Spin off: The stupidity of TNA

[Kidd Dibiase]

2010
http://taimapedia.org/images/thumb/e/ef/Cantseeshyt.jpg/200px-Cantseeshyt.jpg

I can't see shyt.
The 4th of January 2010 -- The Hulk Hogan Era 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance

• At the very beginning of this special edition of Impact (which started a multi-week run of the show airing on Mondays against Raw), footage was aired of fans bashing WWE and talking up TNA.
• An X-Division Asylum match opened the show; to win the match, one of the participants had to climb up the domed cage structure and through the hole on the top. The cage's blinding red color made it nearly impossible to see anything going on in the ring, and even if anyone could see anything, the incompetent cameramen missed every single spot. Homicide attempted to climb out of the cage, but when he failed, he dropped down to the ring and hit everyone with a baton, causing a cage match to end in a No Contest. This resulted in very loud "This is bullshyt" chants from the audience. TNA did this as its first salvo in a new "Monday Night War".
  • Jeff Hardy returned to TNA by randomly hitting Homicide with a chair following the Asylum match. TNA Never Explained This™ (and neither did Hardy).
  • The second time Homicide attempted to climb the cage, he got stuck.
  • After the first round of "This is bullshyt", the chanting was very noticeably censored. Instead of turning the audience mic down or just censoring the chant itself, production decided to blank the sound entirely upon every reiteration of the chant, making them look stupid in the process.
  • Vince Russo later defended this match by rhetorically asking why a cage match can't end in a No Contest.
• TNA showed Hogan's arrival via limousine on its way to the Impact Zone. The footage clearly showed the limo driving around Universal Resort. Hogan arrived and said "I've been in the back all day". That line was edited out of the repeat showing.
• During Eric Bischoff's first promo with the company, he asked SoCal Val to bring him the script for the night. He ripped the script up and threw it into the crowd, then gave Val his version. Security went into the crowd during commercial and asked the fans to hand the ripped pages back (since Bischoff had ripped up a real script).
• Fans booed Hogan (who was still supposed to be a face) after he verbally attacked Jeff Jarrett (who was supposed to be the heel but acted like a face) following a heartfelt speech.
  • During the segment, Hogan accused Jarrett of being a famewhore who held young talent down for his own gain. This would have been an accurate and legitimate criticism of Jarrett's career...if it hadn't been delivered from the biggest famewhore in professional wrestling.
• Bobby Lashley came out, randomly turned heel for no reason, and left the company a few weeks later.
  • When Lashley first joined TNA, an agreement between Strikeforce (the MMA promotion Lashley worked for) and TNA said Lashley could appear on either company's programming so long as he crosspromoted both companies. When rumors about Hogan and TNA began, Hulk appeared at a UFC event and put over the company. UFC planned on moving to Spike, and Strikeforce considered Hogan's appearance a breach of its verbal agreement with TNA. Strikeforce disallowed Lashley from promoting TNA, then later pulled him from the show altogether.
  • After firing Lashley, Hogan and Bischoff proceeded to tell Ric Flair (who had also arrived during the January 4th Impact) that they couldn't fire him because he'd signed his contract before they'd arrived -- which made absolutely no sense.
• The Nasty Boys showed up and shredded their last tiny sliver of relevance to the wrestling industry. Despite general fan apathy, they stuck around and engaged in an awful feud with Team 3D, which showed that Brian Knobbs couldn't even cut a promo without getting winded.
• Prior to the show, TNA advertised a match between Samoa Joe and Abyss. Once the show started, Rhino replaced Joe, and the match turned into a Barbed Wire Match. During the show, a backstage attack forced Rhino out of action, and TNA replaced him with Samoa Joe. Joe and Abyss then proceeded to have a regular singles match.
  • TNA also advertised a tag team between The British Invasion and Beer Money, but this match never took place due to Beer Money also being attacked backstage.
• Bubba the Love Sponge, an obese radio host and (now former) longtime friend of Hulk Hogan, served as the show's interviewer. He tried to use the whole show to get himself over (as opposed to the people he was supposed to be interviewing).
• Mick Foley spent the whole show attempting to get into the Impact Zone despite security doing its best to keep him out -- all while numerous other uninvited guests (including Scott Hall, Sean Waltman, and the Nasty Boys) managed to get in with little problem. Hall and Waltman actually attacked security (and were not punished for doing so), while Bubba the Love Sponge ran interference to get the Nastys in.
• OBD and Tara wrestled a godawful (and ridiculously short) match due to ODB busting one of her breast implants. TNA decided to show this match without any opposition from WWE to potential new fans -- and put on an awesome tag team match (Awesome Kong & Hamada vs. Sarita & Taylor Wilde) on the second half of the show (when Raw was on). None of the four women in the tag team match showed up regularly on TV again after this show, and Sarita only started showing up again thanks to Rosita and the Mexican America stable.
• Throughout the night, TNA showed The Beautiful People playing strip poker with Sean Morley (formerly Val Venis) in an attempt to keep people from switching to Raw. Nobody cared.
• Orlando Jordan made his debut by interrupting a backstage interview with D'Angelo Dinero, and despite Tenay and Taz hyping him up as a big star, nobody cared. Jordan went on a winning streak for a while, then underwent an infamous gimmick change (which we'll get to shortly).
• Numerous commercial breaks plagued the show's main event. At one point, Tenay said TNA would stick with the main event to the finish with absolutely no commercial breaks -- then followed up by transitioning into the next commercial break.
• Rather than ending the night with the fantastic main event match between Kurt Angle and AJ Styles, TNA ended the show with a segment featuring Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Sean Waltman, and Mick Foley talking.
• To top it all off, this show took place on the 11th anniversary of one of WCW's most infamous moments, the Fingerpoke of Doom. Talk about a bad omen for what was soon to come.

Christopher Daniels went from having MOTY main event matches to feuding with Sean Morley. And losing. Clean.

• Hogan and Bischoff opened the show by introducing the traditional four-sided ring. The crowd shyt all over the entire segment, loudly chanting "We want six sides". Hogan responded by burying TNA's history (much like he did on January 4th with Jarrett), which resulted in more boos. Hogan and Bischoff resorted to insulting Vince McMahon so the fans would cheer again.
  • No one on the roster was informed of the ring change prior to their arrival at the arena. This was gross negligence on TNA's part, as matches had to be changed to accomodate the new ring and injuries could've resulted from the roster not being prepared for the switch.
• To reward Christopher Daniels for his series of great main event matches leading to the turn of 2010, Hulk Hogan brought in Sean Morley to feud with "The Fallen Angel". The former WWF enhancement talent, now severely out of shape, beat Christopher Daniels clean at Genesis. Even though Morley was playing the face and Daniels the heel, the fans absolutely refused to get behind him. Several fans even turned their backs on the ring, as if they were turning their backs on TNA. Morley had two more matches after this before leaving, while Daniels was reduced to obscurity before getting released.

• Despite being fired by the WWE nearly a year before, Mr. Kennedy (now billed as Mr. Anderson) debuted as a "major acquisition". The fans proceeded to loudly chant "overrated" during his match with Abyss.
  • Scott Hall had no-showed two TNA PPVs in the past at this point. But this was of no concern to TNA, as they simply brought him back for a third time and had him compete in another PPV match at Genesis. Hall tried on his wrestling trunks, realized how fat he was, and pulled out of yet another match just hours before showtime.
  • TNA was so butthurt over the reaction they got during Genesis that Senior Director of Production Steve Small went out to address the crowd. Small explained to the live audience that they must tell a story to the (home viewing) audience by reacting to the show properly, not by chanting offensive words. He also branded the crowd as "cast members". This enraged a lot of the Impact Zone regulars and caused many people who had showed up at the Impact Zone for years to never go back.
    Spoiler
  • TNA later stacked the thinning crowd with obvious plants (most noticeably, several hot girls in the front row who only cheered when the camera was directly on them, one of whom gave the game away completely one week by going from selling verbal abuse from Bully Ray one second to noticing the camera on her and mugging for it the next). The formerly-rowdy Impact Zone crowd soon became dead enough that TNA would pump in unbearably loud canned crowd noise during taped shows (despite the cameras clearly showing the crowd not making any noise). The 2013 move to finally leave the Impact Zone and go on the road was greeted with wide approval.
  • The match between Kurt Angle vs. AJ Styles had a stipulation attached: if Angle lost, he would never get a TNA title shot again as long as Styles was champion. Angle lost. The next night, Hogan changed his mind on the stipulation and booked Angle vs. Styles for the third consecutive time. This one ended in Montreal Screwjob Rehash #139 with, of course, Earl Hebner as referee. Nobody cared.

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

Miscellaneous Shenanigans

• From the 3rd of March 2010 to the 17th of June 2010, Impact failed to get a 1.0 in the ratings. Three shows managed a 0.99, and the lowest of these numbers was a 0.62 (the episode that went up against the post-Wrestlemania 26 episode of Raw). TNA moved back to Thursdays soon after Raw kicked its ass to the point of pure embarassment.
• Ric Flair began to manage AJ Styles after the former's TNA debut. AJ was soon billed as "The New Nature Boy" and wore flamboyant robes to the ring. The Nature Boy gimmick didn't end up sticking since it didn't fit with Styles (and there was little chemistry between him and Flair).
• ODB and Tara had two consecutive one-week reigns as Knockouts Champion as they bounced the title between each other four times.
• Roxxi Laveaux became a consistent force in the Knockout's Division. During the New Year's Knockout Tournament, Roxxi snapped her ankle in a match, but worked through the injury until the finish. Dixie Carter praised Roxxi on Twitter for being a trooper; TNA rewarded Roxxi by releasing her before she recovered.
  • Roxxi returned to TNA on the 20th of May 2010. After gaining momentum and pinning then-Knockouts Champion Madison Rayne, she received a shot at the Knockouts Championship at the following PPV. Unbeknownst to her, the PPV would be her last night with the company: upon arriving to the arena, TNA told her she would be dismissed from the company after her match with Rayne. This run with the company lasted less than a month.

• Orlando Jordan started using an extremely over-the-top bisexual gimmick -- a version of which he'd been pitching to WWE before it let him go. This gimmick included such segments as him pouring semen-like liquid on himself, descending from the top of the arena wrapped chiefly in caution tape, and talking dirty to a cardboard cutout of Rob Terry. Jordan (who is actually bisexual) defended the gimmick by saying he hoped it would "help troubled teens." Of course, it had the opposite effect: much like the Rainbow Express in early TNA, Jordan was portrayed as a freak while Tenay and Taz both acted completely disgusted with everything he did. After the gimmick was poorly received, he was taken off television before having a short lived comedy tag team with Eric Young...in which he did the usual "gay guy" comedy schtick wrestling fans have come to loathe.
• Homicide delivered a brutal unprotected chairshot to the head of Rob Terry (which also busted Terry open without him having to blade) as a means of putting Terry over as a monster. The segment caused controversy since it aired two days after the suicide of Chris Kanyon -- a suicide many speculated was linked to concussions suffered throughout his career. Lance Storm quit watching TNA after the incident and wrote a blog about it entitled "TNA: I'm Done". Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez called for whoever wrote the segment to be fired during their podcast.
  Spoiler
  • TNA also did this segment not long after WWE had banned chairshots to the head over concussion fears, so some fans saw it as an awful potshot ata directive meant to ensure the health of WWE performers.
• A fat ninja constantly interfered in matches to attack AJ Styles. This went on for several months before the ninja was revealed to be Tomko, who claimed he taught AJ everything he needed to know before becoming champion (despite AJ being a 3-time TNA Champion prior to Tomko even coming to TNA). AJ and Tomko had one match before Tomko was returned to jobberhood and eventually ended up booted from the company again.
• During a radio interview, Hulk Hogan claimed with a straight face that Abyss was the next John Cena. (In this same interview, Bischoff decided to bash Chris Jericho and say that he never drew a dime.) Abyss became Hulk Hogan's buddy on TV following that interview, and Hogan rewarded Abyss with his WWE Hall of Fame ring. With Abyss holding the ring, he was suddenly more powerful and had the ability to slam people through wrestling rings. But if that wasn't bad enough, Ric Flair got into this feud, too -- which led to a match where he challenged Hogan and Abyss to put Hogan's Hall of Fame ring against Flair's. That's right: TNA hyped up a main event match where the main prize was possession of two WWE Hall of Fame rings.
  • After Hogan and Abyss earned Flair's ring, they gave it to Jay Lethal. Jay Lethal was promptly given a push against Flair and got quite over...only for Creative to run out of ideas and send him straight back into the X-Division (and jobbing to Robbie E). He was eventually released a few months later, which pissed off much of the roster -- and was actually used as an onscreen reason for Fortune turning on Immortal.
• Joe was kidnapped by ninjas and was off TV for over a month. Even after returning, TNA Never Explained This™.
  • Between Joe's kidnapping and his return, a single pretape was broadcast, with him declaring that "They have spoken". TNA Never Explained This™, and Abyss soon started saying those exact same words.
    • The kidnapping was supposedly cover for Joe being suspended over complaining about a match he'd been part of. Rumors say he was originally going to be put in Immortal (a claim supported by the aforementioned pretape), but the plan was nixed because he was still getting cheered for beating people up.
• TNA built up "Pope" D'Angelo Dinero as the next big face of TNA. His Black Pope gimmick got over big with the fans, and he had a reputation of putting on great matches. After giving him a huge upset victory over AJ Styles, TNA made him #1 Contender for Lockdown. This was followed up by Pope losing cleanly to Orlando Jordan and taking a backseat role on the show so Team Hogan vs. Team Flair could be hyped up for Lockdown. Pope lost at the PPV and was shuffled back down to the midcard before having a terrible heel run that completely drained all his momentum.
• Lockdown also saw Kazarian win the X-Division Championship (which had been vacated at the last second because Doug Williams was stuck in the UK following the eruption of an Icelandic volcano). Kazarian held the belt for almost a whole month, but no photographic evidence of this reign exists because the belt was still in Williams' possession. Once a rematch was put together at Sacrifice, Kazarian lost the title right back to Williams.
• At one point during his feud with Jeff Jarrett, Eric Bischoff opened a live Impact by treating the audience to a guitar solo, only to be predictably hit in the head with the guitar by Jarrett at the end of the segment.
• Sean Waltman no-showed Lockdown. This made TNA PPV #3 that Waltman had no-showed. However, management knew weeks in advance that he would not be able to participate: Waltman had tested positive for Hepatitis C, and Missouri wouldn't give Waltman a license to wrestle as a result. Rather than remove Waltman from the card and pull him from all advertisements, they waited until the PPV went on the air to announce Waltman's no-show, and Taz was told to say (against his will) that it was "just X-Pac being X-Pac". Waltman later said he hadn't been a fukk-up for many years, yet he didn't hold the remark against Taz because he was aware of the way TNA buries people.
• After weeks of suffering abuse at the hands of the Outsiders the nWo The Band, Eric Young joined them. Why did he join? TNA Never Explained This™. Young went on to hold the TNA Tag Team Championship with The Outsiders under the Freebird Rule after Nash cashed in his Money in the Bank Feast or Fired contract. That's right, Hall and Nash were tag team champions in an actual wrestling promotion in the year 2010.
  • The Band weren't the champs very long, however, as Hall was arrested ten days after they won for disorderly conduct (i.e. being drunk in public). When asked where Hall worked, he replied that he was unemployed -- despite being a reigning champion in TNA. TNA released Hall and stripped Nash and Young of the titles, even though Nash and Young handled nearly all of the action and Hall contributed little to their matches.
• TNA signed Rosie Lottalove, an obese Knockout fresh out of Team 3D's wrestling school, and gave her a tryout match with Daffney at the insistance of Brother Ray, who allegedly claimed that Rosie was the best student in the school. Rosie seriously injured Daffney in the match by sitting on her face, but TNA hired Rosie anyway. She wrestled a few more matches for the company before they released her (because she was terrible), and Ray proceeded to scream at Daffney backstage, blaming her for Rosie being fired. TNA refused to pay for Daffney's medical bills related to this accident as well as the aforementioned barbwire board accident she had suffered a few months earlier (because TNA is terrible). Daffney filed a lawsuit as a result, which was eventually settled out of court a day before the case was supposed to start (because the American legal system is terrible).
  Spoiler
  • Although the Daffney incidents were huge black eyes for the reputation of Dixie Carter and all of TNA management, the company put the blame on Terry Taylor, Head of Talent Relations and one of Dixie's known stooges. TNA released Taylor and replaced him with Bruce Prichard, a former WWE Producer and performer (he portrayed Brother Love), who had bashed TNA in an interview before he joined the company and reportedly wasn't well-received in the back. Terry Taylor returned to the WWE in a backstage role around the time Prichard entered TNA.
• Matt Morgan went off the deep end after he put Hernandez on the shelf: he declared himself the sole Tag Team Champion and referred to himself in the Royal We, leading to jokes that he'd somehow become the comic book villain Venom. Despite TNA actually recognizing him as the sole Tag Team Champion, for some reason, he still had to enlist partners so he could defend the titles. TNA Never Followed Up On This™, as it quietly dropped the angle after Morgan lost the tag titles.

The longest reigning champion in TNA, AJ Styles, dropped the title to a newly debuted RVD. RVD vs. Styles -- considered a "dream" match for years with many fantasy bookers, was thrown together with no hype on free television.

• Dixie Carter went back on her promise to never become an onscreen character and...became an onscreen character. She delivered performances wooden enough to make Linda McMahon seem like Meryl Streep in comparison.
• Destination X 2010 ended with Ric Flair, AJ Styles, and Desmond Wolfe (aka Nigel McGuinness) literally falling into a hole in the ring.
• After returning in March, Sting turned heel and began spouting off cryptic nonsense every week. He donned the red Wolfpac facepaint, to boot. Sting was also in the worst shape of his entire career, having to wear a t-shirt in every match. All of his actions were supposed to warn us about the formation of the Immortal faction (see below), but TNA dragged it out for over half a year. By the time everything came to fruition, nobody cared.
• Rob Van Dam debuted in ridiculous fashion: after being revealed as a mystery opponent for Sting, he pinned Sting in less than a minute after hitting a crossbody and the Rolling Thunder senton. The fans went wild for RVD, but all of this excitement was killed stone dead when Sting grabbed his baseball bat and delivered a beatdown that lasted nearly ten minutes. Security inexplicably prevented Hogan from getting involved, choosing to let Sting beat RVD down as much as he wanted. Sting then hit Hogan with the bat to end the segment, leaving the focus squarely on Sting and Hogan. What a way to debut a big name acquisition.
  • Post-show dirtsheets revealed Sting was rehabbing from shoulder surgery and Hogan was late to the ring, so facepalms all around.
• RVD was signed to a contract where he was only contractually obligated to make a certain number of appearances. That didn't stop TNA from making AJ Styles (the longest reigning TNA Champ in history at that point) drop the belt to Van Dam on a random Impact with zero hype. When the number of appearances RVD had made caught up with them, they wrote him off TV by having Abyss attack him with the wooden-board-with-nails he called Janice. The result was...well, as Joey Styles best put it, "I’ve seen wood chipper victims who were less of a mess than RVD. Who books that crap?" TNA said RVD had suffered head and spinal trauma, needed 115 stitches, and could have possibly had punctured organs. As a result of the attack, TNA vacated the World Title. RVD miraculously recovered from these life-threatening injuries in a few months and later defeated Abyss without much difficulty. He spent the next several months bytching about how he never lost the belt and demanding a title shot.
  • In an interview that took place during his reign as champ, RVD said he would not lose the title to anyone who didn't work during the Attitude Era, then compared himself and Jeff Hardy to rock stars (and buried the rest of the TNA roster in the process). Nice choice of champ there, TNA.

"

• RVD is hit with a chair by a man in the first row wearing a Sting mask. The man took off his mask, revealing himself to be... Sting.

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

• • Velvet Sky used the open contract she won to challenge Angelina Love to a "Leather & Lace Match" for the next Impact. The next week, that match was changed to an "I Quit Match", and the match itself ended in a No Contest. ODB's infamous "What is happening to our division?!" tweet was sent during this match.
    • The contract allowed the holder to book any match of their choosing. For some reason, Velvet booked herself into a non-title match with the reigning Knockouts Champion.
• Eric Bischoff debuted a ranking system that would be voted on by TNA fans; the person who ended up at #1 would earn a title shot. Fans were quick to give Desmond Wolfe a landslide victory, mainly because the system TNA was using allowed multiple votes. Bischoff's response to this? He had Wolfe get squashed by RVD in mere minutes. The fans tried again the following week and Wolfe won again, only to get squashed again. The ranking system was then discontinued and Bischoff then took every opportunity to bash wrestling fans in any interview he did. Wolfe was rarely ever seen around the main event after this.
  • Where did Abyss, the guy Hogan said would be the next John Cena, rank in the fan poll? Dead last. Even Rob Terry had more votes than Abyss.
• After becoming Fourtune's manager, Flair began getting "iced" during interviews and after matches. TNA thought this would make him connect better with the younger TNA crowd. Nobody from that age group cared.
  • At one point, TNA management actually had to tell Flair to keep his clothes on while on TV, as they'd been getting complaints from...everyone, really.
• AJ Styles went from Main Eventer to midcard goon as both the TV Champion and part of Fourtune. (Still better than being Angle's bytch, though.)
• TNA greenlit a segment in which James Storm spit a fireball at Jeff Hardy. Storm's fireball actually engulfed Hardy's face and left him with second degree burns. The scene was so gruesome that Spike TV cut it out of the broadcast.

Abyss, Desmond Wolfe, and Chelsea

• Abyss was shown laid out in the parking lot during an episode of Impact. Later in the night, footage from the security cam shows that he was hit by a barely moving car. Abyss is then shown leaving the Impact Zone in an ambulance. He returned on the next Impact and acted like nothing ever happened -- until about a month later, when he was arrested for allegedly assaulting Desmond Wolfe's valet, Chelsea. The whole thing ended up being a setup by Wolfe to screw Abyss over. If this sounds eerily familiar, it should: the angle bore a resemblance to the Goldberg/Elizabeth angle from WCW that set up the infamous Fingerpoke of Doom.
• After Desmond Wolfe lost Chelsea's services to Abyss for a month, a hysterical Chelsea was forcefully carried away from Wolfe by Abyss. Abyss was the "hero" in this equation.
  • In typical Beauty and the Beast fashion, Abyss eventually won Chelsea over just as her month with him was done. She was then forced to once again manage someone she wanted nothing to do with (in this case, Desmond Wolfe).
• Abyss kidnapped two of TNA's backstage personnel, then branded them with his personal branding iron, "Bob". He also introduced a 2x4 covered in nails that he named "Janice". For those uninitiated, Bob and Janice Carter are Dixie Carter's parents.

The Kong and Bubba Blunder


BtLS seen here after receiving a stiff punch from Mick Foley.

• TNA hired obnoxious radio host/Howard Stern wannabe/(now-former) Hogan buttbuddy Bubba the Love Sponge after Hulk Hogan's TNA debut; a couple of months later, Bubba said "fukk Haiti" on Twitter (in regards to the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti). Awesome Kong, who had been a driving force in raising funds for Haiti within the pro wrestling world, got into an altercation with Bubba. Several wrestlers who witnessed this altercation confirmed that Kong beat the living dogshyt out of Bubba; these wrestlers, including Hulk Hogan, unanimously described the beating as one of the most brutal and one-sided locker room shoot fights they had seen in the past thirty years. For her actions, Kong was given a lifetime pass to Universal Studios and the unofficial title of President of All Badasses. ...just kidding! TNA actually suspended her, and when the company refused to release her upon request, she declined to participate in the company's United Kingdom tour. After a threatening phone call from Bubba and a refusal from TNA to increase pay within the Knockouts Division, TNA finally released Kong -- then stripped Kong and her partner Hamada of the TNA Knockouts Tag Team Title (the company said on-screen that they hadn't defended the titles within the past thirty days, even though they had actually defended them three weeks prior). Hamada all but disappeared from TNA television after this, and she was later released to go be awesome in a company that would fukking appreciate her.
  • The fat fukk that got Kong fired was released in April, not long after Kong's release. What did Bubba do to deserve getting shytcanned by TNA when "fukk Haiti" wasn't enough? He ambushed Kong during an interview on another radio show and spouted racist/sexist slurs at her. (The host of the radio show was one of Bubba's friends and had planned the ambush with him.) Once the interview hit the Internet, his release was immediately announced, and it was thus celebrated by the great majority of the Internet. On the plus side, Bubba's last on-screen appearance in TNA saw him getting punched in the face by Mick Foley.

TNA ReACTION (or, "How I Learned to Gain a Third Hour and Alienate Fans")

• On April 12th, TNA ReACTION began as an hour-long program following Impact. The show did two pilots and Spike showed interest in airing the show weekly. The show was initially an "after the storm" show with improvised dialogue from the wrestlers, who were filmed in a cinema-verite style (read: shaky camera hidden from view angle), as well as traditional promo-style interviews. This was a complete change from most of modern wrestling, where promos had deliberate segments and were filmed with clear shots.
  • ReACTION was pushed back from May to June, and then pushed back again to July, before eventually debuting in August.
• Instead of the original follow-up format, Impact began to use the show as a third hour. As a result, most main events on Impact started five minutes before the end of the show, so commentary would tell viewers to stay tuned for ReACTION...even though ReACTION only aired in the USA and Canada, which meant the rest of the world didn't get any main events. Also problematic? Anyone with DVRs who forgot to record ReACTION also missed out on the main events.
  • After twenty episodes, Spike dropped the show in December. Rumors say Spike was upset that ReACTION was killing the ratings boost Impact gave whatever show would normally air afterImpact. (Spike didn't have good programming in the first place, but of course, Spike Never Explained This™.)
    • Another nail in the ReACTION coffin: the cinema-verite style of promos it used was soon integrated into Impact, which resulted in most of the stuff that would've been on ReACTIONairing on the main show anyway.

Hardcore Justice and EV2.0

• Paul Heyman was in talks with TNA to join the company -- but he reportedly wanted both full control of several parts of the company (including Creative) and the immediate firing of all but one of the veterans ("If you're over 40, I'll rip your fukking head off") so he could build a younger roster to carry the company forward. Both Spike TV and TNA management reportedly had no issues with the deal, but Dixie Carter refused out of loyalty to these veterans as well as other people Heyman would likely fire (e.g. Vince Russo). The deal eventually fell apart.
  • Heyman later let it slip that he would've tried to steal Daniel Bryan away from WWE right after "Tiegate" happened and build him up as an unstoppable submission machine for an eventual match with Kurt Angle.
    • Sidebar to this: back when Angle first signed with TNA, PWG came within days of putting on Bryan Danielson vs. Kurt Angle. The match got canned when TNA pulled Angle from the booking. TNA Never Explained This™ (the dikkheads).
• The failed Heyman deal may have helped Dixie come up with an incredibly unique idea, though. TNA held a focus group to ask a handpicked group of fans what they wanted to see in wrestling. When most of them said they missed the days of ECW -- and keep in mind, this focus group was held in Philadelphia -- Dixie decided to put together an ECW "reunion" of her own.
• Tommy Dreamer was shown in the crowd for a few weeks. At first, he appeared alone, but he was joined by more ECW alumni each week. Eventually the group of ECW originals jumped the guardrail and attacked members of the TNA roster. The week after this, Dixie Carter threw her support behind the ECW originals by saying she had invited them and agreed to give them their own PPV. Dreamer announced that the stable of ECW originals would be called EV2.0 but never bothered to explain what that stood for. (TNA actually did explain this one later on: it was supposed to stand for "Extreme Violence 2.0". Because the word "dub" is slang for two, people were supposed to chant "E-V-Dub!" so it sounded like fans were chanting "E-C-W" or "E-C-dub" without getting TNA into trademark troubles. Very few of the fans caught on to the joke.)

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

Hardcore Justice

• For some reason, TNA filtered the Impact Zone with weird blue lighting. It was supposed to make the show seem ECW-esque. It didn't.
• Taz opened the show to get the crowd fired up. He later admitted in an interview that he wants people to move on from ECW and he wasn't in favor of yet another ECW reunion.
• Due to WWE owning most of the ECW trademarks, TNA had to rename performers who couldn't use their old names. TNA also couldn't use the actual letters "ECW" on the show. Mike Tenay opened the PPV by saying, "Some of you might remember a certain promotion associated with the letters ECW. Well, we aren't allowed to mention it, but you'll get a fresh reminder tonight." Tenay proceeded to mention ECW several times anyway.
• A bald Sabu, a thin(ner) Balls Mahoney (or Kahoneys, as he was billed), and an aging bleached-blonde Raven were among the wrestlers who competed.
  • Kahoneys and Brother Ray had a lightsaber duel in the middle of their match. It was simultaneously the most entertaining and most embarassing spot of the match.
• Many of the ECW originals paid tribute to Joey Styles. Styles responded by ripping into TNA at every possible chance. (He still does, too.)
• Tommy Dreamer and Raven's match caused controversy when Dreamer bled profusely in full view of his two young daughters.
• RVD was set to face Jerry Lynn in a rematch from his most fabled rivalry. Lynn injured himself while training for the show and was replaced by Sabu. (On the bright side, RVD/Sabu ended up being better than expected.)
• Brother Ray asked the fans to thank Dixie Carter for allowing this night to be possible. "Thank you Dixie" and "fukk you Vince" chants filled the Impact Zone moments before the show went off the air.
• Despite the Hardcore Justice tagline of "The Last Stand", EV2.0 remained with the company for the rest of the year and even picked up a victory over Fourtune at Bound for Glory. Fourtune remained all-powerful in the weeks following that loss, whereas EV2.0 quietly disappeared throughout the course of the year.
• The original non-ECW-flavored PPV card was moved to the Impact after the PPV, which TNA billed as "The Whole F'n Show". This show was applauded by fans more than the PPV that had replaced it, especially in regards to the last match in the Best-Of-Five series between Beer Money and the Motor City Machineguns.
• Some of the ECW Originals who returned for the PPV were reportedly paid around $250 for their appearance. Many in the industry were critical of Dixie Carter because this PPV was estimated to have sold at least three to four times better than the average TNA PPV. She had the ECW Originals to thank for that, and she rewarded them with a light paycheck.

Bound For Glory: The Prelude, The "Glory", and The Aftermath

• At No Surrender, Kurt Angle wrestled Jeff Hardy in the semi-finals of a TNA World Championship Tournament, with the stipulation that if Angle lost, he would have to retire. The match, which featured Kurt Angle kicking out of Jeff Hardy's Swanton Bomb three times to little crowd reaction, ended in a time limit draw, only for Eric Bischoff to react to the crowd and order the match to go for five more minutes. After that five minutes, there was still no winner, so Bischoff demanded another five minutes. After all this, there was still no winner, so the match was announced as a draw after all. The two wrestled in a rematch on Impact on the 16th of September, which also resulted in a draw, prompting the announcement that both Hardy and Angle would wrestle for the title at Bound For Glory in a Triple Threat Match with Mr. Anderson.

Before The Glory

• The episode Impact before Bound for Glory started with Abyss taking Dixie hostage. A camera crew followed closely behind the two of them as they headed to the ring. Although they passed several people on their way to the ring, nobody (including the camera crew) seemed too eager to help free their boss from Abyss until Eric Bischoff saved the day.
  • Bischoff and Hogan tricked Dixie (kayfabe) into signing a contract that, as revealed a week later, gave them full power over TNA. She thought she was signing papers to get Abyss fired. What happened to Dixie, the smart and powerful businesswoman who would, you know, check the fine print of shyt like that?
• Ric Flair and Mick Foley had a pretty gruesome Last Man Standing Match. These two veterans were given more time than any other singles match on the card.
• Robbie E and Cookie made their long awaited debut! Nobody cared. To make matters worse, the Robbie E character was created to grab the interest of fans of MTV reality show Jersey Shore. Robbie E debuted on TNA on Spike TV while Jersey Shore was airing on MTV, making that impossible (see below for more).
  • Prior to their debut, they reportedly competed in a dark match against Shannon Moore and Christina Von Eerie that was called the Worst Dark Match Ever by those who saw it. During the match, Moore reportedly laughed his head off at Cookie.
• The main event of this Impact was a $100,000 Gauntlet Battle Royal. The match was pretty much the Royal Rumble Lite featuring various Bound For Glory participants. Kevin Nash was visibly uninterested and showed up in street clothes.

Bound for Glory

• The Bound for Glory PPV poster was released several months before the event. It featured Kurt Angle, Mr. Anderson, and Jeff Hardy next to each other. This spoiled the main event months before it was officially announced. The other wrestlers on the poster were Jeff Jarrett, Sting, and Hulk Hogan. The poster featured no TNA Originals, and the average age of everyone featured on the poster was 43 years old.

They're*

• TNA held its 2010 Bound for Glory PPV at the Ocean Center in Daytona, Florida -- the same arena in which Hulk Hogan turned heel during the 1996WCW Bash at the Beach event (which led to the formation of the nWo). The company ended up getting 3,500 in attendance (the majority of whom were papered in with free tickets), and the PPV ended with Hogan (who was apparently not in the arena due to recovering from back surgery) struggling to get into the ring to argue with Eric Bischoff, who had brought a chair with him after everyone was knocked out and a ref bump happened. Instead, Jeff Hardy stepped up, took Hogan's crutches, and...smashed them over Angle and Anderson so he could pick up the win. Jeff turned heel, and "they" was revealed to be Hardy, Hogan, Bischoff, Jeff Jarrett, and Abyss. So basically, they redid the Bash at the Beach turn...complete with fans throwing trash into the ring.

The people who actually bought tickets to the PPV
After the Glory

• A nearly 45-minute promo opened the Impact after Bound for Glory; it actually spanned two commercial breaks. Hogan and Bischoff formally announced the creation of the Immortal faction and Jeff Hardy consolidated his heel turn. Kevin Nash left the company and Sting decided to disappear again. Fourtune, which had been feuding with Hogan for quite some time, also joined Immortal for...some reason.
• When they finally got around to the first match of the night, Tara voluntarily laid down to be pinned by Madison Rayne to win the Knockouts Title in Tara's first title defense.
• Dixie Carter managed to sneak into Bischoff and Hogan's office and call Bischoff a "smug shyt". She later thanked Spike TV in a tweet for letting her swear on television. This promo closed with Dixie's husband Serg getting punched in the face by Gunner and Murphy while she screamed his name at the top of her lungs.
• Abyss and Joe wrestled a two-minute match before Abyss got himself DQ'd by using the timekeeper's bell as a weapon.
• Kurt went back on his promise to retire if he lost a match due to the ending to his match at Bound For Glory. Jeff Jarrett came out to shoot on his relationship with Karen, thus beginning a feud which would last for nearly nine months. (Florida apparently has laws against early abortions.)
• J-Woww of Jersey Shore fame was paid $15,000 to make a single appearance on Impact -- this episode, in fact. Many in the TNA locker room were angered by the news, especially as the Knockouts were known to be underpaid and often had to take second jobs to make ends meet. TNA got some free publicity, however, as J-Woww and other Jersey Shore cast members hyped up the appearance and told their fans to check out the first hour of Impact (but to turn the channel at 9:00 for the season premiere of Jersey Shore). TNA decided to do the neverending Hogan/Bischoff segment to start this episode and started the J-Woww segment at 9:00, which directly competed with theJersey Shore episode. Predictably, TNA lost.
  • A few months later, TNA pulled this same shyt with Angelina (another Shore castmember) with a similar $15,000 payout attached.
• Because Nash and Sting had walked out of the company, D'Angelo Dinero was punished by Immortal for being their partner at Bound for Glory and was booked in a 5-on-1 handicap match with Fourtune in which Fourtune cheated to win. Dinero was pulled off TV completely shortly after this.
• Ken Anderson and RVD had a match to decide who the #1 Contender to the world title would be. Bischoff came down and took the referee to the back with him. Hardy then came down with a chair and attacked both of them with it to close the show, making the match end in a no contest.
• The entire show featured only six minutes of wrestling in a two hour span (counting commercials). If you count the main event going long into ReACTION, that brings the total up to sixteen minutes for three hours of programming.

More Miscellaneous Shenanigans

• Ric Flair appeared on the sidelines of the South Carolina Gamecocks/Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles football game. ESPN cameras showed Flair multiple times, and commentators and graphics referred to him as a "former professional wrestler" despite Flair being an active competitor on TNA's roster.
• Matt Morgan vs Hernandez: Round I. It didn't work.
  • MATT MORGAN VS HERNANDEZ: ROUND II: NO CHEMISTRY BOOGALOO. It didn't work again.
    • MATT MORGAN VS HERNANDEZ: ROUND III THIRD TIME'S A CHARM (that's not a guarantee) WHEN YOU'RE IN A CAGE (also, their face/heel alignment was switched). It still didn't work.
• Eric Bischoff forgot the name of the Ultimate X match and booked Mr. Anderson in an "X-Division" match with Kazarian. Everyone involved apparently forgot the rules to Ultimate X, as Anderson almost won by using a ladder (a match originally billed as No Limits, No Ladders).
• TNA did a round of drug tests in early autumn of 2010. Several wrestlers knew they were going to fail before the tests came back and were scared of getting reprimanded. Wrestlers with failed drug tests were informed that their test came back positive for illegal substances, but TNA took no disciplinary action and had no other tests done.
• WWE banned chairshots to the head and issued fines to wrestlers who did it from then on. TNA responded by having a chairshot to the head happen every two or three matches. Turns out WWE banned them because of the potential health hazards with repetitive concussions (see: Bret Hart, Chris Benoit, Chris Kanyon, any long-term TNA fan). TNA's repeated chairshots resulted in Mr. Anderson getting an actual concussion from Jeff Hardy braining him with a chair. To their credit, TNA banned all chairshots to the head after the Anderson incident. Matt Morgan then began a kayfabe crusade for concussion awareness stemming from the fiasco, even though he had been kicking people's heads into the ringpost (and bragging about it) weeks earlier.
  • Around this time, Eric Young had a gimmick where he'd gone insane (again) after being knocked from the top turnbuckle by Suicide and hitting his head. TNA treated Young's brain injury as comedic, which completely contrasted with the serious take on head injuries caused by Anderson's actual concussion.
• When Bischoff turned heel, he turned on his sex-retary Miss Tessmacher and told her she would have to fight as a Knockout to stay employed. Tessmacher sought the help of wrestling novice Lacey Von Erich to learn how to wrestle. The angle was quickly scrapped when Lacey was released from the company and Tessmacher broke her jaw; it was rendered completely pointless after Tessmacher's return, in which she showed she was much better in the ring than Lacey ever was (or ever would be).
• Ric Flair admitted to having sex with a horse during a promo on the November 18th episode of Impact. TNA Never Followed Up On This™.
  • On that same episode, Hogan cut a long, uncomfortable promo in which he destroyed the fourth wall. He said they were throwing kayfabe out the window, said "34 fake titles" mean nothing, and buried Team 3D (the winners of every major Tag Team Championship in American pro wrestling and then some). In a fit of borderline hilarity, once Victory Road 2011 came along and Jeff Hardy got himself in trouble by showing up for the main event with visions of fried eggs dancing in his head (see below), Hogan chose Bully Ray of Team 3D to push as the next big thing. Hogan's crapping all over Bully and his partner in this promo was (of course) never mentioned.
• As a prelude to Victory Road 2011 (again: see below), TNA officials almost pulled Jeff Hardy from the main event of Turning Point after suspecting him of being unfit to perform. Hardy told officials he was exhausted from being on the road and ultimately got to perform. Matt Morgan was able to carry Hardy to a watchable match, though Hardy spent a sizable portion of the match laying on his back.

 

[mrken12]

• TNA signed Rosie Lottalove, an obese Knockout fresh out of Team 3D's wrestling school, and gave her a tryout match with Daffney at the insistance of Brother Ray, who allegedly claimed that Rosie was the best student in the school. Rosie seriously injured Daffney in the match by sitting on her face, but TNA hired Rosie anyway. She wrestled a few more matches for the company before they released her (because she was terrible), and Ray proceeded to scream at Daffney backstage, blaming her for Rosie being fired. TNA refused to pay for Daffney's medical bills related to this accident as well as the aforementioned barbwire board accident she had suffered a few months earlier (because TNA is terrible). Daffney filed a lawsuit as a result, which was eventually settled out of court a day before the case was supposed to start (because the American legal system is terrible).

I remember this happening but I didn't know Bully Ray tried to blame Daffney for Rosie getting fired. All those stories about Bully Ray being a piece of shyt person were true.

 

[mrken12]

And I'm still at this Looney Tunes shyt.



Abyss was awful during that time but the fukkery he brought was unparalleled.

And they forgot to mention one of the funniest Abyss moments when he tried to force a WWE Hall of Fame ring down Hogan's throat.

 

[Johnny Joestar]

sup /wooo/

shout out to the Taimapedia and /wooo/ for keeping us updated on all this fukkery

 

[ManxOfxThexYear]

Jesus fukking christ, please tell me you didn't write and research all this shyt????

 

[Johnny Joestar]

Jesus fukking christ, please tell me you didn't write and research all this shyt????

Nah, he didn't.

the guys over at /wooo/ did.

LOLTNA History - Taimapedia

if you want some more fukkery

they got shyt for WCW and WWE

LOLWWE History - Taimapedia

LOLWCW History - Taimapedia

 

[Jmare007]

Someone should pitch a comedy series to Netflix based on WCW and TNA. shyt would do numbers

 

[Project Downtime]

TNA hired obnoxious radio host/Howard Stern wannabe/(now-former) Hogan buttbuddy Bubba the Love Sponge after Hulk Hogan's TNA debut; a couple of months later, Bubba said "fukk Haiti" on Twitter (in regards to the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti). Awesome Kong, who had been a driving force in raising funds for Haiti within the pro wrestling world, got into an altercation with Bubba. Several wrestlers who witnessed this altercation confirmed that Kong beat the living dogshyt out of Bubba; these wrestlers, including Hulk Hogan, unanimously described the beating as one of the most brutal and one-sided locker room shoot fights they had seen in the past thirty years. For her actions, Kong was given a lifetime pass to Universal Studios and the unofficial title of President of All Badasses. ...just kidding! TNA actually suspended her, and when the company refused to release her upon request, she declined to participate in the company's United Kingdom tour. After a threatening phone call from Bubba and a refusal from TNA to increase pay within the Knockouts Division, TNA finally released Kong -- then stripped Kong and her partner Hamada of the TNA Knockouts Tag Team Title (the company said on-screen that they hadn't defended the titles within the past thirty days, even though they had actually defended them three weeks prior). Hamada all but disappeared from TNA television after this, and she was later released to go be awesome in a company that would fukking appreciate her.

• The fat fukk that got Kong fired was released in April, not long after Kong's release. What did Bubba do to deserve getting shytcanned by TNA when "fukk Haiti" wasn't enough? He ambushed Kong during an interview on another radio show and spouted racist/sexist slurs at her. (The host of the radio show was one of Bubba's friends and had planned the ambush with him.) Once the interview hit the Internet, his release was immediately announced, and it was thus celebrated by the great majority of the Internet. On the plus side, Bubba's last on-screen appearance in TNA saw him getting punched in the face by Mick Foley.

 

[Anonymous Being #17]

The sheer amount of L's in this is overwhelming

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

2011
Miscellaneous Shenanigans, Part 1

• On January 4th, TNA sent Beer Money, Rob Van Dam and Jeff Hardy to New Japan Pro Wrestling's Tokyo Dome show. While the Beer Money and Rob Van Dam matches were at least passable, Jeff Hardy's TNA World Title defense against No Limit member Naito was horrible. NJPW cut all of its ties with TNA as a result. (Smart company.)
• Mr. Anderson took several digs at TNA during his first promo as TNA World Champion, including the reveal about how WWE banned him from chewing gum. TNA had to shoot the promo twice, since the company thought he didn't take enough potshots at WWE the first time.
• Matt Hardy debuted at Genesis with a hairdo similar to that of then-WWE performer Tyler Reks. During the match, Tenay pointed out Hardy's position as a trending topic on Twitter -- and failed to mention Tyler Reks trending right below Hardy.
• TNA made obvious plans to have the Main Event Mafia reunite to face down Immortal. After Booker T and Kevin Nash were contacted to make an appearance, both showed up at WWE's Royal Rumble event days before the planned MEM reunion, forcing TNA to drastically alter its plans.
  • Booker had problems with TNA after he joined the company; he also didn't approve of TNA's decision to partner up with Team 3D's school as a training facility instead of his own. He was eventually branded "the most selfish man in the company". Nash, on the other hand, walked into Dixie's office the Friday before the Royal Rumble to hand in his notice. Dixie granted his release despite knowing he planned to sign with WWE. Nash had issues with his pay (of course), but he also had issues with the storyline. Creative contacted Nash and Steiner to say they planned to reunite the MEM; Nash agreed to return so long as TNA made Immortal look like a legitimately dominating force (so the MEM would be on near-equal ground and the feud would mean something). The week before Nash left the company, TNA filmed an angle where Crimson planted Janice (Abyss's nail-enhanced 2×4) into the back of Abyss (then serving as Immortal's muscle). Nash saw no point in returning when Immortal looked weaker and weaker with each passing week.
  • TNA's backup plan -- having Fortune break away from Immortal -- was, ironically enough, what the fans had wanted all along. It was very strongly received, especially the accompanying promos from AJ and Roode. (The latter's promo was seen as the beginning of his run towards a main event spot.)

TNA airs a highly original video promo hyping the return of Sting. This aired just two weeks after Undertaker's 2.21.11 WWE return.

• Following the 2/21/11 vignettes hinting at the return of The Undertaker, numerous reports said Sting had signed with WWE, which fueled rampant speculation about Sting's fate and who would actually come out on 2/21/11. (The Undertaker and Triple H ended up returning on the fated date to hype their eventual WrestleMania 27 match.) Sting re-signed with TNA soon after the first vignette aired, but before he returned into an on-screen role, TNA aired videos identical to the 2/21/11 vignettes to hype Sting's return. The videos were widely panned and mocked as ripoffs. The 52-year-old Sting won the TNA World Heavyweight Championship on his first night back.
  • Sting later said in interviews that he'd been negotiating with WWE at the start of the year and (at the time) came as close as he'd ever gotten to signing with WWE. To its credit, WWE reportedly filmed the vignettes with Sting in mind, but changed them over to Undertaker once Sting re-signed with TNA.

Against All Odds (Bad Booking, Snowstorms, and Falling Off Ladders) 2011

• Robbie E won a #1 Contendership Triple Threat against Generation Me (aka the Young Bucks) via countout, mainly because flights to Orlando were grounded due to a snowstorm.
  • TNA made up for this by sending X-Division Championship Kazarian out for a match with the new #1 Contender.
  • The Bucks got in trouble with TNA for having the decency to let their fans know they wouldn't be at the show via Twitter. Supposedly, TNA wasn't happy with them because it forced them to have to "come up with something on the fly". Nevermind that, because the company booked both Bucks in the same triple threat, it had no choice but to declare Robbie E the winner or anything like that.
• Mickie James and Madison Rayne had a Last Woman Standing match where, for no reason, the two women spent a minute under the ring before reappearing.
  • The finish involved Tara distracting Mickie so Madison could use brass knux on her. Madison also attempted a pin before the ref counted Mickie out.
• Kurt Angle vs. Jeff Jarrett, a huge grudge match with almost two years of storyline where Kurt could regain custody of his children if he wins, opened with a lockup, continued as a standard wrestling match and ended with Jarrett pinning Kurt -- clean.
  • At the end of the match, Angle took off his boots and left them in the ring as a sign that he had retired, four months after Kurt said he'd retire if he lost the World Heavyweight Title Match at Bound for Glory.
• Jeff Hardy and Mr. Anderson wrestled each other in a Ladder Match. These guys nearly killed each other to the point where the finish almost legitimately killed them. The plan was for Anderson to go for his finisher (the Mic Check) from the top of two ladders on Jeff. Jeff would hold onto the ladder, let Anderson fall off to the mat, and grab the belt afterwards. Anderson instead fell off the ladder, Jeff reached out and fell off the ladder, and the two men clattered to the floor between the ladders. Jeff then just got up and pulled down the belt. Keep in mind, this was after Jeff had lost the belt a mere thirty days before (and while Jeff still had his drug charges hanging over his head).

The Impact Zone began chanting "bullshyt" after the finish. Sting responded by turning around and agreeing with them.
Victory Road 2011: TNA Fans Had to Suffer Because He Got High

• TNA placed Kurt Angle on the PPV poster by himself. Kurt didn't even appear at the event.
• The heated, personal feud between former ECW alumni Bully Ray and Tommy Dreamer culminated in a hardcore match where Dreamer hit Ray with a water bottle and a big yellow plush toy. The highlight of the match: Tommy used a blow-up doll as a weapon. Ray sold the attack and ended up in the 69 position with said doll.
• The finish to Rosita and Sarita vs. Angelina Love and Winter involved a distracted ref (Earl Hebner, no less!), the belts being used as weapons, and a run-in -- all at once.
• Hernandez defeated Matt Morgan in a First Blood Match by spraying fake blood all over Morgan.
• TNA played footage of the Jarretts throughout the night in order to hype Jeff and Karen Jarrett's feud with Kurt Angle. In the footage, Jarrett -- the heel in this feud -- took Angle's kids around Universal Resort and helped them have a good time.
• GenMe had a mini-feud where Max treated Jeremy like a bytch on his birthday. This culminated in an Ultimate X Match where Max treated Jeremy as a slave, Robbie E brought a ladder into the match, and Kazarian won the match by climbing the ladder to retrieve the X-Division Championship.
• RVD faced off with Mr. Anderson for the #1 Contender spot to the TNA World Title at the next PPV. Due to their contrasting styles, they had a piss poor match; fans might have called it the worst match of the year if this show's main event hadn't happened. The match ended in a double countout and left no clear contender for the following month. Half the audience chanted "Restart the match" in disgust, while the other half chanted "NO" in fear of having to watch these two wrestle again. Taz encouraged fans to tune into Impact to watch an expected rematch.

The Main Event Was A fukking Trainwreck Because He Got High

• In the show's now-infamous main event, Sting defeated Jeff Hardy to retain the TNA World Heavyweight Championship in less than ninety seconds. Jeff came out to the ring looking completely exhausted stoned out of his goddamned motherfukking mind and stumbled around the ring before climbing into it. The referee noticed Hardy flailing about and raised the "X" arm signal to the back. Eric Bischoff came out to make a last-minute audible (ostensibly telling Sting to end the match as quickly as possible), clearly upset with Jeff's condition. Sting then forced Hardy into the Scorpion Death Drop, dropped him, and pulled him into a pin (which Hardy actually struggled to get out of, as evidenced by scratch marks on Sting's neck). When fans started chanting "bullshyt" post-match, Sting turned to the crowd and yelled "I agree!" on camera. It was loud enough for even the home audience to hear.
  • Because the PPV ended far earlier than expected, TNA played a recap of the PPV after the main event finished. That recap lasted longer than the actual main event. TNA also gave people who paid for the PPV a "refund" in the form of six months of free access to its On-Demand service. The idiot who made the call to send Hardy out for the match apparently kept their job.
  • This match would eventually become the inaugural match in /wooo/'s Disasterpiece Theatre collection, and I know why. (Why, man?) Because Jeff got high, because Jeff got high, because Jeff got hiiiiiiiiiigh...

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

Miscellaneous Shenanigans, Part 2


One of these men is a professional wrestler. The other is a WWE Hall of Famer.

• Brian Kendrick proved how little control TNA exerted over its talent when he made an impromptu appearance on daytime game show The Price is Right. Kendrick won a popcorn machine and ended up on the main stage, but he never once mentioned his profession or who he worked for. TNA never hyped Kendrick's appearance, and TNA Never Followed Up On This™ since it would show how little they knew about what their own talent did.
  • One rumor says the popcorn machine Kendrick won accounted for 65% of TNA's income for the rest of 2011.
• TNA billed Madison Rayne as "The Queen Bee of the Knockouts" and gave her the then-longest individual reign as Knockouts Champion. At Lockdown 2011, an injured Mickie James squashed Rayne in less than a minute; Madison's momentum died almost immediately, and she arguably never completely recovered from the humiliating loss.
• Jay Lethal won the X-Division Championship for the fourth time...on a random episode of Impact with no buildup and a confetti-laden celebration. Lethal lost the title at a non-televised house show a few weeks later.
• TNA booked AJ Styles vs. Douglas Williams for the TNA Television Title for Genesis, but when AJ suffered a knee injury, TNA put Abyss in his place. Abyss won the title at the PPV, but two weeks later, Crimson nailed Abyss with Janice (no pun intended), and Abyss disappeared from television. Five months later, TNA officially stripped Abyss of the TV Title -- one week before he returned to television.
• Gunner debuted as one of Immortal's two security guards and randomly won the vacant TV Title on an episode of Impact -- even though nobody could tell the difference between Gunner and his equally bland partner, Murphy, despite the fact that Murphy was the taller of the two. They eventually started wearing their names on their ring gear.
• TNA plugged Dixie Carter's Twitter on TV for several months -- but their advertising hit a snag when Twitter suspended her account for imitating a "verified account" (she had the "Verified" icon on her Twitter background image). Twitter later un-suspended the account and verified it.
• TNA signed former WWE performer and certified human trainwreck Chyna to work with Kurt Angle in his feud with Jeff and Karen Jarrett, giving continuity to the Chyna/Jeff Jarrett feud from WWE that nobody cared about in 1999. Chyna made two appearances -- one on Impact and one on Sacrifice -- before TNA forced her to choose between working for TNA and doing porn. She chose doing porn. (The jury's still out on whether this makes her a smart gal.)
  • In her big return match, Chyna nailed Karen Jarrett. ...with a Pedigree, you sick fukks. Mike Tenay, in a brilliant piece of commentary, called it as a "DDT-style move" at Sacrifice.
  • It was rumored that TNA's original choice for the role was Isis the Amazon, who'd managed a certain amount of infamy as Aloisia, the NXT competitor that WWE had released for failing to disclose some racy pre-WWE photo shoots. That deal fell through, though.
• "Wildcat" Chris Harris returned to TNA to team up with Matt Hardy at Sacrifice as challengers to Beer Money. Harris hadn't worked for a major promotion since his month-long run in WWECW as Braden Walker -- and he hadn't appeared to have lost his "Walker weight" in the interim. Before the match started, the crowd chanted "Knock Knock! Who's there? Bra-den Wal-ker!" to mock Harris' WWE tenure. Harris and Hardy lost their match, and Harris (along with his expanding waistline) disappeared.

ROB DAM VAN! THE WHOLE SHOW fukkIN'!

• Misspelled merchandise images -- including "Eric Bishcoff" greeting cards and "RDV" T-shirts -- showed up on TNAShop.com and TNA's Facebook account.
• Angelina Love started seeing Katie Lea (aka Katie Lea Burchill in WWE) in segments resembling the 1998 WCW vignette where Warrior appeared in a mirror to Hogan. TNA eventually revealed Katie Lea's new identity -- Winter -- and turned her into a psychotic possibly-lesbian pseudo-vampire who drugged Angelina, turned her against Velvet Sky, and broke up The Beautiful People.
• Immortal turned into an empty stable after Fourtune left the group, TNA suspended Jeff Hardy, and Jeff Jarrett continued to feud with Kurt Angle on his own. At Lockdown 2011, what was left of Immortal faced off against Fourtune in a Lethal Lockdown Match. TNA billed the match as a winner-take-all situation where the winner would gain power in TNA. Fortune won and turned Immortal into a bloody mess in the process -- but on the very nextImpact, Immortal remained in control of TNA.
• TNA put together another "foreign heel" group in Mexican America. Unlike other such groups (including Team Canada and spiritual predecessor LAX), none of Mexican America's members could cut a promo or (in the case of Hernandez and Anarquia) wrestle a quality match. TNA spared half of the audience from at least watching Mexican America's in-ring segments by dropping a giant Mexican flag from the rafters, which obscured the audience's view. As an extra bit of irony, none of Mexican America's members were from Mexico -- hell, Sarita even hailed from Canada.
  • After what seemed like forever, Mexican America quietly broke up. Anarquia was first kicked to OVW, then was later fired after causing a horrendous botch that injured Chris Sabin. The other three members were completely pulled off TV (and in Sarita and Rosita's cases, never came back), but not before Doug Williams nearly died of a broken neck in the ring because Hernandez botched the Border Toss. In his first appearance after the group's dissolution, Christy Hemme announced Hernandez as being "one-half of Mexican America".
• After a number of referees left the company, Eric Bischoff gave a job to his son Garett, who worked under the name Jackson James. When company officials tried to deny Garett's real identity -- and the internet called the company on its nepotistic bullshyt by revealing the truth -- Garett received a ton of heat from the talent. TNA attempted to turn Garett into a crooked ref who made rookie mistakes, but it soon dropped this idea and turned the actual reveal of Garett's real identity into a plot point at Bound for Glory 2011.
• In mid-2011, Jesse Neal tweeted about getting approved for food stamps. When a number of his followers accused him of making fun of people who rely on food stamps to feed themselves, Neal claimed he wasn't joking and he needed food stamps to help feed his family. His tweets became yet another indictment of TNA's reportedly low salaries.
  • He later retracted the tweets, even though tons of fans had already seen them. Neal left the company some time later, presumably after TNA wanted him to move to Kentucky to work in OVW but refused to compensate him for the move.

A typical TNA House Show.
Wrestling Still Matters, Right? ...Right?

• As a response to WWE backing away from the word "wrestling", TNA rebranded itself with the tagline "Wrestling Matters Here". In vignettes playing up the new tagline, the TNA roster took shots at "sports entertainers" and hyped up TNA's focus on wrestling -- and in another example of TNA failing to live up to the hype, the first episode of Impact following the debut of the new tagline featured less wrestling than the average episode of Raw. The show closed with a segment featuring Sting attacked by Mr. Anderson (who dressed up as '80s Sting) and featured segments such as Eric Young walking in on Gunner taking a shyt, Eric Bischoff cleanly pinning one half of GenMe, and Abyss winning the X-Division Championship.
• TNA put up "Wrestling Matters" billboards in Stamford, Connecticut -- the home of WWE's headquarters and a city TNA had never run a show in before or since -- to take a jab at its competition.
• The "name change" of TNA's chief program to Impact Wrestling confused fans and TNA employees alike, since nobody knew for sure if the company planned on changing its name to Impact Wrestling as well. At Slammiversary 2011, the ring still featured the Impact Wrestling graphics (despite not being advertised under the Impact Wrestling banner). At Hardcore Justice, the company finally bothered to change the ring back to TNA's traditional red colors. Eventually (a long time after the actual change), Dixie Carter finally clarified that it was just the show.
• The Impact Zone crowd (better known as Impact Zoners) eventually gave up on the product and stopped reacting to anything. To deal with this problem, TNA placed a group of plants in the front row during every taping and began dubbing in loud canned crowd noise throughout the show without stopping. (TNA basically turned the SmackDown Hair Dryer up to "high" and left it on all night.) They also began to show camera shots of the "cast members", even though most of them did nothing.

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

Miscellaneous Shenanigans, Part 3

• TNA replaced Jeremy Borash with Christy Hemme as its main ring announcer (Borash stayed around to announce main events). Hemme received a spotlight and screen time to announce the entrances -- and proved horrible at her new job. She often said lines before entrances happened, and at Destination X, she botched Austin Aries' introduction by saying, "ALL THE WAY FROM....................IT'S AUSTIN ARIES!"
• Gunner won the TNA Television Title, then didn't defend it for two months. He ended up losing it to Eric Young on the same episode of Impact where Beer Money found a stand-in for an injured Robert Roode (so James Storm and his new partner could defend the TNA Tag Team Championship).
• In response to WWE signing Mistico and debuting him as Sin Cara, TNA slapped Amazing Red into a bad luchador outfit to create the character Sangriento. The company made things worse when it called Sangriento a "Mexican sensation" prior to his TNA debut. The Sangriento gimmick didn't last long, and Red eventually left TNA once again.
• Abyss became the X-Division Champion. He began to call the championship "the Xtreme Title" and quoted Sun-Tzu's The Art of War before and after matches. Eric Bischoff dubbed Abyss the "X-Division Killer". After losing the title, TNA Never Followed Up On This™.

• On some idle Wednesday afternoon, Eric Bischoff got on his Twitter and said people should stop criticizing him and Hulk Hogan. He said the changes they made to TNA never truly affect the on-screen product, and TNA's Internet critics make up only 10% of its total audience. Bischoff also said the ratings showed the true story ("The numbers don't lie"); to prove his point, that Thursday's edition of Impact Wrestling did a 1.01, the lowest rating of the year (to date).
• Bully Ray vs. AJ Styles had a Last Man Standing match at Slammiversary. At the climax, AJ gave a bloodied Bully Ray an awesome diving elbow drop off a stage truss through a table. The crowd went nuts; even the commentators went nuts. Then Ray pushed AJ with his foot and sent AJ stumbling into TNA's cheap set. Bully Ray won the match and the crowd's enthusiasm died.
• Mr. Anderson won and lost the World Title twice during this calendar year. He had also turned heel and face so many times by the end of the year no one knew what he was or how to use him. (He's like Bret Hart in WCW, only without Bret's in-ring talent.)
• ODB and Jackie Moore randomly re-debuted by attacking Velvet Sky and blaming her for the declining quality of the Knockouts division. (The obvious logic fail of them not going after TNA management instead? TNA Never Explained This™.) Despite "not being under contract", security did little to stop the duo from interfering in Velvet's matches. It got to the point where, despite "not being under contract", they received more TV time than the other Knockouts. The angle ended with the two teaming up with Velvet to fight Madison Rayne, Angelina Love, and Winter for no reason. Jackie left TNA shortly after never to be seen again, while ODB reappeared later in the year as a face.

Sting transforms into The Joker.

• Sting became The Joker. Seriously. After his gimmick change gathered slight interest from fans, TNA booked Sting to win the TNA World Heavyweight Championship from Mr. Anderson less than a month after he initially lost it.
  • On the Impact after Destination X, Sting appeared in the ring with three "clowns", who he referred to as his backup. Throughout the night, the "clowns" attacked members of Immortal. Gunner eventually was cornered by four "clowns", who unmasked and revealed themselves to be AJ Styles, James Storm, Kazarian, and Chris Daniels. During the main event, Bully Ray ended up getting attacked by a fifth "clown"; after Sting won the world title, he found out who wore the final "clown" mask: Kurt Angle.
• When CM Punk became the hottest thing in the mainstream wrestling industry after his worked shoot prior to WWE's Money in the Bank event, TNA made all five of Punk's TNA matches (from 2003) available on their On-Demand service -- even though Punk did nothing in TNA, TNA kicked him out shortly after he got in a fistfight with Teddy Hart (though Punk denies this was the cause of them booting him, instead saying that it was the usual "creative had nothing for him"), and Punk has made a point of openly hating the company.
• Kurt Angle and Sting feuded over the TNA World Heavyweight Championship under the idea of Angle never managing to beat Sting in a match before. Critics soon pointed out a glaring flaw with this feud: Angle beat Sting in a world title match on a 2007 episode of Impact.
• TNA claimed Kurt Angle had won fourteen world championships. At the time of these claims, Angle had only won twelve world titles (five in TNA, six in WWE, and one in New Japan). TNA treated his Olympic gold medal and a heavyweight championship from WWE's Memphis developmental promotion as his other two world championships.
• Bischoff, convinced X-Division matches placed style (high spots) over substance (story), booked a Triple Threat X-Division match for Hardcore Justice. During the match, Austin Aries essentially ducked out of the ring and looked to steal a pin, which involved Alex Shelley looking over his shoulder and Brian Kendrick not caring about Aries at all. The crowd refused to care, and to top it off, Kendrick won.
• Kurt Angle had feuded with Jeff Jarrett over his ex-wife Karen marrying Jarrett and taking Kurt's kids away from him. When Angle turned heel and joined Immortal, he said he joined because Dixie kept Jeff and Karen's relationship secret from him -- and he said this while joining the same stable as Jeff and Karen.
  • This must've been an on-screen secret, as some time beforehand the relationship was made public off-screen. For some reason, Dixie got involved and suspended Jarrett once she heard about it (citing possible problems), even though Angle had already known and was said to have been cool with it.
• Almost two months after Jimmy Yang made an appearance on TNA, he took to Twitter and said TNA had not paid him for the appearance -- and the check it had issued him for the appearance had bounced. A TNA official called him after the tweet went out and called his behavior "unprofessional". Yang replied to the accusation on Twitter: "Somebody called and said I was being unprofessional. Not paying somebody for a job is unprofessional." (TNA eventually paid Yang for his appearance after that tweet.)
• TNA failed to learn from the mistakes it made when it signed Jonny Fairplay, Jenna Morasca, or the Jersey Shore supporting cast: it signed another reality "star" -- former Big Brother contestant Jessie Godderz -- to a contract. After letting him appear on-air a couple of times, TNA sent him to Team 3D's Academy, then booted him straight to OVW.
• TNA succeeded in putting together a sponsorship deal with Direct Auto Insurance -- then fired the employee that worked out the deal in the first place.
• TNA and Spike TV agreed to hold three Impact tapings outside of Orlando. Instead of going to places where the company actually drew crowds (such as New York), TNA decided to hold the tapings in Huntsville, Alabama; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Macon, Georgia (where TNA drew about 400 fans at a 2010 house show). 3,300 people reportedly attended the Huntsville tapings -- and only 400 of those people actually paid for their tickets.
  • On the September 1st episode of Impact (one of the episodes taped in Huntsville), TNA used the 2010 Impact theme song in segments instead of the current intro.
• Kurt Angle and Mr. Anderson had a Lumberjack Cage Match. Yeah, we can't figure that one out, either. Also, this Lumberjack Cage Match ended with outside interference from Bully Ray.

TNA World Champion Kurt Angle poses for his fourth mugshot since joining TNA. Still employed. (And still World Champion!)

• TNA suspended Jeff Hardy following the Victory Road 2011 debacle. Even after Jeff refused to go to rehab -- and despite his having a long-running legal case involving drug possession hanging over his head -- TNA kept him under contract. Hardy returned at the Huntsville Impact tapings and asked for a second chance; the crowd chanted "one more chance", seemingly forgetting about TNA allowing Jeff Hardy to work a match while exhausted higher than Snoop Dogg in Colorado.
  • In the meantime, Jeff's brother Matt floundered around doing nothing after joining Immortal. TNA later suspended Matt for showing up to a house show late and not attending pretapings. Soon after his suspension, Matt found himself arrested for DUI following a car accident (which prompted TNA to release him). After making a YouTube video where he vaguely threatened suicide, Matt made another video where he apologized for the previous video and announced his retirement from wrestling. (Which didn't last long.)
    • Less than a week after Matt's DUI, Kurt Angle -- the then-reigning TNA World Heavyweight Champion -- was arrested for a DUI (his third such arrest and fourth arrest overall as a member of the TNA roster). TNA punished him by booking him to successfully defend the title at a PPV.
• TNA booked Jersey Shore's Ronnie Ortiz-Magro to make multiple appearances on Impact, even though every appearance of every reality show "star" on TNA programming did nothing to affect the ratings, and the company had both fired Cookie and kept Robbie E off of TV for months. TNA fans on Facebook noted the past failures of reality show "stars" in regards to helping the company.
• Less than a year after being released, Traci Brooks made one-off appearances in TNA to support her husband, Kazarian. A few months later, TNA brought Traci back full time to participate in a storyline where she slept with Eric Bischoff in order to get re-hired as the head of the Knockouts Division (something Kazarian apparently had no problem with at all). Bischoff eventually put Karen Jarrett in charge of the Knockouts, but TNA kept Traci around so it could book her as a sympathetic figure.
• After nine years of promoting the X-Division with the tagline "It's not about weight limits; it's about no limits", TNA imposed a weight limit on the division, turning it into the equivalent of the WCW's "You're too small to ever be a star" Cruiserweight Division. (THOSE CRUISERWEIGHTS CAN CRUISER-WAIT, BROTHER.)
  • Almost immediately, the weight limit was ignored, as Doug Williams (who was just over the limit) continued to compete in X-Division matches. It was finally abolished when RVD won the X-Division title. Zema Ion, who RVD had won it from, took to Twitter to complain about RVD being over the weight limit; nobody cared.
• Madison Rayne forced Brooke Tessmacher to face her tag team partner, Tara. Madison forced the two faces to fight each other, and she placed a condition on their match: if they didn't fight, they would be fired. Brooke and Tara proceed to pretend to fight each other -- which consisted of rolling around the floor and corpsing (Mike Tenay: "What are we watching here?") -- but instead of firing them, Madison simply forced them to actually fight. She tried to make the faces fight each other by slapping Brooke in the back of her head to make her think Tara took a cheap shot; even though Brooke had Tara in her line of sight, she believed Madison and began to fight Tara. The match ended when Madison broke the women up, shouted "HIT SOMEONE!", and ended up getting hit by the babyfaces. This took ten minutes from start to finish, and neither woman was fired. In the match's only true highlight, the crowd started a "USA!" chant for no real reason (TNA Never Followed Up On This™).
• Jeff Hardy and Sting teamed up on an episode of Impact; in a pre-match interview, they both referred to themselves as "marks" for the other person.
• Kurt Angle attacked James Storm backstage; as a result, Storm took time off for a concussion. During a video link interview between Tenay and Storm, Angle came out, grabbed the headset from Tenay, and verbally taunted Storm. Storm responded by cutting Angle down and saying he would eventually put Angle out for twice as long. Angle told him he didn't have to wait as he'd come to Tennessee and find him the next week. This segment was highly praised by several critics for its simple storyline progression as well as the pure aggression and feeling in the promos from both men. TNA capitalized on this great segment by...filming Kurt Angle dressed up as a cowboy and superkicking people in a bar.
  Spoiler