Bryan Staebell
TNA YEAR EIGHT: June 22 2009-June 13 2010
That’s when I knew I would never have come back from Florida alive
Now that Kurt Angle was once again the TNA Champion he wasted no time in kicking Sting out of the Main Event Mafia on the first Impact after Slammiversary. Sting was upset because he remembered the original storyline…that the Mafia formed because they hated punks like Samoa Joe. When Angle brought Joe into the fold without telling Sting about it…that spelled the end for Sting.
It was hard to argue with the immediate success the group had after kicking Sting out. Angle was the TNA champion. By the end of Victory Road in July Kevin Nash would be the Legends Champion (beating AJ Styles then losing it to Mick Foley soon after), Booker T and Scott Steiner would be the TNA Tag Champions (beating Beer Money) and Samoa Joe would beat Sting when Taz came out and revealed himself as Joe’s secret adviser. By the end of Hard Justice the next month Joe would win the X title (from Homicide) and Nash would regain the Legends title from Foley. So in August of 2009 The Mafia controlled the TNA World, TNA Tag, X division and Legends titles.
Not pictured: All the Frontline guys getting over from this angle
Around this time the Mafia joined up with Eric Young’s shitty World Elite faction (shitty except for the British Invasion. They had matching British flag pants and were awesome) for no reason I can remember. This was the show where the other TNA guys finally had enough and there was a riot:
The beginning of the end came for the Mafia at No Surrender in September when Angle lost the TNA title to AJ Styles. During the match (which featured the Goddamned dumbest cash in of a briefcase of all time by Hernandez) Angle was down and beaten leaving Sting and Styles staring at each other over him. Sting stepped aside and let AJ take the pin in what I guess was supposed to be the pay off for Sting’s storyline as he had learned to respect AJ or something. It just came off like Sting was an idiot.
Ta Ta For Not as long as my promo would lead you to believe
Bound For Glory took place in California this year. There was a lot of speculation that Sting would be hanging them up for good after the event. Styles beat Sting to retain the title (Sting had won the title at the last 3 BFGs) and afterwards Sting addressed the retirement rumors as best he could…since he didn’t know if he’d be back or not either. The match ended just as it was getting going and with 5 more minutes they might have had a great main event (not that it was bad).
The show also saw a wild 4 team Full Metal Mayhem match with both the IWGP and TNA tag titles on the line. Funny story about that…Russo didn’t have the right to book Team 3D’s IWGP title changes…but he did it anyway. The British Invasion beat the for the titles before and 3D got them back here. Also this was Booker T’s exit from the company (except for a house show he popped up in a long time later as a favor). They wrote him out with an injury during the match and then Scott Steiner busted his ass to try and keep his job.
The match of the night, as usual, went to Kurt Angle…this time dragging Matt Morgan to easily the best match of his career.
Mick Foley took on Abyss in a Monster’s Ball match in a kind of mentor/protege dream hardcore match. But it wasn’t all that good. I’ll post it just because I found it…and because I still think it was a cool match to book:
10-18-09 Abyss vs. Mick Foley
We never did figure out what he was pointing at
Bobby Lashley had shown up at the end of Lockdown last year to…point at people. It wasn’t until July that he actually came in to the company. He would go on to beat Samoa Joe at Bound For Glory before feuding with Scott Steiner. In November Lashley won a tournament to receive a future TNA title shot…a shot which I’ll go ahead and assume he can go ahead and cash in any time now. He eventually turned heel on his way out the door to concentrate on MMA…but no one remembers that. Or for the most part Lashley’s TNA run.
Never Forget
Hungry like the Wolfe
Nigel McGuinness was supposed to be in WWE. He failed to pass a physical and ended up back on the market. TNA quickly snatched him up in late October and immediately put him in a program with Kurt Angle. There first meeting was a classic:
11-15-09 Kurt Angle vs. Desmond Wolfe
They had a very good rematch the next month. It was 2 out of 3 falls with wacky rules..but it was still quite good:
12-20-09 Kurt Angle vs. Desmond Wolfe
Wolfe would go on to kick around a level of near importance for a while…but this was unfortunately as good as it would get for him in TNA.
AJ Styles: TNA Champion part 1
Styles had a freaking tremendous title run. He started it off with a 20 minute draw against Kurt Angle on Impact (10-15-09) that I couldn’t find on the internet. It’s one of the best TV matches in TNA history, and a real shame it doesn’t seem to exist online.
From there he walked into Turning Point for a rematch of the classic Unbreakable 3 way with Samoa Joe and Christopher Daniels. This time…it lived up to the hype:
11-15-09 AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe vs. Christopher Daniels
A singles match with Daniels waited for him the next month:
12-20-09 AJ Styles vs. Christopher Daniels
At this point TNA was about to undergo a major change starting on the January 4 2010 show. We’ll get to that in a moment…but the main event for said show was another fantastic match between AJ Styles and Kurt Angle that has vanished from existence.
They’d have a rematch at Genesis that saw AJ Styles, 4 months into his title reign, turn heel. It was billed as Angle’s last chance at the title while AJ held it. So AJ took on Ric Flair as his manager and made sure he wouldn’t have to deal with Angle again:
1-17-10 Kurt Angle vs. AJ Styles
It’s a shame that this is the match that can be easily found since it was the weakest of the 3 Styles/Angle matches from that era (the best being the Impact draw).
It took Hogan over 6 years to walk here from Japan
The night that changed wrestling forever, brother. Well…it didn’t really change anything but it was a TNA show on a Monday Night that drew their best rating ever (1.5). The show was built around the arrival of Hulk Hogan in TNA and the promise of many surprises. Jeff Hardy showed up (back when WWE still figured he’d come back once all of his legal troubles were put to bed) after the opening match. Homicide got himself stuck in the structure of the steel asylum match and it was live TV so it was hilarious. Ric Flair got out of a limo and walked past Beer Money like they were two goofs. Hulk Hogan finally arrived and there was an incredibly long in ring segment with Eric Bischoff, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall (seriously) and Sean Waltman. The good news is they managed to get all the important members of the NWO together. The bad news is it was 2010. Sting was seen up in the rafters because he got confused and thought it was 1997. The surprises went into overkill at that point…and we ended up with C-grade guys like the Nasty Boys, Val Venis and Orlando Jordan.
It turns out the worst thing that came out of this show was the rating. Doing a 1.5 made them decide to move to Monday Nights that March and go head to head with Raw. They got slaughtered big time and ran back to Thursdays with their tail between their legs in May. The main event from that first Monday Night show in March…Hulk Hogan and Abyss vs. Ric Flair and AJ Styles. At one point Hogan bumps for a Styles enziguri which was adorable.
Trying to hold horseshit together with duct tape
Scott Hall and Sean Waltman had returned to TNA but in storyline didn’t have contracts. They had turned on Kevin Nash when he couldn’t help them and Nash went on to team up with Eric Young. This led to a tag match between the 4 where if Hall and Waltman won…they’d get their contracts. Nash, of course, turned on Young so his friends could get signed. Confused yet? Because it gets better.
Matt Morgan was the tag team champions at the time because he had taken out his partner Hernandez but decided he was man enough to be his own tag team (all of his promos were done referring to himself in the plural. It’s the best work he’s ever done). Samoa Joe laid out Morgan on a May Impact and Kevin Nash cashed in his feast or fired briefcase so he and Hall were now the tag team champions. Realizing that trusting Hall was a dumb idea on this…the 4th go around…they turned Eric Young to join “The Band”. Yes…the Eric Young who Nash turned on before.
Waltman was supposed to team with Hall before all of that at Lockdown against Team 3D but he wasn’t cleared to wrestle in Missouri so, if you can believe it…Kevin Nash pulled double duty on the show. On the next Impact they wrote Waltman off of TV by having Team 3D take him out. Hall would get fired for whatever his legal issue was that time and the titles were held up.
The only surprising thing in any of that is that the Nash and Hall vs. Team 3D match at Lockdown was actually kind of alright. I’ll put it here for historical purposes I guess.
4-18-10 Team 3D vs. The Outsiders
For a smart guy Kevin Nash sure picks some stupid friends
We’ll always have Lockdown
The surprises didn’t stop on the January 4th show. 2 weeks later at Genesis the former Mr. Kennedy would arrive using his real name Ken Anderson. Anderson had actually worked dark matches for TNA in the weekly PPV era but never made it to the show. He had been fired for being reckless in WWE and now that he was a known name…TNA was all too happy to bring him in. He beat Abyss in his debut and then lost to the Pope in the finals of a #1 contenders tournament the next month. Anderson had surprisingly beaten Kurt Angle in the first round after busting him open with his dog tags and then spit on him after the match (why did he have dog tags? Who cares?).
Angle beat Anderson at Destination X by using the dog tags to bust Anderson open and then making him tap out. Anderson grabbed the mic after the match and called Angle out for having to resort to cheap tactics to win.
Then came the showdown at Lockdown. This match is WORLDS better than any other Mr. Anderson match. It’s seriously on another level than anyone thought Anderson could play on. It’s the ultimate blow off match and the Year Eight Match of the Year:
4-18-10 Kurt Angle vs. Mr. Anderson
AJ Styles: TNA Champion part 2
The second half of Styles’ title reign was less about good matches and more about watching him grow into the role of top heel. He was shaky and easily overmatched by the star power of Flair in the beginning. He beat Samoa Joe in February and went to a no contest with Abyss in March. Throughout this time he was becoming more confident in his promos (and it’s year 8 I’ll remind you) and started to grasp how to carry matches as a top level heel. He really had started to put it together when Lockdown rolled around and he faced off with the Pope. Unfortunately for AJ…they still weren’t done bringing in surprises.
Rob Van Dam debuted at the first Monday Night Impact defeating Sting in just seconds (Sting was actually injured through this whole year and couldn’t do much of anything). At Lockdown in April RVD would beat James Storm to give his Lethal Lockdown team the man advantage in the main event. His team won the match that night. The next night on Impact he defeated Jeff Hardy to get a title shot at AJ Styles later in the show. And in the end RVD, wrestling his 4th match in 2 nights, beat AJ Styles for the TNA title:
4-19-10 AJ Styles vs. Rob Van Dam
It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with pushing Van Dam to the top…TNA too often makes everyone just another guy almost immediately and this at least felt different. The problem was that despite having held the title for 7 months, AJ Styles not only still felt fresh as champion…but he was just coming into his own as a heel.
The top ten
At the end of year 8 Bischoff and Hogan decided to introduce a top ten system for the TNA title. Kurt Angle wanted to challenge himself so he asked to be removed from it and would challenge everyone from #10 up to the champion and he would retire if he lost at any point along the way. This mostly happened in year 9 and became a moot point fairly quickly when the title was vacated due to RVD’s (fake) injuries and the concept was abandoned before Angle could finish his way through.
And just to show how these rankings would have worked out had they kept it along for the long haul…#3 AJ Styles lost to Jay Lethal on that same show. Lethal wasn’t good enough to be ranked. I’d love to be able to put both those matches in here (they were quite good)…but the videos are going to start drying up the closer we get to modern day.
There were a couple decent X champions
Though the X division was the afterthought of all time by year 8…there were two guys who should be singled out as having done a nice job with nothing to work with.
The first was Red who got a run of over 100 days with the belt. Don West served as his manager and did a great job with it. He retained the belt in a fun Ultimate X at Bound For Glory and in this good match with Homicide at Turning Point.
11-15-09 Red vs. Homicide
He was beaten for the title by Doug Williams (another feast of fired cash in) who held the belt for 89 days before a volcano in Iceland wouldn’t let him travel to Orlando. Seriously. They stripped him for that. Kazarian became the new champion but at first chance Williams beat him to get it back and would hold it for 113 more days. His greatest moment would be beating Shannon Moore after hitting him in the face with a brick. From there Williams would proclaim his hatred of the flippy floppy high flying X division style and would spend the better part of a year grounding and beating everyone.
Where the white women at?
Not a very memorable year for the Knockouts. They still drew the best ratings so TNA gave them tag titles to go along with their Knockouts title. But those knockouts tag titles seriously make the TV title look like it matters. Probably the highlight of the year in the Knockouts division was this match between Awesome Kong and Tara:
11-15-09 Tara vs. Awesome Kong
Gail Kim was gone by the time year 8 started and Awesome Kong would be gone by the end of it. They brought in some talented women (Sarita, Hamada, Tara, Alissa Flash (Cheerleader Melissa doing double duty)) but the division was pretty much a mess. At one point Tara lost her Knockouts title to Angelina Love due to the contents of a lockbox.
All that needs to be said.
And in the end
This was the year that Sharmell and Jenna Morasca had the worst match of all time. This was the year that Abyss got Hulk Hogan’s Hall of Fame ring and they wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it. This was the year that Val Venis stuck around long enough to collect some wins and the bolted. This was the year that Pope had to lose to fucking Orlando Jordan. This was also the year that TNA aired the first episode of Reaction…which for a time in year 9 became easily the best thing about the company. This was the year that Bischoff and Hogan got rid of the 6 sided ring. Mostly year 8 will be remembered as the year of terrible booking probably brought on by too many people stirring the pot. Anyone remember the ending of Lethal Lockdown with all the heels falling into the hole in the middle of the ring? That’s what year 8 was.
