instead of where new talent was taking over.
By the time Rhino led The Frontline against The Main Event Mafia, it was just plain ridiculous. Fans didn’t identify him as a TNA original, so him battling former top WWE and WCW stars didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. He was a good talent, just way over-pushed.
9. Suicide
impactwrestling.com
Had Suicide only made one appearance in TNA, and lost in 30 seconds to Samoa Joe, he would still make this list. Why? Because he was a freaking videogame character! Having him show up at all is a massive over-push.
The company attempted some viral marketing with him before his debut by trying to get fans to check out a website they set up for him. When he did show up, he basically kicked every other X-Division wrestler's ass. He did have kind of a cool swing from a rope type-thing ring entrance, but then they took that away from.
Suicide laid out everyone with cool looking moves, but then he mysteriously grew smaller and changed up his moveset as the role switched from Kazarian to Christopher Daniels (and a few other people along the way too). He soon won the X-Division Title, meaning a once great division was being led by a videogame character.
8. Chris Sabin
ImpactWrestling.com
For the most part, Chris Sabin was painfully under-pushed during his time in TNA, but for a few months he was over-pushed to the point of absurdity. And it pains me to write that, as I think The Motor City Machine Guns are one of the best tag teams of this millennium, but Chris Sabin as Heavyweight Champion just wasn’t a very good call.
TNA was in this really weird spot in 2013. They were still recovering from the fallout of the Hogan/Bischoff era, and were having huge financial problems. Their top stars began leaving the company, so they started taking some of their originals and suddenly making them the Heavyweight Champion. They just didn't go through the effort of writing storylines for them or anything like that.
Sabin was chosen to dethrone Bully Ray, but he had been nowhere near built up for that role. Ray was doing great work as the top heel of the company, but Sabin had been known as a mid-card act for the past 10 years, and never received much character development. Fans weren't really clamoring for him to win the World Title.
As an X-Division star, Sabin was great, but he just wasn’t the right guy to push as the top face in the company.
7. Orlando Jordan
ImpactWrestling.com
When Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan joined TNA, they wanted to bring some big stars to get a buzz going. That first night in, Scott Hall, Sean Waltman, Jeff Hardy and Ric Flair all appeared on the show...oh, and so did The Nasty Boys, Val Venis and Orlando Jordan.
Venis played strip poker with The Beautiful People, The Boys took a dump in Team 3D’s bag and beat them up and Jordan defeated Samoa Joe in his first match with the company. That’s right, Orlando Jordan beat Samoa Joe.
Years later, one can still not comprehend what TNA management was thinking when they booked a forgettable mid-card act in WWE, and put them over one of their biggest stars ever (they also did the same when Venis beat Christopher Daniels).
Jordan soon became an over-the-top, flamboyant act that was a personal favorite of Vince Russo’s. He was kind of like Goldust from the mid '90s, but less talented.
Eventually the company stuck him in a mid-card comedy act, but those first few months of him in TNA were brutal.
6. Sting
ImpactWrestling.com
Yes, Sting is an icon and all that, but wow, was he amazingly over-pushed in TNA.
When he first joined the company, it was a pretty big deal. Here was a guy that could have easily gone to WWE and had big matches with Steve Austin and The Undertaker, but he wanted to help out his old friend Jerry Jarrett, as well as work a light workload while making good money.
He helped give the company some buzz, but he never really got out of the way. He ended up main-eventing Bound For Glory 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. His ‘08 match against Samoa Joe is one of the biggest mistakes the company ever made, as they took their young, crazy talented World Champion and had him lose to a man nearly 50.
It’s not all Sting’s fault, as he was just doing what he was told to do, but eventually he seemed to quit trying. He let his physique go, and covered it up with a giant Sting T-shirt. And still, he was usually beating the best the company had to offer.
Icon or no icon, there comes a point when the next generation has to be made look like the biggest stars, and TNA never bothered to do it.
5. Eric Young
TNA.com
If you saw Eric Young from his beginning run in TNA in Team Canada, you may not have guessed he would last as long as he did in the company. He was fine, but his stablemates in Bobby Roode and Petey Williams showed a lot more potential. But Young hung on, and saw his role increase, sometimes to ridiculous levels, over the rest of his run there.
For years, Young was like the Santino of TNA, except that at times he had a lot of in-ring credibility. Someone in management seemed to think he was the funniest thing they’d ever seen, as they gave him one lame gimmick after the next like Super Eric or winning the Knockouts Tag Titles.
While Young was a solid mid-card act, he was drastically over-pushed as the leader of World Elite. He just didn’t have the swagger or charisma to justify the spot. He actually should have been fourth in line to lead the group as Sheik Abdul Bashier, Homicide and Magnus would have been better choices. The company, though, kept on putting him places he didn’t belong, like adding him to The Band with Scott Hall and Kevin Nash.
But Young’s most ridiculous run was as the TNA Heavyweight Champion. Again, Young is a good talent, it’s nice to see him in NXT, but he’s not the face of a company. It was especially bad, as it was obvious that he was only chosen for the role as they were trying to do a rushed, sloppy version of what WWE did with Daniel Bryan.
4. Crimson
ImpactWrestling.com
When people think of great wrestling undefeated streaks, they think of Goldberg’s and The Undertaker’s. Most people likely don’t remember Crimson having one...if they remember who he was.
Crimson was brought in as the “little” brother of Amazing Red...thus the Crimson name. Ugh. His first match was against Jeff Jarrett and he dominated the contest. He was given a high-profile role in the company, and was featured in tag matches with Kurt Angle.
Somebody absolutely loved this guy, and put him over Abyss and Samoa Joe, and had him lead the standings for a shot at the TNA title before his character was injured. Eventually, he was no longer pushed as a top star, but still remained undefeated, until after 470 days when James Storm beat him.
Crimson was in over his head. He was an okay wrestler, but for starters, he didn’t look anything like a monstrous, unstoppable wrestler. He looked more like a swimmer than anything.
It’s actually a bit of a shame, though, that the company let him go when they did, as when he dropped the undefeated streak that no one cared about, he was actually a pretty good heel.
3. Rob Terry
impactwrestling.com
Rob Terry wasn’t always over-pushed, for most of his run in TNA, he was largely cast as a harmless bodyguard type figure. It wasn’t a bad spot for him to be in while he learned how to wrestle, except that he never learned how to wrestle!
That didn’t stop management from suddenly giving him a huge, Goldberg-like push during the Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff era. Maybe you can forgive them, as perhaps when they joined the company they had never actually watched the show and just gave Terry air-time because of his physique.
He ended up winning the Global Championship, and in some incredibly frustrating television to watch, he squashed his actually talented former stablemates Douglas Williams and Magnus. He then joined Team Hogan for a Lethal Lockdown match to continue his rise near the top.
Somehow, the new management team realized the dude just couldn’t wrestle and finally pulled the plug on his massive push.
What took them so long?
2. Garett Bischoff
impactwrestling.com
It doesn’t matter if Garett Bischoff “paid his dues” as a ref on Impact, or if he tried really hard to be a professional wrestler, he just wasn’t good. Actually, he was terrible.
He was pushed as a BIG DEAL in TNA, as he received silly vignettes of him working out. Cool, the dude can lift some weights. But can he cut a promo or deliver a decent match? No.
The most ridiculous moment of his push is when he was a captain at Lethal Lockdown. Who the hell did Garett Bischoff have the right to lead? You’d probably expect the Braun Strowman jobbers from Raw, but no, he had Austin Aries, A.J. Styles, Mr. Anderson and Rob Van Dam on his side. Oh, and Garett got the winning pinfall.
And in one of the saddest, most transparent “please like this guy” moves in wrestling in years, we saw Hulk Hogan giving his friend's son his endorsement on-air. Didn’t work.
Garett later joined Aces and Eights as a lackey, but those few months being pushed as a future top star are among the worst things TNA has ever done. No joke. And isn’t it quite amazing that his entire wrestling career took place while his dad had power in a nationally televised wrestling company, and basically ended right afterwards?
1. Jeff Jarrett
impactwrestling.com
No one else but Jeff Jarrett could close out this list. He’s easily the most over-pushed talent in TNA history, and in the decades to come it’s going to be hard for anyone to unseat him on this throne.
Jeff started the company with his dad, longtime promoter Jerry Jarrett, and it seemed the entire thing was a vanity project. Now Double J was a great mid-card heel in the WWF, but he just didn’t have the talent to be a top star. In WCW, they tried to make him Heavyweight Championship material, and while he was pushed as one, the fans didn’t buy it. TNA would finally fix all that, or so the idea seemed to be.
Jarrett was the top star for years, holding the World Title more often than not, and either aligning himself with, or facing every former top WCW and WWF star that came in. DDP, Sting, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Gail Kim, Rhino, Kurt Angle...it didn't matter who. If they had name value, bah' gawd they were going to be involved with Jarrett!
Eventually Jeff did tone it down a little on himself, but you can only imagine how many fans he turned off by promoting himself as the center of the TNA universe for so long.
Matt Morgan should've been in the top three he was garbage
at them having Rhygoat on that list
10. Rhino
ImpactWrestling.com
Rhino was the last ECW Heavyweight Champion, though more by default than anything else. With most of the company’s top stars abandoning ship at that point, someone had to be champ. So why not Rhino?
He also had a decent run in WWE, but by the end of his run there, he was basically a jobber. TNA picked him up in 2005, and made him a big player by aligning him with Jeff Jarrett. He found himself in multiple main-events, including beating Jarrett for the World Title at their biggest show of the year at Bound For Glory. It was way too much.
In Unbreakable that year, Raven fought Rhino in a World Title match, whereas four years earlier the two fought each other on the second match on the card at Backlash. It defined TNA down as a place where former WWE mid-carders went to earn a living, instead of where new talent was taking over.
By the time Rhino led The Frontline against The Main Event Mafia, it was just plain ridiculous. Fans didn’t identify him as a TNA original, so him battling former top WWE and WCW stars didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. He was a good talent, just way over-pushed.
9. Suicide
impactwrestling.com
Had Suicide only made one appearance in TNA, and lost in 30 seconds to Samoa Joe, he would still make this list. Why? Because he was a freaking videogame character! Having him show up at all is a massive over-push.
The company attempted some viral marketing with him before his debut by trying to get fans to check out a website they set up for him. When he did show up, he basically kicked every other X-Division wrestler's ass. He did have kind of a cool swing from a rope type-thing ring entrance, but then they took that away from.
Suicide laid out everyone with cool looking moves, but then he mysteriously grew smaller and changed up his moveset as the role switched from Kazarian to Christopher Daniels (and a few other people along the way too). He soon won the X-Division Title, meaning a once great division was being led by a videogame character.
8. Chris Sabin
ImpactWrestling.com
For the most part, Chris Sabin was painfully under-pushed during his time in TNA, but for a few months he was over-pushed to the point of absurdity. And it pains me to write that, as I think The Motor City Machine Guns are one of the best tag teams of this millennium, but Chris Sabin as Heavyweight Champion just wasn’t a very good call.
TNA was in this really weird spot in 2013. They were still recovering from the fallout of the Hogan/Bischoff era, and were having huge financial problems. Their top stars began leaving the company, so they started taking some of their originals and suddenly making them the Heavyweight Champion. They just didn't go through the effort of writing storylines for them or anything like that.
Sabin was chosen to dethrone Bully Ray, but he had been nowhere near built up for that role. Ray was doing great work as the top heel of the company, but Sabin had been known as a mid-card act for the past 10 years, and never received much character development. Fans weren't really clamoring for him to win the World Title.
As an X-Division star, Sabin was great, but he just wasn’t the right guy to push as the top face in the company.
7. Orlando Jordan
ImpactWrestling.com
When Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan joined TNA, they wanted to bring some big stars to get a buzz going. That first night in, Scott Hall, Sean Waltman, Jeff Hardy and Ric Flair all appeared on the show...oh, and so did The Nasty Boys, Val Venis and Orlando Jordan.
Venis played strip poker with The Beautiful People, The Boys took a dump in Team 3D’s bag and beat them up and Jordan defeated Samoa Joe in his first match with the company. That’s right, Orlando Jordan beat Samoa Joe.
Years later, one can still not comprehend what TNA management was thinking when they booked a forgettable mid-card act in WWE, and put them over one of their biggest stars ever (they also did the same when Venis beat Christopher Daniels).
Jordan soon became an over-the-top, flamboyant act that was a personal favorite of Vince Russo’s. He was kind of like Goldust from the mid '90s, but less talented.
Eventually the company stuck him in a mid-card comedy act, but those first few months of him in TNA were brutal.
6. Sting
ImpactWrestling.com
Yes, Sting is an icon and all that, but wow, was he amazingly over-pushed in TNA.
When he first joined the company, it was a pretty big deal. Here was a guy that could have easily gone to WWE and had big matches with Steve Austin and The Undertaker, but he wanted to help out his old friend Jerry Jarrett, as well as work a light workload while making good money.
He helped give the company some buzz, but he never really got out of the way. He ended up main-eventing Bound For Glory 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. His ‘08 match against Samoa Joe is one of the biggest mistakes the company ever made, as they took their young, crazy talented World Champion and had him lose to a man nearly 50.
It’s not all Sting’s fault, as he was just doing what he was told to do, but eventually he seemed to quit trying. He let his physique go, and covered it up with a giant Sting T-shirt. And still, he was usually beating the best the company had to offer.
Icon or no icon, there comes a point when the next generation has to be made look like the biggest stars, and TNA never bothered to do it.
5. Eric Young
TNA.com
If you saw Eric Young from his beginning run in TNA in Team Canada, you may not have guessed he would last as long as he did in the company. He was fine, but his stablemates in Bobby Roode and Petey Williams showed a lot more potential. But Young hung on, and saw his role increase, sometimes to ridiculous levels, over the rest of his run there.
For years, Young was like the Santino of TNA, except that at times he had a lot of in-ring credibility. Someone in management seemed to think he was the funniest thing they’d ever seen, as they gave him one lame gimmick after the next like Super Eric or winning the Knockouts Tag Titles.
While Young was a solid mid-card act, he was drastically over-pushed as the leader of World Elite. He just didn’t have the swagger or charisma to justify the spot. He actually should have been fourth in line to lead the group as Sheik Abdul Bashier, Homicide and Magnus would have been better choices. The company, though, kept on putting him places he didn’t belong, like adding him to The Band with Scott Hall and Kevin Nash.
But Young’s most ridiculous run was as the TNA Heavyweight Champion. Again, Young is a good talent, it’s nice to see him in NXT, but he’s not the face of a company. It was especially bad, as it was obvious that he was only chosen for the role as they were trying to do a rushed, sloppy version of what WWE did with Daniel Bryan.
4. Crimson
ImpactWrestling.com
When people think of great wrestling undefeated streaks, they think of Goldberg’s and The Undertaker’s. Most people likely don’t remember Crimson having one...if they remember who he was.
Crimson was brought in as the “little” brother of Amazing Red...thus the Crimson name. Ugh. His first match was against Jeff Jarrett and he dominated the contest. He was given a high-profile role in the company, and was featured in tag matches with Kurt Angle.
Somebody absolutely loved this guy, and put him over Abyss and Samoa Joe, and had him lead the standings for a shot at the TNA title before his character was injured. Eventually, he was no longer pushed as a top star, but still remained undefeated, until after 470 days when James Storm beat him.
Crimson was in over his head. He was an okay wrestler, but for starters, he didn’t look anything like a monstrous, unstoppable wrestler. He looked more like a swimmer than anything.
It’s actually a bit of a shame, though, that the company let him go when they did, as when he dropped the undefeated streak that no one cared about, he was actually a pretty good heel.
3. Rob Terry
impactwrestling.com
Rob Terry wasn’t always over-pushed, for most of his run in TNA, he was largely cast as a harmless bodyguard type figure. It wasn’t a bad spot for him to be in while he learned how to wrestle, except that he never learned how to wrestle!
That didn’t stop management from suddenly giving him a huge, Goldberg-like push during the Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff era. Maybe you can forgive them, as perhaps when they joined the company they had never actually watched the show and just gave Terry air-time because of his physique.
He ended up winning the Global Championship, and in some incredibly frustrating television to watch, he squashed his actually talented former stablemates Douglas Williams and Magnus. He then joined Team Hogan for a Lethal Lockdown match to continue his rise near the top.
Somehow, the new management team realized the dude just couldn’t wrestle and finally pulled the plug on his massive push.
What took them so long?
2. Garett Bischoff
impactwrestling.com
It doesn’t matter if Garett Bischoff “paid his dues” as a ref on Impact, or if he tried really hard to be a professional wrestler, he just wasn’t good. Actually, he was terrible.
He was pushed as a BIG DEAL in TNA, as he received silly vignettes of him working out. Cool, the dude can lift some weights. But can he cut a promo or deliver a decent match? No.
The most ridiculous moment of his push is when he was a captain at Lethal Lockdown. Who the hell did Garett Bischoff have the right to lead? You’d probably expect the Braun Strowman jobbers from Raw, but no, he had Austin Aries, A.J. Styles, Mr. Anderson and Rob Van Dam on his side. Oh, and Garett got the winning pinfall.
And in one of the saddest, most transparent “please like this guy” moves in wrestling in years, we saw Hulk Hogan giving his friend's son his endorsement on-air. Didn’t work.
Garett later joined Aces and Eights as a lackey, but those few months being pushed as a future top star are among the worst things TNA has ever done. No joke. And isn’t it quite amazing that his entire wrestling career took place while his dad had power in a nationally televised wrestling company, and basically ended right afterwards?
1. Jeff Jarrett
impactwrestling.com
No one else but Jeff Jarrett could close out this list. He’s easily the most over-pushed talent in TNA history, and in the decades to come it’s going to be hard for anyone to unseat him on this throne.
Jeff started the company with his dad, longtime promoter Jerry Jarrett, and it seemed the entire thing was a vanity project. Now Double J was a great mid-card heel in the WWF, but he just didn’t have the talent to be a top star. In WCW, they tried to make him Heavyweight Championship material, and while he was pushed as one, the fans didn’t buy it. TNA would finally fix all that, or so the idea seemed to be.
Jarrett was the top star for years, holding the World Title more often than not, and either aligning himself with, or facing every former top WCW and WWF star that came in. DDP, Sting, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Gail Kim, Rhino, Kurt Angle...it didn't matter who. If they had name value, bah' gawd they were going to be involved with Jarrett!
Eventually Jeff did tone it down a little on himself, but you can only imagine how many fans he turned off by promoting himself as the center of the TNA universe for so long.
Matt Morgan should've been in the top three he was garbage
at them having Rhygoat on that list
and Eric Young is good. If anything he was under pushed.
what did he go by, Sean Venis? Val Morley? Chief Venis?
