Spin off: The stupidity of TNA

[Kidd Dibiase]

The Bound For Glory Series

• TNA created the Bound For Glory Series as a "tournament" consisting of twelve guys who would receive points for matches based on whether they win or lose (and how they do so). At the end of the Series, the top four men in the rankings would face each other in a match at Victory Road, and the winner of said match would earn the right to face the TNA World Heavyweight Champion at (obviously) Bound For Glory.
• In addition to matches aired on TV and PPV, TNA counted house shows matches towards the Series standings. TNA's usual disorganization came into play here, as wrestlers didn't get an even amount of matches throughout the "tournament". Gunner finished the Series with a 6-13 record, but because he wrestled in nineteen Series matches, he ended up as one of the top four wrestlers in terms of points. James Storm also ended up in the top four despite wrestling in just twelve Series matches.
• Determined to further destroy the career of Samoa Joe, TNA booked him as a loser throughout the entire "tournament": he lost every single match he competed in -- including a submission loss to Brother Devon (aka D-Von Dudley) -- and when he finally won a match via submission, he refused to break the hold, which resulted in a disqualification loss. This loss pushed Joe into negative points, and he remained at the bottom of the points rankings for the rest of the Series.
• Four wrestlers involved with the "tournament" received injuries during matches, which forced them to sit out for the remainder of the Series; only one of the four (Matt Morgan) suffered a legitimate injury (a pectoral tear), and was kept on the show as a Series analyst doing commentary during matches. TNA wrote Crimson, pushed as an undefeated monster at the time, off TV for a short while following his "injury". Brother Devon and D'Angelo Dinero didn't sell their "injuries", though; they even competed at No Surrender with no problem.

No Surrender 2011: We Love America

• This PPV featured five blinding spots over the full three hours. Three matches finished with a blinding spot (including the main event): James Storm lost to Bully Ray via disqualification when he accidentally spat beer in the referee's face, Mickie James lost her match with Winter by getting blood sprayed in her face, and Sting lost his title match after getting blinded by Hogan.
• TNA held this PPV on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The show opened with a touching 9/11 tribute. Rosita appeared on the show as part of the racist anti-American stable Mexican America; later in the show, she gave a very sincere and emotional interview where she talked about her late father passing away during the tragedy and how she used his passing as inspiration to improve as a professional wrestler. Rosita continued to appear as part of Mexican America after this show.

Sting vs. Hogan

• Sting spent an entire year trying to get control of TNA away from Hogan and back into the hands of Dixie Carter (who Hogan had conned into signing over control of TNA in the first place). Sting challenged Hogan to a match at Bound For Glory, but Ric Flair came out and said Sting would have to go through him before getting to Hogan.
• Before locking up in the main event of an episode of Impact, Sting and Flair cut a promo where they discussed their previous matches. Sting questioned Flair's credibility as a wrestler, and Flair questioned Sting's motivations. The serious promo made both men appear to respect each other; by all accounts, it would have sold the match beautifully. TNA decided to retape the promo to be more over-the-top crazy.
  • In their match, Sting (53) and Flair (62) did a superplex spot. Flair suffered a torn tricep and stayed on the shelf for six months. Sting won the match by kicking out of a brass knuckles shot and making Flair submit.
• On the next episode of Impact, Hogan announced his retirement from wrestling in order to avoid the match with Sting. This show did a 1.01, the lowest of the year to date. One week later, Sting tricked Hogan into signing the match for Bound for Glory.
• Hulk Hogan earned two million dollars per year on his 2010 contract, which made him one of the highest-paid performers in the business. Hogan's "retirement" angle, which TNA highly hyped up, ended up getting the lowest ratings of the year. Hogan's presence barely improved TV ratings (and sometimes even hurt them), and PPVs scheduled to feature the Hulkster did no better than those without Hogan (every TNA PPV in 2011 managed to receive around six to nine thousand buys). Hogan made sure to rarely mention TNA in outside interviews; he also hosted another wrestling show (for midgets) and appeared in a wrestling game that licensed his likeness (and failed to mention TNA in any way). How did TNA punish Hogan for failing to draw in fans and improve the company's situation? It re-signed Hogan to a two-year contract as soon as his old one expired.

At TNA's biggest show of the year, only 2,500 people paid to get in.
Bound for Glory 2011: No Push for You, Come Back One Year

• As mentioned above, Eric Bischoff's son Garett debuted as a referee one year prior under the name Jackson James. As a referee, he made a number of mistakes, but no one ever once thought to put over the idea of Garett working as a "heel" referee (even though everyone knew the truth about Garett by this show). At the PPV, Bischoff and James discussed how to screw over Hogan, to which James says "I understand, Dad." The now-heel "son of Bischoff" refereed the Sting/Hogan match, which Sting won by making Hogan tap out; after the match, Garett turned face by grabbing a chair from his father, who waited until after the match to exploit Immortal's numbers in an assault on Sting (and Hogan). After this show, Garett transitioned into a role as a wrestler, where he received TV time and as big a push as TNA would give a green rookie with no real wrestling experience, during which he was shilled by much of the face half of the roster. He was booed like crazy the entire time, to the point where Kid Kash (attempting to drum up the cheapest of heats at a house show in Canada by insulting the memory of Owen Hart and saying he wanted to injure other members of the Hart family) couldn't even get the fans there to cheer for Garett. (For more on Garett's push, see "Nepotism Matters Here" below.)
• In a pull-apart brawl between Jeff Jarrett and Jeff Hardy, the fans cheered more for road agents D'Lo Brown and Al Snow when they hit the ring (fans also cheered for fellow agent Simon Diamond and the famous Atlas Security team). While Jarrett was being dragged backstage, the Philly crowd chanted for D'Lo and Head (Al Snow's mannequin head/"partner").
• TNA booked a Fatal Four-Way for the Knockouts at this show; it became a faces vs. heels tag match with fellow heel Karen Jarrett serving as the guest referee. Karen ended up blinded thanks to Winter, so Traci Brooks counted the pinfall (and received zero repercussions for doing so).
• Hulk Hogan turned face after losing to Sting in what one could charitably call a "brawl", then turned on Immortal and helped Sting fend them off. Why does this matter? Well...

Bobby Roode Gets Pushed (Off a Cliff)
Hulk Hogan went on a media run on the weekend before Bound for Glory to hype the PPV, which featured Kurt Angle and Bobby Roode in the main event match (for the World Heavyweight Championship). On The Howard Stern Show, Hogan hyped his match with Sting while saying Angle would face "some other guy" (Roode). On another radio interview two days before the show, someone asked Hogan about Bobby Roode. Hogan said Roode's "not ready", then said he would have preferred to see James Storm in Roode's position. Hogan did both interviews completely out-of-character.

• • Hogan then went on Twitter and referred to fans angry with what he'd said as "marks", then claimed to be working them all. He also proceeded to re-tweet every possible positive reaction to his comments for a few hours. Hogan also took a potshot at AJ Styles during his tirade by blasting AJ for not attending a fan interaction event on the weekend of Bound for Glory. (AJ had told TNA he wouldn't attend these events due to his father passing away.)

“We literally had a change in 2011 at Bound For Glory right before the match in the main event. In other words, somebody was supposed to win, and it got turned to me winning that night. It worked out for the better; I’m not going to lie to you. So the change was good, but literally, we didn’t hear about it until that night, and me and Bobby Roode was like 'What?! I’m winning?! I have a torn hamstring and I can’'t even wrestle.'”
— Kurt Angle on Busted Open, explaining the ending to Bound for Glory

• Kurt Angle ended up defeating Bobby Roode at Bound for Glory despite the massive amount of hype TNA put into Roode's push towards the PPV (which included Roode defeating all of his Fourtune teammates on the month of Impact episodes leading up to the PPV). Making matters worse: the injured Angle could barely wrestle a full match, which cut the main event of TNA's alleged "WrestleMania equivalent" down to less than ten minutes. TNA's long-term plans had Roode winning the title at the PPV -- apparently, TNA had this plan in place since the summer -- but these plans mysteriously changed the night before the event (after Hogan's "Roode isn't ready, brother" media run). Numerous dirtsheets (and, later on, TNA performers) credited Hogan as the major campaigner in getting the finish changed at the last minute.
  • After the main event, fans angered with Roode's loss once again took to Twitter to express their anger. Hogan spent most of the night re-tweeting positive comments (again) and calling anyone who said something negative a "mark" (again). Eric Bischoff chimed in the following morning with this gem: "Having a blast watching Internet marks react. Candy from a baby!"
  • Several Australian radio stations assumed Bobby Roode would appear on several of their shows as part of a promotional tour for a future TNA house show run. These stations confirmed Roode's appearances had been canceled on Monday (the day after Bound for Glory) and TNA hadn't booked anyone to fill the gap, furthering the theory of Roode's push getting pulled days before the biggest moment of his career. The appearances were later rescheduled for times after Roode actually won the title.
  • Some pundits believe Hogan gave Roode the shaft at the PPV so Hogan's big face turn wouldn't be overshadowed by the most-awaited world title change in TNA history. Hogan defended the booking by claiming that Roode would be better off as a heel. To play up Bobby Roode's heel turn after he eventually won the title, TNA aired a vignette of Roode's friends and family talking about how he became a different person after winning the world title -- and how he should do the right thing and offer Storm a title shot. When TNA aired this for the first time, fans loved it -- so TNA continually aired it over the next few weeks. One of Roode's friends eventually came out during an episode of Impact to talk to Roode; during this segment, TNA established Roode as a neglectful father and husband, as he had apparently not been home to see his kids, wife, or family since winning the world title. Roode pushed his friend down and beat him up before Jeff Hardy made the save.

 

[mrken12]

And fukk TNA for depriving us of a Kurt Angle vs Bryan Danielson match.

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

After the "Glory" 2011: ...The fukk Do We Need Wrestling For?

• This episode of Impact featured less than seven total minutes of actual in-ring wrestling. A similar situation occurred on the Impact following Bound for Glory 2010.
• The opening video package of this show focused specifically on Hogan vs. Sting, and nobody made any mention of anything else that happened at Bound for Glory. TNA also aired two video packages dedicated to Hogan vs. Sting after commercial breaks. The show opened with an in-ring promo featuring Sting, Hulk Hogan, Dixie Carter, Kurt Angle, Bobby Roode, and James Storm; it lasted just under forty minutes and included three commercial breaks. The jist of the promo? Dixie had regained control of TNA, Angle had screwed Roode by rigging the Bound for Glorycontract so Roode would never get another shot, and Sting -- now the authority figure of TNA, thanks to Ditsy...er, Dixie -- had booked Storm vs. Angle for the TNA World Championship as the main event of the evening.
• After a brief Knockouts match -- a segment which earned the highest rating of the show -- Jeff Jarrett and Jeff Hardy did a repeat of their PPV brawl, with one notable difference: in the middle of this brawl, D'Lo and Al Snow started fighting, presumably because the crowd cheered for them at the PPV.
• In the only decent segment of the show, Abyss defeated Gunner by countout when Gunner ran away from Abyss (since Abyss only gets over with crowds when he works as a monster).
• Also: despite having aired promos over the last month saying Roode had waited thirteen years to get a shot at the TNA World Championship and reach the pinnacle of his profession (in TNA), TNA put over Velvet Sky's four year struggle to become Knockouts Champion. Karen Jarrett and Traci Brooks also came out to cut another promo to set up Gail Kim's return.
• After Bischoff called out Hogan, Immortal came down to the ring to beat him up, but Sting came down to the ring to help Hogan. Garett Bischoff appeared at the top of the ramp for the sole purpose of finishing off the bizarre and out-of-place segment: Eric knocked his own son down, then showed the world Garett's chest tattoo ("Bischoff").
• In the show's main event, James Storm defeated Kurt Angle in just over a minute to become the TNA World Heavyweight Champion. TNA put on this match and booked this title change with zero build and zero hype.
• The episode's overall rating was a 1.35. While TNA did earn its highest TV rating of the year with this show -- a show which legitimately attracted a record number of viewers for TNA -- this rating only tied Impact's overall highest all-time rating. On Twitter, Bischoff said the following about the rating: "Ever notice how the shows that the dirt sites put over get the lowest ratings and the ones they bury get the highest? hmmmm." The next episode of Impact dropped back down to normal ratings levels, meaning TNA lost whatever gains it received with the post-Bound for Glory buzz because of this episode.
• After James Storm won the TNA World Championship, Bobby Roode became the #1 Contender for the title. Samoa Joe -- the same guy who scored -10 in the Bound For Glory Series, lost nearly every match he was in during 2011, and had no relevance to the TNA product -- challenged Roode for the title shot. Roode pointed out these issues and buried Joe on camera; Sting still went ahead and booked the match. Roode won, of course. Two weeks after James Storm's TNA World Heavyweight Championship victory, Bobby Roode turned heel, defeated Storm, and won the title on Impact.

• A quick post-script to all this: on the 7th of November, TNA's website was hacked by a group of script kiddies hailing from Algeria. Since TNA outsources all of its web development, they had to try and regain control of the site twice, and until they got control back for good, they redirected visitors to the TNA online shop. Presumably, neither Hogan nor Roode had anything to do with this.

Turning Point 2011 and Beyond

• Robbie E. defeated Eric Young for the TNA Television Title, further proving how little TNA cared about the title.
• Gail Kim won the Knockouts Championship at this show. In the month between her return to TNA and this show, Gail also won the Knockouts Tag Team Championship. Gail said she wanted to work hard to earn titles in the past.
• AJ Styles faced Bobby Roode in the show's main event. AJ worked the match injured, making him the third injured person to work with Bobby Roode in a world title match.
  • TNA booked this match in the last thirty seconds of the episode of Impact before the PPV: AJ came out and shouted at Roode, Sting asked AJ if he wanted to face Roode, AJ nodded, and Sting replied with "You got him!"
• On the Impact episode after Turning Point, James Storm -- who TNA pulled out of Turning Point's main event due to a concussion -- took a couple of head bumps in a fight with Kurt Angle at the end of the show, despite saying he would need six to eight weeks to recover earlier in the show.
• Karen Angle, who still ran the Knockouts Division, said she'd been trying to get the Knockouts to show less skin on camera -- but the fans wanted to see more. To that end, she made the Knockouts wrestle in their lingerie on Impact's Thanksgiving episode in a match billed as "Thanksgiving Thong Thunder". All of the faces complained about this, despite fans apparently asking for it; notable protesters included Velvet Sky (who grinds on the middle rope and directs the camera to her ass during her entrance) and Brooke Tessmacher (who not only posed nude before coming to TNA, but also stripped out of a secretary's outfit during her old entrance). When this match finally happened, the lingerie covered more skin than the Knockouts usually show, the match ran longer than any other match on the show, and everything sucked more than the Bellas in Johnny Ace's office during contract negotiations.

Final Resolution 2011 and Beyond

• Prior to the Knockouts Match, TNA's production crew queued up the Tale of the Tape instead of the planned intro package. The feed went black before going to the intro package; after it aired, TNA went back to a shot of the Impact Zone -- then production fukked up again by playing the video package instead of the Tale of the Tape.
• The crowd reacted to almost nothing on the show (including hot tags, heel tactics, and momentum shifts within matches). The only notable crowd member spent the beginning of the Robbie E vs. Eric Young match chanting "WE WANT RYDER!"
• TNA booked Jeff Hardy vs. Jeff Jarrett in a Steel Cage Match for this show. Either man could win by pinfall, submission, or cage escape. TNA added other stipulations as well:
  • Sting, serving as a ringside enforcer, would keep Karen Jarrett handcuffed to him in an attempt to prevent her from interfering.
  • Hardy would get fired from TNA if he lost, but he would receive a shot at the TNA World Heavyweight Championship at Genesis if he won.
  • TNA later added another stipulation via Twitter: if Hardy won, Sting would fire either Jeff or Karen.
  • TNA's plan: while Hardy crawled trough an open cage door, Jarrett would hit him from behind, which would cause Hardy to push the door against a nearby Sting. TNA's reality: the referee stubbornly tried to close the door while Hardy crawled out.
  • Hardy asked for a short match at Turning Point due to back problems. Hardy performed a Senton off the top of the cage at this show.
• TNA proved how much it loves to use PPVs as a vehicle for the television product with its booking for the 30-Minute Iron Man Match between AJ Styles and Bobby Roode for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. When the match ended in a tie, the crowd chanted "five more minutes" as Roode walked out, AJ screamed for Sting to come out, and the PPV went off the air. On the episode of Impact after this show, Sting gave AJ those five more minutes; Roode eventually won -- clean, no less -- after Sting restarted the match again once those "five more minutes" were up.
  • Remember the firing stipulation mentioned above? After both Jarretts spent most of the post-Final Resolution episode of Impact sucking up to Sting and throwing each other under the bus, he decided to fire them both. This anticlimactic end to the Jarretts was used to legitimately write Karen off the program.
  • TNA averages around one million viewers on each episode of Impact. Final Resolution 2011 reportedly received 8,000 buys. WWE's December to Dismember 2006, which did the lowest buyrate in WWE history, received 96,000 buys.

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

2012
End of an Error

• Relevant to the entries from this year: Vince Russo left TNA in February 2012 after six years of solidifying his reputation as one of the worst wrestling bookers in recorded history. TNA called the split "amicable and professional". Russo released a statement of his own, in which he commented that "It simply makes good business sense that where someone of my talent and ability was not going to be used to their capability or capacity, that a parting of the ways was inevitable." Shine on you crazy diamond, Vinnie Ru.

Miscellaneous Shenanigans, Part 1

• Gunner began using Mike Awesome's early 2000 gimmick; while Awesome randomly attacked people and sent them to the hospital, Gunner randomly attacked people and sent them to OVW. After a few weeks, this was quietly dropped. TNA Never Followed Up On This™.
• Sting decided to hold a tournament for a Tag Team Championship shot -- and each team consisted of partners who didn't get along. In almost every match in the tournament, none of the teams worked as a team, which resulted in one team almost always picking up a victory due to the other team not working as a team. Scott Steiner and Abyss worked as a team for one week, but a week later, Abyss screwed Steiner and cost them the match. AJ and Kazarian also worked together -- until Kazarian turned on AJ in the middle of a match. One team, Magnus and Joe, actually stayed together after the tournament finished.
• Kazuchika Okada became the IWGP World Champion in early 2012. The previous year, New Japan had sent Okada to TNA on a learning excursion. Okada proceeded to do random jobs for a while in TNA, then became a Kato knock-off for a few weeks while Samoa Joe feuded with D'Angelo Dinero. After doing absolutely nothing in TNA beyond that, Okada returned to NJPW, where he became one of the promotion's top stars within a month. Rumors say NJPW knew TNA would book him this way and let it happen to give Okada a healthy dose of humility and perspective before receiving his eventual main event push.
• After months and months of building to a heel turn by Devon's sons during first a feud between Devon and D'Angelo Dinero then them teaming, the two attacked their dad on TV and joined up with Dinero -- but three weeks later, Devon's sons refused to beat up their father after the match (at Dinero's insistence), then turned on Dinero before celebrating with Devon at Genesis and finally disappearing not long afterward.
• After a #1 Contender's match between Jeff Hardy and James Storm broke down into a brawl following countless run-ins, Bobby Roode declared the match as a No Contest -- without explaining what gave him the authority to say it was a No Contest.

An entire company, summed up in one GIF.

• In another attempt to have ESPN notice the company, TNA signed NFL player Brandon Jacobs to make a special guest appearance on Impact. In his appearance, Jacobs argued with Bully Ray and cut an atrocious promo with James Storm. Jacobs' appearance during the main event closed the show -- while a TNA World Heavyweight Championship match between Bobby Roode and Jeff Hardy opened the show.
• TNA started an angle where Abyss' parents (you know, Abyss' mom, who shot Abyss' dad, who was actually James Mitchell) sent TNA a letter about their concern for their son's whereabouts. They claimed nobody had seen Abyss for the past few months -- even though Abyss used Twitter extensively throughout his absence. Apparently this was supposed to be some kind of storyline explanation for his absence while he was in India working for TNA's offshoot promotion, Ring Ka King, which many proceeded to point out.
  • This angle also ran side by side with other Twitter-based "worked shoot" angles TNA tried to run with Austin Aries and Sting.
• Crimson had a 470-day winning streak. Ever since he debuted, TNA did everything in their power to protect this streak and hype it up, despite a majority of the fans not giving two shyts about Crimson or his streak. So how did TNA pay off a joke that lasted nearly 2 years? James Storm returned, kicked Crimson in the face, and pinned him in two minutes. Crimson was promptly shipped off to OVW.
• At Victory Road, Bobby Roode pinned Sting after Sting knocked himself out -- by smacking the back of his head against a steel chair during a Scorpion Death Drop.
  • Also at Victory Road: one segment had Jeremy Borash boast about how "Victory Road" was the #1 trending Twitter topic in the United Kingdom. As pointed out on Botchamania after the event, there's no way to legally watch TNA PPVs live in the UK, so Borash in effect boasted about the PPV being illegally streamed by an entire country.
• After his loss to Roode, Sting began campaigning for Hulk Hogan to run TNA again, so Sting could step down from the position and wrestle again. Yes, after nearly a full year of Sting and Dixie Carter challenging Hulk and eventually taking the reigns of power away from him, they gave it right back to him a few months later. To make matters worse, Lockdown's hype revolved around this storyline instead of the long awaited TNA World Heavyweight Championship feud between James Storm and Bobby Roode.

Nepotism Matters Here

Brooke's debut episode actually drew the lowest rating for a non-holiday Thursday Impact in years. This probably had more to do with the time change, but these plant signs are still ridiculous.

• Vince Russo's son received a job in TNA's production department; however, he left the company with his father. This being the shortest entry of this section should tell you something.

Garett Bischoff

• After Bound for Glory 2011 Garett Bischoff received a major push. First, he defeated former TV Champion Gunner twice, and after the second win, Gunner "injured" Bischoff by piledriving him onto concrete. A very big deal was made about Garett's return from the "injury", including vignettes showing him training, teasing who he'd gotten as a trainer, and Gunner beating up random bystanders. This led to a PPV match where Garett's trainer -- revealed to be Hulk Hogan (see below) -- was in his corner and Gunner had Eric Bischoff in his corner. Garett lost that match, though it was not the end to that feud, as it would continue on 'til Lethal Lockdown in some fashion. He also survived two Beat the Clock matches against Kurt Angle (one a time limit draw, the other thrown out after Gunner rushed the ring) and main evented an Impact episode by teaming with Jeff Hardy against Gunner and Angle.
  • For a while, Hogan was Garett's mentor (the reveal of which was one of TNA's usual "OMG MYSTERY GUY!" reveals, complete with the very overused bit where someone catches a glimpse of who it is, freaks out, and proceeds not to tell anyone until the actual reveal), and he tried to put Garett over as the future of wrestling. All of this took place during a heavily-featured feud against Eric Bischoff which saw Eric eventually leave his on-screen role.
  • TNA held a UK tour around this time which managed to draw large numbers and actually sell out an entire arena. What did TNA do to repay its loyal UK fanbase? It gave them excessive promos, lackluster matches, and a vast focus on the return of Hulk Hogan (revealed to be the trainer of Garett Bischoff). The UK fans, knowing how stupid it was that Garett even had a job, booed the young Bischoff out the arena in every one of his appearances. (TNA edited said boos for cheers.)
  • Fortunately, TNA realized how green Garett was and didn't put him in a singles match against his father at Lockdown. Instead, he was surrounded by a number of competent workers in the tag team Lethal Lockdown match at Lockdown. Garett ended up winning the Lethal Lockdown match for his team nevertheless, which sent Eric packing from his on-screen role in TNA. The stipulation for that match also said Eric Bischoff would no longer have a legal right to his last name and could not be referred to as Bischoff anymore. TNA remembered this on the Impactafter Lockdown by censoring Ric Flair when he came out to talk about Eric B[bleep].
• TNA ended the first Open Fight Night (see below) Impact with the "celebration" of Eric Bischoff's career before he left TNA (as an on-screen character) following his Lethal Lockdown team's loss at Lockdown. Ric Flair came out with Bully Ray, Gunner, Kazarian, and Daniels in tow, then gave a speech on the awesomeness of Eric Bischoff while Bully Ray tried to start pro-Bischoff chants. Bischoff came out and sat on a goddamned throne while the crowd mercilessly booed him and gave him the "Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye" treatment. To add insult to injury, Garett Bischoff came out with the Motor City Machine Guns, Rob Van Dam, and Austin Aries -- and the crowd showed its support for Garett by chanting for his backup while he talked. The entire segment ended with Eric Bischoff getting shoved into a portable toilet, which was then tipped over to covering Eric in shyt. (TNA also voided its own continuity with this segment: the previous week, TNA censored Bischoff's last name when anyone referred to him by his full name, but on this show, TNA didn't censor any audible mention of his last name. Great job, production staff.)
• Much like the great superstables of TNA's past (e.g. S.E.X., the MEM, the TNA Frontline, World Elite, EV2.0), the Eric Bischoff sendoff marked the unceremonious end to the Immortal faction, as everyone involved with Immortal broke out to be in separate storylines after this.

Brooke Hogan

• Dixie Carter announced via Twitter that Brooke Hogan would join the TNA roster as the Executive in Charge of the Knockouts Division in May. We'd make a joke here, but that's enough of one as it is.
  • Instead of promoting anything else that was on the show that week, all the promotion for Brooke's debut episode focused on her. The graphics they used to promote her debut during the episode looked almost nothing like her. Brooke Hogan's introduction to Impact Wrestling by Dixie Carter resulted in a mix of cheers, boos and the crowd not really giving a shyt, definitely not accepting Dixie Carter's claims of how Brooke would help the company and how knowledgeable she was.
  • After debuting, Brooke Tessmacher was forced to drop "Brooke" from her ring name because TNA is only big enough for one Brooke apparently, despite Brooke Hogan referring to Tessmacher several times as "Brooke" and despite her still being referred to on the TNA site's roster page as such.
  • Many of Brooke's segments were taped separately from the rest of the show (or at least looked that way), likely as a result of her relaxed schedule. As a result, she rarely appeared in the same shot with the Knockouts, as her shots were edited into promos later on.
  • Brooke left TNA in August of 2013, which was celebrated by the majority of the Internet -- but not before she played a role in a major TNA storyline...

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

Scott Steiner vs. TNA


Have Steiner's words ever been more coherent?

• After declining to sign a new contract with TNA, Scott Steiner proceeded to trash TNA via Twitter. In the weeks after his release, Steiner blasted Bruce Prichard (TNA's new head writer post-Russo), accused Hogan and Bischoff of doing the "same bullshyt they did to destroy WCW", confirmed Hogan as the force behind the last-minute changed outcome of Roode vs. Angle at Bound for Glory2011, ripped into Hogan for verbally attacking other wrestlers on both personal and professional levels, and (because it was part of a larger number given to Bischoff's docket when he testified in the Gold Club court case) encouraged fans to chant "609" whenever either Bischoff (Eric or Garett) showed up on-screen. Steiner's anti-TNA tirade started on the 2nd of April and went on a brief hiatus in early May (when both Bischoff and Hogan threatened to sue Steiner for the tweets). On the 7th of June (the night Brooke Hogan debuted), Steiner's anti-TNA tweets resumed. The angry and often-incomprehensible Steiner came across as humble, reasonable, and intelligent when compared to Hogan and Bischoff -- and Hogan, who met previous negative Twitter exchanges involving Warrior and other "haters" with contention, had only replied to Steiner's tweets with attempts at reconciliation until the announcement of potential litigation.
  • Steiner remained on TNA's payroll, however, thanks to his work with Ring Ka King.

Lockdown 2012: Sorry About Your Damn Luck

• ODB and Eric Young became the Knockout Tag Team Champions, which made the titles TNA's second biggest joke (right behind Garett Bischoff). During their title reign, they married each other in a steel cage on the Impact before Lockdown. Sarita and Rosita made an appearance before the wedding to try to tempt Young away, then showed up during the ceremony in lingerie, prompting first ODB and then Young to also strip down to their underthings.
  • Young almost promptly vanished from TV after this because he was busy filming for his Animal Planet show, Off The Hook: Extreme Catches. For some reason, ODB calling him and demanding he return with fried chicken became a weekly thing for a while.
• For once, TNA did the right thing and put Garett Bischoff where he belonged: in the curtain-jerker match.
• TNA's road agents still hadn't clued into how War Games works by this event. They gave the heels the advantage this time around, but each time a new heel prepared to enter the match, the heels in the ring had already gained the upper hand. When the next face prepared to come out and get some pops, the faces in the ring immediately started their comeback.
• Hogan and Flair came out for a nonsensical rambling promo that had no relevance to anything else on the show and ended with Hulkster using the old thumb-on-nose, wiggle-of-the-fingers, neener-neener-neener taunt. Although the dirtsheets initially reported that this would lead to a Hogan/Flair feud, TNA Never Followed Up on This™.
• The Motor City Machineguns returned after an nearly year-long run of on/off absences (as Shelley and Sabin suffered back-and-forth injuries which kept the duo from teaming for a long time). To welcome the fan-favorite team back, TNA fukked up their entrance and the duo came out to near-silence.
• "The Undefeated" Crimson beat Matt Morgan, and nobody gave a shyt. Hell, for the majority of the night, the audience gave no fukks about the show, even though TNA held it in their old stomping ground of Nashville.
• Despite Russo's departure from TNA, he continued to inspire the company: the match where Russo defeated Booker T to become the WCW World Heavyweight Champion featured the exact same finish as the Storm vs Roode main event match on this show. How did Storm lose? He hit a superkick on Roode which sent him out of the steel cage door for the win. (Unlike Russo, Roode was already the TNA world champ.)

The Gut Check Challenge and Open Fight Night

• On the April 26th edition of Impact, TNA held its first "Open Fight Night". Under the rules laid out by Hogan a week prior, on an Open Fight Night, anyone would be allowed to challenge any other wrestler on the roster -- including any given champion -- and the company would also hold a "Gut Check Challenge" where an aspiring rookie/newcomer would receive a tryout match with the possibility to be signed to a TNA contract. Glorious indie motherfukker (and OVW regular) Alex Silva jobbed to Robbie E for the first Gut Check Challenge. Great booking.
  • When setting this idea up, Hogan demanded at least one title match on any given "Open Fight Night". He also ordered a mandatory weekly defense of the TV Title the week prior, making it exempt from this demand. Hogan, in his infinite "wisdom", paired off Mr. Anderson and Jeff Hardy and gave them a TNA Tag Team Championship shot -- instead of giving a shot to The Motor City Machineguns, Christopher Daniels & Kazarian, or even Eric Young & ODB. Then-champions Magnus and Samoa Joe retained the titles after a great match; after the match, Kazarian and Daniels attacked the champs because they didn't get the title shot.
    • The May 24th edition of Open Fight Night saw Hogan throw out a #1 Contendership Fatal Four-Way that had been booked from four qualifier matches the week before...just so he could pick the #1 Contender.
    • By the way, wanna know how long would that mandatory weekly TV title defense thing lasted before TNA forgot about it? Approximately three weeks -- and then-champ Devon worked a dark match on the third week instead of defending the title.
  • Instead of ending the April 26th episode show on the great tag team match, TNA ended this episode with the aforementioned "celebration" of Eric Bischoff before he left TNA (as an on-screen character) following his team's loss at Lockdown.

The Gut Check Challenge

• The first edition of Gut Check featured the aforementioned Alex Silva. After jobbing to Robbie E, his performance was graded by Bruce Prichard, Al Snow, and Ric Flair in a segment that could best be described as American Idol meets Tough Enough. The original plan for this segment was to have Flair and Prichard give Silva the thumbs down so Silva wouldn't be signed (a competitor needed two out of three judges to approve). Flair initially went along with the script, but deviated halfway through for reasons known only to Flair -- and Prichard went along with it. Silva was kept in OVW after his signing, made a few other appearances, and was fired just before several other Gut Check contestants.
  • Flair's antics caused TNA to pull him off the Gut Check judging, and Flair ended up leaving the promotion soon after (presumably to get more booze money from TNA for less work). He was replaced by former Tough Enough judge Taz. Taz and Al Snow were both former Tough Enough judges, which only added to the similarities between Tough Enough and the Gut Check.
• The next Gut Check featured Joey Ryan facing off against Austin Aries. The booking made sense because both made their name on the independent scene and had wrestled each other before. Internet voting was 87% for Ryan getting a contract. Ryan was declined a contract when judges Bruce Prichard and an irate Taz voted no. Ryan began to use the 87% vote in a (kayfabe) campaign to get into the company, and eventually won a contract in a match against Al Snow.
  • TNA decided to change its business model and "pull back the curtain" on the industry after the first Gut Check Challenge to coincide with Impact going live at 8pm. The Gut Check suffered the worst of this as Taz, Prichard, and Snow were shown watching clips of Ryan's match while they criticized him for his "gimmick" and being "in character" (which completely ruined any possible suspension of disbelief). Dixie thought doing this would bring in fans of reality television who wouldn't normally care about a wrestling program. It didn't work.
• You -- yes, you! -- could sign up for a Gut Check tryout! All you had to do was send TNA a $250 processing fee for them to delete your application, as this was just a way to justify OVW talent and Team 3D trainees being on the air! (Sadly, we don't know if the applications ended up bringing in more revenue than Kendrick's popcorn machine.)
  • TNA did try to make Gut Check seem legit by bringing in several contestants who weren't from OVW or Team 3D's school. One's selling point was "He's only 18 years old!", and another (Kris Lewie, the absolute worst of the lot) put on what could easily have been called one of the worst matches in TNA history. Both were quickly sent packing.
• Eventually, a Gut Check contestant won their match. Unfortunately, it was Wes Brisco, with his opponent being Garett Bischoff. The match opened an Impact episode, was treated pretty much as an afterthought, and was really bad. It was only after this suckfest (and skipping a month due to holiday tapings) that TNA got the point about Gut Check and started using it to find quality talent they could use immediately (though that mentality also didn't last long).
  • When it came time to judge Brisco, Al Snow "mysteriously" disappeared, and was replaced by D'Lo Brown. This was the moment where everyone immediately pegged D'Lo as being in league with the Aces and Eights (see below). This was on November 29th; it took almost four more months for TNA to anticlimactically confirm what everyone knew all along.
• The insanity didn't end there, though. TNA later organized a fan-vote poll with a huge list of people who had passed their initial Gut Check tryout. This ranged from complete unknowns to several well-known indie workers. This would've been all well and good, except TNA had decided to use everyone's real names, so it took some investigating to figure out who everyone was. This led to the discovery that they'd included three WWE signees (including Corey Graves, who had been on NXT for several months) in the polls. When TNA finally caught on that people had figured this out, they removed their bios, but strangely did not remove them from the polls. Others included one who had already been on TV for a Gut Check (Evan Markopoulos, the infamous "He's only 18 years old!" guy, who TNA later funded OVW training for), several who had already been on TNA TV in some way (including Chase Stevens, who'd been a tag champion twice with the company), and one who was convicted for sexual assault of a minor. The company's persistent use of real names would also alienate several contenders, chief among them Courtney Rush (who requested that she be removed).
  • Not long after the polls started, more insanity occured with the polling: it somehow went from one vote per IP to unlimited voting. This was blamed on a "glitch". Guess TNA didn't learn their lesson from when they did that with the Top Ten rankings poll. Unsurprisingly, that led to a massive amount of people voting over and over for the same people. When informed via email that the "glitch" wouldn't be fixed and the poll would not be redone, several well-known contenders (including Athena [a different Athena], LuFisto, and Greg Iron) dropped out, citing that it had become a popularity contest. Others pleaded with their fans not to cheat. Once word got out and the backlash started, the plug was pulled entirely. It's pretty safe to say TNA shouldn't be trusted with any kind of fan polling.

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

Slammiversary 2012: Celebrating Ten Years of What the fukk

• The main event of Slammiversary was Sting vs Bobby Roode. Hogan called Sting the top man in TNA and said he should get the shot after a lumberjack match in which Sting won. Nice way to build up Roode there, Hogan.
  • Hogan also casually tossed Mr. Anderson under the bus as he originally had the title shot against Roode at Slammiversary. TNA Never Explained This™, and Anderson was put in a three-way with RVD and Jeff Hardy to determine who would face the World Heavyweight Champion on the Impact after Slammiversary. Yes, they were still pushing the same old contenders from 2010 because Hogan said "they're ready, brother".
• TNA thought it was a good idea to do fan voting for a contender to face Devon for the TV Title. We all know about what happened the last time TNA left this decision to fan voting (people wanted Desmond Wolfe over Jeff Hardy), so this time TNA picked four possible contenders every day from Monday and let the fan voting commence that Thursday afternoon. The first week it happened, Jeff Hardy was given a shot and the match was thrown out due to Robbie E/Robbie T interference. The next week, there was no fan voting (way to promote weekly voting) and Robbie E was given a shot, with Garett Bischoff in Devon's corner. Devon/Robbie E became a regular feud, and all their matches stunk.
  • A tag team match was made involving Robbie E and Robbie T vs Devon and Garett Bischoff at Slammiversary. Yes, this happened. Like most matches on the card, it had barely been promoted and was whipped up in the week before the PPV that was supposed to celebrate TNA's tenth anniversary.
    • On a meta level, however, this was the ideal way to celebrate 10 years of TNA: booking PPVs right before the PPV, booking family members of executives no matter how little people want to see them, and recycling matches already done on free TV hundreds of times.

Claire Lynch

• Following his match at Destination X the previous year, Christopher Daniels spent the rest of the year turning heel by openly resenting both Bobby Roode (for winning the Bound For Glory Series) and AJ Styles (for getting far more high-profile opportunities in the company). Daniels finally turned heel at the end of the year and developed a gimmick of trying to stab random wrestlers with a screwdriver. He also had a series of matches with AJ Styles as the next part of their long-running rivalry...and resulted one of the worst storylines in modern wrestling history. (But it does have a silver lining, so stick with us here.)
  • At the beginning of the year, Daniels said AJ Styles had a darker side. TNA actually did follow up on this, but not until after AJ finished his feud with Bobby Roode: during the above-mentioned Wild Card Tag Tournament, Daniels approached Kaz with information on AJ. During a tag match where he teamed with Styles, Kaz walked out and AJ lost the match. Kaz appeared reluctant to follow Daniels on the following episodes of Impact, but finally turned on AJ during their match at Against All Odds and became a full-fledged heel.
  • Daniels and Kaz interrupted AJ's matches over the next few weeks by flashing random documents and threatening to expose Styles' secrets. Daniels eventually revealed photos and video of AJ with Dixie Carter as they entered a motel room together, as well as a phone call between the two about a secret meeting they didn't want Dixie's husband Serg to hear about. On the last reveal, Serg (a non-wrestler) laid out Styles with one punch. (TNA Never Followed Up On This™.) Dixie didn't acknowledge this angle despite her constant presence on Impact to promote Slammiversary until the recorded phone call was played. When that happened, she stormed out on the stage and screamed for production to stop playing it.
  • Daniels and Kaz won the TNA Tag Team Championship at Sacrifice, then dropped the belts to AJ and Kurt Angle one month later at Slammiversaryto up the stakes in this feud. Despite being champs together, Kurt had virtually no involvement in the feud, and AJ hardly ever wore his title belt. Angle and Styles dropped the titles back to Kaz and Daniels two weeks later.
  • AJ and Dixie eventually decided to go public with their big secret. As AJ tried to convince Dixie not to reveal it (despite initially wanting to go public with it in the first place), a random woman entered the ring. She identified herself as a pregnant drug addict trying to get clean with the help of AJ and Dixie without anyone finding out. An enraged Daniels and Kaz rushed to the ring and got laid out by AJ as Impact went off the air. Fans responded with obvious confusion as to who the pregnant junkie is and why they should care about her. (Oh, and as for that mysterious telephone call that Daniels recorded? He had edited a telephone call between AJ and Dixie talking about planning Serg's surprise birthday party. TNA did a whole article dedicated to it on their website. As mentioned, TNA Never Followed Up On This™.)
  • At the end of the next episode Impact, Daniels told Dixie that AJ had fathered the junkie's baby. TNA felt proud enough of this angle to praise Eric Bischoff for coming up with such a compelling twist and rewarded him with a raise...despite largely negative fan reactions on Twitter and some of TNA's lowest ratings for the big reveal segment. In later weeks, the pregnant junkie -- Claire Lynch -- turned heel when she joined with Daniels and also accused AJ of fathering her child. AJ claimed he didn't know if he had even fukked her (and called her a foot), but Claire provided evidence for her claim: pictures of her on top of a passed-out AJ that suggested she had date-raped Styles following a wild night of partying. AJ challenged Daniels to a match in which AJ would own up to fathering Claire's baby if he lost, but take a paternity test if he won. Yes, we know: that sounds stupid no matter how you read it. He won the match and took the paternity test.
  • One week, Claire cut a promo after arriving at the Impact Zone, during which she was smoking. Yes, she was supposed to be pregnant and she was smoking. On camera. During a nationally televised show. Suspension of disbelief, what's that?
  • TNA abruptly ended the storyline when Julia Reilly -- the actress who played Claire Lynch -- left the company after fans found some of her other acting jobs on YouTube and left harsh comments on her work. (Photos eventually surfaced of Ms. Reilly at her day job: playing Olive Oyl at the Popeye ride in Universal Studios. TNA never even left their own backyard to look for someone to play Claire.) On the episode of Impact where Daniels and Kaz would have revealed the paternity test results, Claire's attorney (played by Janice Carter, Dixie's mother) came out and read a statement that said Claire admitted to conspiring with Daniels and Kaz to blackmail AJ over a pregnancy she never had in the first place.
  • This storyline was so bad that, despite giving us Daniels and Kazarian as the tag team Bad Influence (and making them the only entertaining part of this debacle), it still won WrestleCrap's 2012 Gooker Award by a wide margin.

Miscellaneous Shenanigans, Part 2

• From May 31st on, Impact started an hour earlier at the 8pm EST time slot. And for 12 weeks, Impact went live from Orlando. The first week generated a 0.89 rating and a viewership of 1,296,000 -- the lowest viewership of the year at that point and the lowest overall viewership in years.
• Hulk Hogan posted on Twitter praising everyone in TNA for working together and staying positive with the ratings being a mirror reflection of their hard work. Shortly after the tweet went up, the rating for that week's Impact was posted (a 0.97) and other data showed TNA had received the lowest viewership number since moving to live at 8pm. Oops.
• Viacom, Spike TV's parent corporation, played hardball with DirecTV and struck out; DirecTV dropped all of Viacom's networks following failed negotiations over pay rates for the networks. After putting on one of the best PPVs in its history and drumming up tons of positive buzz, TNA's ratings suffered thanks to something far out of its control. The Viacom/DirecTV dispute lasted two weeks, and Viacom, being amazingly petty, pulled all their shows from the Internet, forcing fans to find alternate means to watch Impact.
• Spike TV decided to give TNA an extra hour to play with. (Again.) TNA showed no interest in making Impact a three hour show, and as a result, Spike TV aired Impact Rewind -- an hour-long recap of the previous week's episode of Impact. The show's only episode flopped hard with a 0.2 rating; Spike canceled the show, and TNA eventually moved it online before incorporating weekly recaps into the beginning of Impact itself.
• Most likely due to the 2012 schedule changes and the DirecTV fiasco, Impact drew its lowest yearly average ratings in six years.
• Mr. Anderson needed a submission in his last match in the 2012 Bound For Glory Series to tie with AJ Styles for 4th place and stay in the Series -- but during the whole match, Anderson only went for pinfalls and made no submission efforts. He won by pinfall and effectively eliminated himself from the series.
• Devon's contract expired and TNA didn't renew it -- despite Devon holding the TNA Television Championship at the time of his departure.
  • This was not the first time this had happened. The Knockouts tag titles were vacated at least once for the exact same reason prior.
  • TNA attempted to rectify the situation by holding a TV title tournament (won by Joe), only to promptly rehire Devon as part of the Aces and Eights and have him win back the title he never actually lost in an overbooked screwjob, then almost never defend it. What happened to that 30 day thing, huh?

• Hulk Hogan had a meeting with three TNA tag teams who've never received a tag team title shot: Chavo Guerrero & Hernandez, Kid Kash & Gunner, and the Robbies. AJ Styles crashed the meeting and wanted to face the champs, but Hogan refused to let him wrestle them alone. Kash and Gunner were eliminated, which left the month-old team of Chavo & Hernandez and the year-old team of Robbie E and Robbie T (Rob Terry). Robbie E made a great case for his team by mentioning his team's longevity to Hogan. Hulk picked Chavo & Hernandez, who promptly lost to champs Christopher Daniels and Kazarian later in the evening. Hulk then booked Bad Influence to face AJ Styles and Kurt Angle at No Surrender -- despite Angle having no involvement with the AJ/Daniels/Kaz angle at any time and working with a torn hamstring.
  • During Chavo and Hernandez's feud with Kazarian and Daniels, Bad Influence made snide remarks about how Chavo only gets over because he constantly references his uncle Eddie. It would have been good heel heat...if it wasn't true. We dare you to go watch any Chavo promo from TNA and count how many times Eddie Guerrero is mentioned. Hell, "second rate Eddie clone" eventually became Chavo's entire TNA gimmick.

• Joseph Park was kidnapped by the Aces and Eights and tortured for about a month. These segments were filled with over-the-top violence; at one point, the Aces and Eights hit Park in the head with a hammer, nearly killing him. Despite the possible murder of an innocent attorney, the show continued without a hitch and the incident was undersold by the announcers.
• Tara defeated Miss "don't call her Brooke" Tessmacher to win the TNA Knockouts Title at Bound For Glory. A few weeks before the match, Tara turned heel by attacking Tessmacher on the advice of her "Hollywood boyfriend". Tara revealed her boyfriend after her title win: Jessie Godderz from Big Brother, who nobody cared about despite Taz's attempts to put Godderz over (even though Taz only said "It's that guy!"). The crowd even chanted "who are you" during his reveal.
• The stipulation for the Aces and Eights vs Sting and Bully Ray match said Aces and Eights would have full access to TNA and the Impact Zone if they won and go away if they lost. TNA spoiled this with a poster for their upcoming Turning Point PPV when it used Aces and Eights imagery all over the poster. Of course the bikers won the match.
• The Knockout Tag Titles were mentioned a few weeks before Bound For Glory and how they needed to be defended by the decree of Hulk Hogan. The Knockout Tag Titles disappeared off the face of the earth shortly after these mentions.
• After Matt Morgan left the company, TNA still incessantly played his Direct Auto commercial damn near every commercial break. Morgan made subtle hints over Twitter that he planned to join WWE, but this was made impossible due to legal restrictions involving a recent lawsuit TNA had filed against WWE. He returned to TNA by jumping the guardrail at house shows until he re-debuted publicly atBound For Glory to aid Joey Ryan.
• TNA hired Howard Stern Show regular Eric the Midget to make appearances on the online show TNA Today in the hopes of getting some free publicity from Stern. Howard refused to play clips from the show for weeks, claiming the show was terrible. After Eric threatened to withdraw donations he made to Stern's favorite animal charity with his TNA paycheck, Howard played a clip where Bobby Roode threatened to kick Eric out of his wheelchair -- and he and his crew ridiculed the exchange. This debacle caused Eric to resign from TNA.
• Matt Morgan vs. Hernandez: PART 4: AN OLD HOPE. This time, Chavo and Joey Ryan were dragged into it. At that point, it was worse than the never-ending AJ/Daniels feud. Morgan and Hernandez could only dream as being as entertaining (or as safe) as them.
• Christopher Daniels' feud with AJ Styles STILL kept going, slowly building up more heat. Daniels often insulted Styles and bragged about making his 2012 horrible. Both wrestlers even took shots at TNA management by openly mocking the "One Last Time" gimmick, with Daniels going so far as to say "One last time, until the next time".

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

• Former WWECW jobber Mike Knox was unmasked as a member of the Aces and Eights. After several seconds of astonished gasps from from the announcers, Tenay says "That's a familiar face" to Taz, then explains to the audience that Knox used to be employed by WWE. They did the exact same thing when Luke Gallows was revealed.
  • Knox wasn't given a name for weeks, so the commentary had to skirt around calling him a name until TNA came up with "Knux".
• The turkey suit returned! This time, Jessie Godderz ended up wearing it. At least he deserved it, though.
• From May 10th onward, Madison Rayne teased having a crush on someone, to the point of even asking people what he was like. After taking forever with this, she came out on the July 5th episode of Impact -- during Devon's mandatory weekly title defense -- and revealed her crush by tackling and kissing him senseless. Her crush? Earl Hebner. This eventually led to Hebner tweeting about receiving blowjobs (that actually happened; he eventually deleted it) and being sacked as a ref for Knockouts matches.
  • Once Hebner was sacked, Brooke Hogan introduced Taryn Terrell as a Knockouts ref. Her debut received no response, which upset people backstage. Apparently those people conveniently forgot that she never used her real name on TV outside of the WWE Diva Search. According to rumor, much of the TNA roster didn't know who she was, only remembering her as "the crazy one" who got herself fired from WWE (for beating up then-boyfriend Drew McIntyre). After several months of Taryn's horrid refereeing, Gail Kim managed to get her fired from that gig, but Brooke Hogan promptly rehired her as a wrestler.
    • After Taryn was fired, Brooke Hogan decided to stuntcast refs again. First, it was Joey Ryan (who proceeded to ogle, grope, and pretty much harass the girls mid-match). Not learning from that, Brooke appointed ODB as Knockouts ref.
    • Taryn soon received a nickname. That nickname? "Hot Mess". Either someone was really stupid or thought they were being clever.
    • After participating in two well-received hardcore matches with Gail Kim and being positioned to challenge for the Knockouts title, Taryn suddenly vanished from Impact. After several weeks, the reason she had disappeared was found out: she'd become pregnant.

PLEASE DON'T GO, YOU MONEY-MAKING fukk-UP

• With his contract expiring by the end of 2012, TNA did its best to make Jeff Hardy comfortable so that he would re-sign with them. This all took place while a restraining order was in place keeping WWE from signing TNA talent, as we previously saw with Matt Morgan.
• Remember the Bound For Glory Series? TNA did it this year to see who took on Austin Aries at Bound For Glory. Are you thinking Bully Ray won? Samoa Joe? James Storm? Nope: Jeff Hardy won and became the #1 Contender. At the Impact before Bound For Glory, Aries turned heel at the end of the show by taking a script out of his trunks, going against it, and shooting on Jeff. Ultimately, Jeff won the belt in a match where more than half of the audience was against him, partly due to TNA jumping the gun on Aries' heel turn.
• On the October 25th episode of Impact, Hulk Hogan told Jeff he would pick one of the following opponents for a title shot: Bully Ray, Kurt Angle, James Storm or Mr. Anderson. After leaving Hogan's office, the home audience actually heard Jeff's inner monologue on the possible opponents. Suspension of disbelief, what is that? (On that same episode, Mr. Anderson was challenged by Austin Aries and attacked Aries shortly thereafter. Before the segment ended, a production team member could clearly be heard saying "Cut! Ok!" before moving on to the next segment. It would've been bad enough if this had been on a live Impact, but this aired on a taped episode.)
  • Hardy's inner monologues, always delivered in that bored-sounding monotone, would soon become a weekly thing for a while, prompting many a telepathy joke at Hardy and TNA's expense.
• After winning the world title, TNA allowed Hardy to carry a custom belt around similar to the one he used in 2010 as well as holding the real world title belt. TNA Never Explained This™ (and neither did Jeff Hardy), though the reasoning was clear: make Jeff Hardy happy at all costs.
• Kicking off the first Impact of 2013 was the 2012 Impact Wrestler of the Year Award, with fans "voting" for the winner. The options were Austin Aries, Bobby Roode, Bully Ray, James Storm, and (duh) Jeff Hardy. Despite not doing much until being pushed to the moon so he would renew his contract, Jeff Hardy won it. Austin Aries protested against the decision, saying it was rigged. (At least TNA admitted it...in a way.)

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

2013
General fukk-Uppery

• Despite heavily promoting how their shows were completely live, TNA eventually return to their previous taping model (taping shows an hour or two before the actual live broadcast). TNA's social media continued to plug it as being a live show with the hashtag #ImpactLive; this was mocked by several people with the hashtag #ImpactTaped. This pretence continued until 2014, when #ImpactLive was dropped in favor of #ImpactOnSpike.
• TNA also took the opportunity to change its PPV model by bringing the number down from twelve annual PPV events to four: Genesis,Lockdown, Slammiversary, and Bound For Glory. The remaining months were filled with pre-taped "One Night Only" specials to fulfill PPV contracts. This ostensibly gave TNA more time to create bigger buildup for their remaining PPVs (but also helped disguise how badly their PPVs sell).
  • One of the first "One Night Only" specials was a Knockouts-only special. Due to the company's past mistreatment of its female performers, requests to participate were declined from TNA alumni Traci Brooks, Angelina Love, Roxxi, Awesome Kong, Winter, Peyton Banks, Sarita, and Rosita. Alissa Flash (who had originally declined) was the only alumnus who accepted an offer, while Madison Rayne (who was still with the company at the time of filming, though not when it was aired) made a non-wrestling appearance because of her pregnancy.
  • All but the first two specials were taped over three days in March. They wouldn't air for months afterward, leading to wrestlers (such as Madison Rayne) making appearances on "One Night Only" specials after they were no longer employed with TNA.
  • The 10 Reunion special was dropped by DirecTV in favor of softcore pornography. This happened with another "One Night Only" special the following year. (Smart satellite provider.)
• TNA booked the Alamodome in Texas for Lockdown, which was re-scheduled for March instead of April. The arena seats over sixty thousand people, but even if TNA had managed to reach full attendance via a combination of ticket sales and papering fans in (it didn't), the stadium would have had far more empty seats than filled ones that night, thanks to TNA running Lockdown in a smaller part of the full stadium.
• 
• "The Road to Lockdown" United Kingdom tour was heavily advertised for January 2014. This included two TV tapings in Manchester and London. Due to his felony drug conviction, then-TNA world champ Jeff Hardy would not be permitted into the country. Instead of taking the opportunity to put the championship on another wrestler (e.g. Christopher Daniels, who Hardy wrestled right before the tour), TNA explained Hardy's absence from the tour and a month's worth of television with an "injury" caused by an attack from the Aces & Eights after the match with Daniels. TNA eventually revealed that Hardy wasn't actually injured and would be back after TNA returned to the US.
• Spike and TNA's relationship took an interesting turn as TNA began heavy cross-promotion with MMA company Bellator (which had replaced UFC programming on Spike TV when Fox signed a deal with UFC). This included Dixie announcing Jeff Hardy's re-signing to TNA for another two years on Bellator; in return TNA plugged a bunch of Bellator stuff. Unfortunately for TNA, Bellator soon stopped promoting TNA, even though Bellator was still heavily promoted on Impact. Eventually, Spike TV saw Impact as a viable platform to promote their other full-contact sport endeavors as well, which angered what few long-time TNA fans were still watching the show.
• The February 28th edition of the Gut Check saw the judges decide between Ivelisse Velez and Lei'd Tapa. Despite having the majority of the offence during their match, huge interest from the fans, and recognition from her run on the last season of Tough Enough, the judges chose Tapa over Velez. This was met with boos from the fans in attendance, who probably would've booed harder if they'd known that Tapa was the niece of one of Hogan's good friends (The Barbarian).
• March 7th saw D'Lo Brown unmasked as the VP of Aces & Eights. He had been unmasked by Kurt Angle the week before, though the unmasking itself took place out of camera shot. Rather than relay the information to anyone after unmasking D'Lo, he kept it to himself for the whole week, then delayed it further the next week when he decided to brawl with Wes Brisco. Kurt eventually identified D'Lo by pointing at him and was promptly kicked in the balls.
  • Dixie Carter then waited until March 16th to announce that she'd "fired" D'Lo from his TNA management position on Twitter.
  • Two months later, D'Lo lost an I Quit Match (his first televised match in four years) to Kurt Angle and was demoted from VP to "prospect" the next week. This would last for two more months before his firing as part of budget cuts in July (not long after he had agreed to take a pay cut).
  • Speaking of Wes Brisco, he and Garett Bischoff were revealed to be Aces & Eights members in January after also turning on Angle, who had been mentoring them both and was a driving force behind getting Brisco a Gut Check match the previous year. Brisco stayed with the group until September 26th, when he was kicked out after losing a match and was completely removed from TV. He remained employed with TNA until January of 2014.
• March 8th was the one-year anniversary of Eric Young and ODB's Knockouts Tag Team Title win. This was not acknowledged at all by TNA.
  • Brooke Hogan would eventually strip and retire the Knockouts Tag Titles due to Eric Young being a man, though not due to them not having defended the titles in more than 30 days, which had been a reason for at least one other vacancy of the titles. This was 478 days into the reign. Even with them being officially removed from television, they were not removed from the TNA roster page until July.

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

• • • At the same time, the Television Title was also discontinued, though it would remain on the TNA roster page until well into 2014.
• TNA tried (again) to place limits on the "no limits" X-Division by turning all title matches into Triple Threat Matches. They also overcomplicated the contendership for the title: if a contender lost a title match, they would have to re-earn a shot by winning a three-way contendership match. This drew concern from fans, as the contendership rule was not very well explained and the X-Division was not very large at the time. It took six months for these confusing restrictions to be dropped, and TNA claimed fan demand was behind it.
  • At almost the same time as these rules were introduced, a new X-Cam (a camera attached to the referee's head) was introduced; as this was not well-received by fans due to the low quality of the footage filmed (as this camera gave everything it filmed a strange yellow hue), it was discontinued after two weeks.
• Dixie Carter got her very own action figure. TNA promoted the release on Twitter with a contest to take pictures featuring the figure; responses included the figure at the inaugural NXT PPV and being stood on by a Vince McMahon figure.
• On May 9th, Christy Hemme accidentally introduced Austin Aries and Bobby Roode incorrectly as Bad Influence, thinking that Daniels and Kazarian would come out first. Aries, being legitimately annoyed, cornered Hemme near the turnbuckle, climbed up the second turnbuckle, and proceeded to shove his junk into Hemme's face. Hemme later went on Twitter saying that Aries was out of line with his outburst, to which Aries countered back by saying that Hemme couldn't take a joke.
  • Aries was later "severely" fined at the insistence of Spike TV. A few days afterward on Impact, many shots were taken at TNA and Spike for their hypocrisy in still including its usual pervy camerawork for its female personalities, such as the slow pan up Hemme's body that highlights the skimpy outfits she wears.
• Zema Ion was hospitalized with appendicitis. In addition to removing the appendix, doctors also found a tumour in his bladder which had to be removed. Zema couldn't afford to pay for it -- and TNA decided not to pay for it, either. A fundraiser started by Zema's girlfriend for the $30,000 treatment only reached $6,648, while Zema received heat from officials backstage for making the company look bad.
• In a severe lack of foresight, TNA moved back to a 9pm timeslot on May 30th -- right in the middle of the NBA Playoffs. The return show did a 0.83 rating with a 26% drop in viewers from the previous week (the lowest ratings since the Monday Night Massacres of 2010).
• The last month of Velvet Sky's Knockouts title reign featured a knee injury which Velvet would often forget about while running around the ring before remembering the injury and selling it by collapsing like a puppet having its strings cut. This injury, and her quasi-selling, continued even after she was medically cleared for a rematch after losing the title to a newly-heel Mickie James.
• During Slammiversary, Dixie Carter announced the second member of the TNA Hall of Fame: Kurt Angle. TNA's Hall of Fame consisted of two people who were most famous for their performances in companies outside of TNA (Sting in WCW, Angle in WWE) and neglected those who had been with the company since day one (James Storm, AJ Styles, and company founder Jeff Jarrett).
• Slammiversary also saw the announcement of a new "Major Free Agent"; despite rumours of wrestlers such as John Morrison, Shelton Benjamin, Prince Devitt and even Rob Van Dam, the announcement turned out to be Quinton "Rampage" Jackson -- who would also be fighting for Bellator.
  • TNA teased an Angle/Jackson feud for all of a week before having the two make up. Jackson also announced he had no plans to wrestle until he had finished with his MMA career, making him another non-wrestler hired to not wrestle. (This didn't stop TNA from putting him in their Main Event Mafia reboot.) By September, Jackson was pulled completely from all TNA programming by Bellator to keep him from being injured before a then-scheduled fight between him and Tito Ortiz. Despite announcing that he had no plans to return to TNA after he saw "the way they ran things", TNA still has a profile page for him on their website (though he is now listed as part of the TNA Alumni).
• June 27 saw a "fake" Suicide win the X-Division Title and eventually unmask as Austin Aries; this shocking announcement was already shown on YouTube two days prior to broadcast, spoiling everything but Aries' reveal in the process. During the segment in which Aries was revealed, Hogan claimed that TJ Perkins (who had previously made stops in TNA as Puma) had played the character since its debut, which was pretty much impossible since at least three other people (Frankie Kazarian, Christopher Daniels, and Kiyoshi, plus it's been claimed in some parts that Kazuchika Okada had a short run under the mask as well) had played Suicide through the character's run.
  • In order to revamp the character, Suicide was renamed Manik and given new music, but used the same (barely altered) costume until late 2014. (After all, you can't very well put "Suicide" on an action figure and expect it to sell, can you?)
• July 17th saw the toll of taking Impact on the road as TNA went on a cost cutting spree (despite being late on paying talent): Madison Rayne, Taeler Hendrix, Joey Ryan, Christian York, Crimson, D.O.C. (then embroiled in a storyline between himself and Mr. Anderson over the position of Aces & Eights VP), Todd Keneley, Jesse Sorensen, Mickie James, Tara, Matt Morgan (for the second time!), and Bruce Prichard were either intentionally cut, allowed to leave, or had their contracts expire without renewal. In an unintentional foreshadowing to the cuts, Bobby Roode's contract was quietly allowed to expire in March of 2013 while he was one-half of the reigning Tag Team Champions. Roode reportedly had to bring this to the attention of TNA, but was fortunately able to negotiate a new contract.
  • Todd Keneley (a recent addition to the commentary table who had been received favorably by fans) was dropped in favour of Taz (who had deliberately let his contract expire to try and get interest from WWE, which didn't work).
  • Crimson's release was only days before his appearance on the pretaped Hardcore Justice "One Night Only" PPV. Quips about him returning and chants of "Welcome Back" weren't edited for broadcast.
  • Mickie James turned down a $60,000 per year offer -- a tidy sum, but dwarfed by the salary of non-wrestling announcer Christy Hemme (who reportedly earns $100,000 per year).
  • Madison Rayne was pregnant at the time of her release, earning the company a lot of unnecessary heat. She eventually returned in December.
  • Hendrix, Ryan, and York had been hired through Gut Check, with Ryan and York being two of the few Gut Check contestants not immediately dropped in OVW upon being hired. In Hendrix's case, TNA had even aired a buildup video featuring her story a month before releasing her.
  • Arguably worst of all was Jesse Sorensen's release. In 2012, Jesse suffered a serious neck injury during a match with Zema Ion that would keep him out action for at least another year. Dixie assured fans that she would never fire an injured wrestler. Sorensen said in later interviews that Dixie considered herself a member of his family and would do everything possible to make sure he would always have a spot in TNA. Sorensen was given a job on the production side of the business to help out during broadcasts...which allowed TNA to break their promise, as he technically wasn't employed as a wrestler any more. Sorensen would later reveal that TNA didn't pay for any his medical bills -- or at least, they didn't pay for enough of them to prevent his mother from going into bankruptcy so she could help pay those bills.
• After the Summer Bloodletting, Dixie had the bright idea of addressing fan concerns on Twitter. On July 25th, she solicited questions marked with the hashtag #AskDixie on Twitter. To say this backfired would be a massive understatement: after being bombarded with snarky comments and questions for over a day (with the hashtag legitimately trending worldwide at one point), Dixie's account went quiet and she eventually resurfaced a month later to address questions that weren't "outrageous" or "hurtful". She answered such questions for a few weeks, then stopped.
• A house show in Cape Girardeau, Missouri on July 20th saw all 300 attendees refunded as several wrestlers scheduled to appear on the show had no wrestling license in the state. These included Garett Bischoff, Jay Bradley, Miss Tessmacher, Gail Kim, Wes Brisco, and then-reigning TNA World Heavyweight Champion Chris Sabin. Bruce Prichard was later blamed for this mistake.
  • Around this same time, two more house shows (Eugene, Oregon and Yakima, Washington) were cancelled, and TNA's On-Demand service was discontinued.
• Kurt Angle was pulled over for a DUI on August 1st, his fifth such arrest while under the employ of TNA. As a result of the arrest, Kurt finally checked himself into rehab on a substance abuse program. This happened while TNA was promoting a five-on-five Aces and Eight vs. Main Event Mafia match for a special episode of Impact. The match was postponed for a week, then happened on August 22nd -- with AJ Styles replacing Angle.
  • The stipulation for that match, by the way, said whoever was pinned would be fired. Devon was pinned. He returned almost a year later for induction into the TNA Hall of Fame alongside Bully Ray.
• August 15th featured Bully Ray vs. Chris Sabin in a cage match where Bully would never get another title shot if he lost. Bully won the match via interference after a ref bump, which included Tito Ortiz turning on the Main Event Mafia (see "#August1Warning" below). Sabin was branded a transitional champion as he immediately slid back into the X-Division and later turned heel before leaving the company.
• On July 11th, as part of that year's Bound For Glory Series, TNA booked a Joker's Wild random tag tournament where winning teams were entered into a gauntlet match. Main Event Mafia member Magnus drew Aces & Eights member Mr. Anderson as a partner, and Anderson spent the entire match being a horrible tag partner to Magnus as a result. Their opponents, Jay Bradley and Hernandez, also had problems with each other -- which allowed Magnus, who had done the great majority of the work for his team, to win the match. He subsequently won the gauntlet match as well.

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

• August 29th saw Hogan attempt to book a match between Bully Ray and Sting for the title, despite a stipulation made earlier in the year that Sting could no longer challenge for the title. It was later revealed that the match was non-title and that Hogan had made a mistake...that couldn't be edited or re-taped before broadcast.
• Following cues from Mr. Anderson the previous year, AJ Styles eliminated himself from the competition by deciding to win a Series match via pinfall when he needed to win via submission, which commentary pointed out during the match. Luckily for Styles, Hogan decided to prolong the tournament for another week (despite the previous week being promoted as "Winner Take All") and booked a Battle Royale featuring every competitor in the tournament. The only person who could really move anywhere close to the top of the rankings was AJ, who won the match, catapulted from fifth to first place, and knocked Jeff Hardy out of the top four in the process.
• Hogan's contract expired on October 1st; despite financial woes and constant roster cuts, TNA was still interested in renewing his $35,000-per-appearance contract. Hogan's final appearance on TNA saw the Hulkster quit the company, and when he tried to leave, a crying Dixie clutched at his leg and begged him to stay. After he refused to come back, she spitefully fired him. (Rumors say Hogan had invoked a creative control clause to make the segment turn out this way so he wouldn't have to put TNA over on his way out.) The next week, in treatment similar to what Eric Bischoff had received, Hogan's name wasn't even mentioned. Bischoff himself was soon removed from the creative process after Hogan's departure, and his contract was allowed to expire.
• A graphic advertising a contract signing between himself and Bully Ray taking place on the October 17th Impact featured a massive production mistake, which displayed AJ's Twitter address as that of Mickie James, who had departed the company beforehand. Despite this being a pretaped show, the mistake was not caught before airing, and the graphic aired at least three times during the show.
• On November 2nd, TNA severed its ties with Ohio Valley Wrestling as a developmental territory in order to cut further costs. That being said, TNA never really used OVW as a developmental promotion; it merely used it as a place to dump wrestlers it didn't want or couldn't put on television (which included a good portion of the Gut Check contestants that they had hired).
  • Around the same time, TNA returned to Universal Studios to tape some episodes of Impact to cut costs, though at a different soundstage than the original Impact Zone (which was occupied at the time).
• A mere five days after cutting those costs, Adam "Pacman" Jones returned to TNA for a one-time appearance where he and DeQuin Evans (another football player) bodyslammed Bad Influence. Neither would appear again, despite Dixie hyping Pacman as a former champion who'd re-signed with the company days prior to his appearance. Also in spite of those cost cutting measures, TNA paid bodybuilder Phil Heath to accompany the Bro-Mans at Bound For Glory (which backfired when nobody recognized him).
• One of TNA's longest running gags -- Christopher Daniels or one of his alter egos being fired as a result of the Feast or Fired Match -- came to an end on December 12th. Curry Man, who had been scheduled to compete in the match, decided to voluntarily remove himself from the match rather than risk receiving the briefcase with the pink slip once again.
• On December 17th, AJ Styles' twelve-year tenure with the company came to an end when he decided to leave a company he helped build rather than take a cut in pay. Four days later, TNA co-founder Jeff Jarrett left the company after he (along with Toby Keith) failed to negotiate a buyout of TNA with the Carters. (The deal breaker? Bob Carter reportedly insisted they keep Dixie in the company in some fashion).

Specific Extended Mishaps
Bully Ray and Brooke Hogan (or, "Working a Shoot into a Worked Shoot-Work, Brother")

• On December 20th 2012, Hogan caught Brooke and Bully Ray making out in the parking garage as the last segment on Impact. Two weeks later, Bully alerted Brooke to his suspicions that Hogan might know about them. In response, Brooke outwardly expressed confusion as to how her father could know. Despite pleas from both parties, Hulk Hogan suspended both Brooke and Bully, though Bully would remain on promotional material for the upcoming Genesis PPV.
  • A week later, moments after being saved from an attack from Aces & Eights, Bully proposed to Brooke -- and she accepted. The wedding took place on the January 17th episode of Impact; during the wedding, Taz unmasked as a member of Aces & Eights, who promptly destroyed the wedding and all its attendees. (A few days after uploading this segment to their Youtube channel, TNA took it down and replaced it with an edited version. In the unedited version, Brooke had a wardrobe malfunction and had revealed it to her father just loud enough for the camera to pick it up. By the time TNA replaced the video with the edited version, however, someone had already uploaded the full unedited version.) After this reveal, Taz's commentary suffered as he began to shoehorn in references to being aligned with the group.
  • For some reason, Brooke did out-of-character interviews where she told everyone the angle was real. Famed gossip/famewhore Perez Hilton went to the internet to lampoon Bully for posting pictures of himself with a topless dancer, but Perez later "researched" the topic and proclaimed Brooke might not have gotten married and wrestling may be "fake". Brooke's actual engagement to a football player, which directly contradicted events on Impact, was actually brought up on Impact.
  • After the wedding, Hogan's opinion of Bully completely changed. He immediately made Bully the #1 contender to the World Title, completely ignoring the four matches he'd made to decide who that would be beforehand. At Lockdown on March 10th, Bully Ray faced off against Jeff Hardy -- and when Aces & Eights attacked the match, Bully turned heel, won the match, and officially revealed himself as the President of the Aces & Eights, revealing he'd been using everyone (including Brooke Hogan) to get the belt.
  • (Quick aside: despite the scattershot booking of Aces & Eights after its debut, TNA pulled off a genuinely great moment on the post-Lockdown episode of Impact when it aired several videos throughout the evening of Bully Ray explaining his entire plan. It did the best job possible of making sense out of most of the awful booking surrounding the group while helping Ray come off as a villainous mastermind.)
  • The following episode of Impact saw the Aces & Eights interfering and beating up various people while practically begging Hulk Hogan to fire them. Hogan didn't and instead decided to unfairly shift the blame to Sting. Despite dominating almost half the locker room in a brawl the week before, the entire Aces & Eights fled from the ring when Sting came down to save Hogan (who had gone out to face the Aces & Eights alone). In order to try and win the championship off Bully Ray, Sting won a match against Matt Morgan to become #1 Contender. (This was after Morgan had offered to take out the Aces & Eights in exchange for a title shot, which had been declined by Hogan, who cited that Morgan was doing it "for all the wrong reasons". Morgan wouldn't recover from this loss and left the company as part of the Summer Bloodletting.) Despite Hogan's best efforts to talk him out of it, Sting agreed to a stipulation for the match: if he lost, he could never challenge for the World Title again. Sting lost.
  • During all this chaos, Bully started trying to see Brooke again. There was a belief that this would eventually lead to Brooke turning on her father, but she left the company in August 2013. (In kayfabe, her departure was explained by Bully Ray saying he'd finally granted her the divorce she'd wanted for so long.) Luckily, Bully was able to satisfy his need for a "Brooke" in his life by reintroducing Miss Tessmacher as Brooke one week after Brooke Hogan left the company.

#August1Warning

• Following the Summer Bloodletting, TNA uploaded a cryptic video of a shadowy figure announcing that a non-TNA/non-Spike employee would show up on the August 1st episode of Impact. In a failed attempt to create more buzz, TNA claimed they would release a clue as to the person's identity if the original video received 250K views (a claim that was met with confusion and derision). Following speculation on who it might be, TNA released further videos denying claims that it was either Batista or Chris Jericho.
  • The man behind the videos was revealed on August 1st as MMA fighter Tito Ortiz, who was last relevant in TNA ten years ago. Tito's debut consisted of standing on the ramp with his arms folded whilst the rest of Aces & Eights tried to act concerned. The live crowd greeted it with silence, the home audience greeted it with derision, and Mr. Anderson greeted it with confusion (and a series of mocking videos later on, which are about the only truly good thing he's ever done with his TNA career). Due to Angle's rehab depature on August 15th, Ortiz was offered the empty spot on the Main Event Mafia team by Sting and "Rampage" Jackson. Ortiz accepted, then turned on the Mafia that same night.
  • The entire deal was done to cross-promote the Ortiz/Rampage fight for Bellator in November. Despite this cross-promotion, neither man actually took part in any wrestling, and both Ortiz and Jackson were pulled from TNA television after a couple of weeks. (Ortiz suffered a neck injury during training, which nixed the Bellator match and made the entire Spike-mandated storyline a loss on all fronts.)

 

[XII]

We get the point, damn

 

[Tanahashi Coates]

Kris Lewie, the absolute worst of the lot) put on what could easily have been called one of the worst matches in TNA history.

@Lani

 

[Xane Vic]

Unmasked Shark Boy...

 

[Rarely-Wrong Liggins]

TNA so much fail.

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

We get the point, damn