Bryan Staebell
TNA YEAR TEN: June 13 2011-June 10 2012
What is dead may never die
Eric Bischoff and Abyss’s attempt to destroy the X division was sidetracked by “The Network” (yet another entity calling the shots in TNA) when they decided that the Destination X PPV in July would focus entirely on the much maligned X division. They teased repeating the famous Unbreakable 3 way yet again…but in the end AJ Styles beat Christopher Daniels in the main event. This would be the beginning of Daniels’ jealousy storyline which is still going 2 years later. Joe was relegated to losing the opener to Kazarian. Jerry Lynn finally got his match with RVD that he couldn’t have at HARDCORE Justice…losing as usual. The Ultimate X match was represented by Alex Shelley pulling down the X to become the #1 contender to the X division title. The title itself was still held by Abyss going into the show…but Brian Kendrick (who had somehow become the leader of the X division) beat him in the co main event to take it back for the division.
In the weeks leading up to the event each Impact had 3 way qualifiers to be in a 4 way match at the PPV where the winner would receive a TNA contract. The idea was 2 of them would be guys who had been in the company and the other 2 would be newcomers. Austin Aries qualified by beating Kid Kash (who got a contract anyway) and Jimmy Rave. Zema Ion qualified by beating Dakota Darsow and Federico Palacios. Low Ki qualified by beating Matt Bentley and Jimmy Yang. Jack Evans (who had been in before…but it was in an X Cup so it can slide) qualified by beating Anthony Nese (who got a contract he was later let out of) and Jesse Sorenson (who got a contract and a broken neck).
The new best example of irony I can come up with is this…after years of being made as unimportant as possible…and they would be again after this show…for this one match on this one night when these guys went out and had a classic X division style match and tore the house down:
7-10-11 Austin Aries vs. Low Ki vs. Zema Ion vs. Jack Evans
Aries won the contract and embarked on a hell of a comeback. Ion would get a contract too.
The return of math to TNA wrestling
They came up with an interesting yet horribly flawed concept to crown the challenger for the TNA title at Bound For Glory, called the Bound For Glory Series. The concept was that 12 guys would compete in all kinds of matches trying to earn the most points and win the title shot. The 12 guys were A.J. Styles, Bully Ray, Gunner, Samoa Joe, The POPE, Scott Steiner, Crimson, Bobby Roode, James Storm, Devon, Rob Van Dam, and Matt Morgan. You got 10 points for a submission win, 7 for a win by pin fall, 5 points for a count-out win, 3 points for a DQ win, 2 points for a draw and you lost 10 points if you got DQ’d. Matches took place on PPV, Impact and house shows.
The flaw was there was no even distribution of matches. Some guys worked nowhere near as many matches as others. Shockingly they got the match to work out anyway…kind of. They cheated. Matt Morgan was doing well until he tore a pec and had to pull out. Samoa Joe couldn’t buy a win so he lost it and started injuring people to take them out. He took out Devon and Crimson (who had been in the lead). RVD was running away with the thing until Jerry Lynn started costing him matches. In the end Bobby Roode, James Storm, Bully Ray and Gunner were the final 4 left standing.
They went into No Surrender in September to finish off the series and crown the winner. James Storm was DQ’d against Bully Ray…taking Storm out of the running and leaving Bobby Roode having to submit Gunner to force a tie. Roode pinned Bully Ray to win the series. They’d improve the concept immensely in year 11.
Math, Bitches
8 years and 2 tries later…
Sting had been trying to get Hulk Hogan into the ring for a long time. He changed his persona for the first time in years from “the crow” version to “the insane icon” with his smeared facepaint and unpredictable behavior. It all started with this backstage segment:
On the September 15 2011 Impact Sting faced Ric Flair for almost certainly the last time of their career’s (and to date the final match of Ric Flair’s career). Flair had shot off his mouth that Sting couldn’t beat him and said if he did he could have Hulk Hogan at Bound For Glory.
11-15-11 Sting vs. Ric Flair
To try and get out of it Hogan announced he was retiring from wrestling. What makes this segment work is that for reasons beyond comprehension…the crowd buys into this as an actual retirement.
So the day finally came where Hulk Hogan stepped into the ring at Bound For Glory. Sure the actual wrestling in the match wasn’t any good…Hogan can barely move and should never take another bump (he took 3 here…just to shut people up) but again…that’s hardly the point of a nostalgia match. Also let it always be remembered that in 2011 Hulk Hogan and Sting flat out had a better match than AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels did on the same show (their “I quit” match was an epic disaster). The post match is where the fun is at as Hogan turns face to help Sting and the crowd loses its shit as he Hulks up.
10-16-11 Sting vs. Hulk Hogan
The first of two great things Hogan did that night
It pays to be Roode…eventually
It was a lock that Bobby Roode was going to win the TNA title at Bound For Glory from Kurt Angle. Angle was all kinds of injured and could barely move. Roode had just won the BFG series and Impact featured videos that hyped him up to the point where they were flat out telling you “This guy is going to win…so order the show for the happy ending”.
Then the day of the show Hulk Hogan decided that wasn’t happening. It was the best thing that ever happened to Bobby Roode.
Of course Angle still couldn’t walk so they had to get the title off of him. On the next Impact Sting (now it was his turn in charge) gave the title shot to Roode’s partner James Storm. Storm did in moments what Roode couldn’t do on the biggest night of his career:
Two weeks later Beer Money would face off on Impact for Storm’s TNA title. Roode hit Storm with everything he had but couldn’t put him away. With the ref down Roode saw his way out. He grabbed Storm’s beer bottle and broke up Beer Money, Fortune…all of it. But he became the new TNA champion:
Worth it.
Storm would get a rematch but was jumped by Kurt Angle before the match. Roode took advantage scoring an easy pin on him. The two would go their separate ways for a little bit.
El Fired
Jeff Jarrett became the King of Mexico when he won the AAA title immediately after Angle sent him packing from TNA. He returned a conquering hero.
He would eventually get the endorsement of Mexican America when he helped them win the TNA tag titles from Beer Money.
They let Jeff Hardy come back around Bound For Glory, asking fans to give him one more chance. Jeff Jarrett was tired of Hardy and his issues (Jeff Jarrett is always right) which led them into a feud. After a ton of pull a part brawls (and I mean…a…ton) they finally got in the ring at Turning Point where Hardy pinned him in seconds and then beat him again in the immediate restart. This led to a cage match at Final Resolution where if Jarrett won, Hardy would be fired. But if Hardy won either Jeff or Karen would be fired. Hardy won and on the next Impact Sting had a decision to make. The two spent the show talking shit about each other behind the other’s back and complimenting Sting on his hideous jacket. Here’s the payoff:
He was written out so that he could go run Ring Ka King over in India. Then they never brought him back. The world patiently waits in anticipation of the return of this great, great man.
James Storm becomes awesomer
James Storm was out for revenge on Kurt Angle for giving him a concussion and costing him his rematch at the TNA title. It was actually a match that Storm had with Angle in September that made TNA officials take notice and start thinking he could be a top guy in the promotion (he’s been in the company since literally day 1 mind you). While the matches in the Angle feud never lived up to what they should have…Angle did put him over clean repeatedly as he made his way back towards Bobby Roode. More importantly than that though…this is when James Storm’s promos went from pretty good to fucking awesome. The second one especially is something to watch. Angle does some of his best work here without ever saying a word:
After this feud Storm was ready to focus on Bobby Roode.
Yet another great Angle run
Angle moved on to a feud with Jeff Hardy that produced another rare (at the time) good Jeff Hardy match in TNA:
3-18-12 Kurt Angle vs. Jeff Hardy
Nearing the end of the year Angle had turned babyface again after coming to dislike Christopher Daniels and Kazarian. He would beat AJ Styles at Sacrifice in an awesome match with a terrible crowd:
5-13-12 AJ Styles vs. Kurt Angle
Then the two would team up to face off against Daniels And Kazarian at Slammiversary. It rocked and was the Year Ten Match of the Year:
6-10-12 AJ Styles and Kurt Angle vs. Bad Influence
Gail Kim found the man of her dreams. One with the money to let her leave WWE
Gail Kim went back to WWE because they made her an offer that she couldn’t refuse and that TNA didn’t match despite her being their biggest ratings draw. She then sat around for a couple of years missing TNA. After she met one of those celebrity chefs and got engaged (now married) she didn’t have to worry about the financial side of the business anymore and could go back to what she never wanted to leave in the first place.
The Knockouts title was traded between Mickie James and Winter a couple of times heading into Bound For Glory. That night Velvet Sky finally won her first Knockouts championship. Her reign would be short lived though as Gail Kim returned to the company immediately after and took her title back at the next PPV. She would hold it through all of year 10, finally losing it at Slammiversary to Brooke Tessmacher.
The X division has one wrestler in it
After winning the TNA contract in July, Austin Aries wasted little time getting the X title around his waist. He’d win the belt from Kendrick at No Surrender in September:
9-11-11 Austin Aries vs. Brian Kendrick
From there Aries would run through Jesse Sorenson, Kid Kash and Zema Ion before facing a legit opponent in Alex Shelley at Against All Odds:
2-12-12 Alex Shelley vs. Austin Aries
And then…he ran out of opponents in the X Division. Sorenson broke his neck in a #1 contenders match that he was supposed to win so Aries quickly dispatched of Ion. He then moved up to compete with the big boys in the Lethal Lockdown at Lockdown and then this great fucking match against Bully Ray at Sacrifice:
5-13-12 Bully Ray vs. Austin Aries
He continued his run against non X division guys at Slammiversary against Samoa Joe.
6-10-12 Austin Aries vs. Samoa Joe
When later interviewed on the show Aries proclaimed that he was no longer content being X division champion…he wanted to be World Champion. But we’ll get to that in Year 11.
Growing into the role
The early months of Bobby Roode’s title run saw him take every short cut in the book to keep his title. He played keep away at the end of an Iron Man match to go to a draw with AJ Styles. He got intentionally DQ’d to escape Jeff Hardy. And he took advantage of Sting’s mistake to get out of a 4 way at Against All Odds.
Then his character started to grow from “Guy cheating to keep the title” to “Guy winning by the skin of his teeth”. Sting hit his head on the back of a chair while doing the Death Drop and Roode capitalized at Victory Road. James Storm’s quest for vengeance over victory led to Storm superkicking him out of the cage to retain his title at Lockdown. Oh…here’s the awesome go home segment to the Impact before Lockdown as the former Beer Money partners get some things off of their chests:
Following that…Roode was able to get a legit win over RVD in a ladder match at Sacrifice.
5-13-12 RVD vs. Roode
Right after this he had an excellent TV match defending against AJ Styles:
5-24-12 Bobby Roode vs. AJ Styles
Roode capped his year by retaining against Sting at Slammiversary X. James Storm made his return on that show (he’d taken time off after his loss to Roode at Lockdown to think about his future) and the inevitable Roode/Storm title showdown at Bound For Glory seemed right on track. But a funny thing happened along the way. We’ll get there next year.
You know…Abyss
Bully Ray faced Abyss in a Monsters Ball match WAY back at January’s Genesis PPV. After losing the match Bully Ray was seen fighting with Abyss outside and then…Abyss was never seen again. Well not never…but not for months. Eventually a great man came looking for him.
Mr. Joseph Park, Esq.
Abyss’s brother Joe spent months trying to track down a lead on his brother. It finally led him to Bully Ray. Now, of course Joe Park is Abyss without the mask and with his fake teeth in…but here’s the fun part…Joe Park is brilliant. Everything he does is entertaining and so perfectly in the character of a lawyer who’s never been on TV and doesn’t know how to fight. He’s the living embodiment of Clark Kent to Abyss’s Superman. Abyss is so good as Joe Park you can almost suspend your disbelief and think “Well he can’t be Abyss because this man is a pussy.”
It seemed like the storyline was going to reach a payoff last Slammiversary when Park stepped in the ring with Bully Ray…but the character had become so enjoyable that whatever the endgame is has still yet to be revealed a year later. The finish of the Bully Ray match was Joe Park rolling under the ring and Abyss emerging from the other side to take Bully Ray out…then they switched back and Park won.
Whistling Dixie
Christopher Daniels left Fortune and turned on AJ Styles because he couldn’t deal with his jealousy over Styles being more successful than he was. Then he found out why. He got Kazarian to turn on AJ by holding some information over him. Kazarian didn’t want to be aligned with Daniels at first…and then when Russo left (hooray!) he suddenly did. They explained this by Kaz saying at first he was trying to protect AJ…but he had come around to Daniels’ point of view.
Anyway they found out that AJ got all the opportunities they didn’t get…because he was (allegedly) fucking Dixie Carter. They’ve provided a lot of evidence and neither Dixie nor AJ immediately denied it. It became the highest rated thing on the show and Daniels said they were not even close to finished (the middle of the beginning of the story is how he put it) by the end of year 10. He would unfortunately be proven correct as what started as an interesting idea turned into a giant colossal mess that only Daniels and Kaz would survive. This was the beginning of the “AJ Styles is having a bad year” story that we’re seeing the payoff to now.
Laying out for Dixie’s husband. A bad year indeed.
Many unhappy returns
Jeff Hardy isn’t the only guy who returned to TNA this year. RVD looked around and saw nothing else to do…so he came back too (hilariously he’s in the same spot a year later). Mr. Anderson left with a personal issue and came back out of shape (he’ got better). All 3 were completely lacking in direction. For those reasons and no more I can think of…they had a 3 way #1 contenders match at Slammiversary…which actually turned out to be pretty good.
6-10-12 RVD vs. Jeff Hardy vs. Mr. Anderson
Anderson would lose the title match on the following Impact and then, like the other 2, become a part of the BFG series that started at the beginning of year 11. Only one of them would come out of the series with any direction.
Garrett
Oh Garrett. Let me tell you at the end of 10 years of recapping how little I want to write about Garrett Bischoff.
At Bound For Glory it was revealed that ref Jackson James is actually Eric Bischoff’s son Garrett. He turned on his father and called for the bell when Sting beat Hogan and Immortal lost control of the company. He then tried to stop the Immortal beat down on Sting. That was all fine. Then we found out that Garrett wanted to be a wrestler.
If that’s really what he wants to do then TNA screwed him by putting him on national TV in a prominent position. He should have been down in OVW training and learning…but instead he was captaining a team in Lethal Lockdown…and starting off the match.
I racked my brain and come up with ONE good Garrett related thing in his time in TNA so far:
They paired him up with Devon as his mentor/partner until Devon’s contract ran out early in year 11.
The finish line
Samoa Joe and Magnus had a great tag team for a few months. They were broken up for no reason but at least they both have been more featured coming out of it.
ODB and Eric Young became Knockouts tag champs and got married (if you didn’t spot the pattern by now…I’ll just tell you. Every thing Eric Young does fucking sucks). They’re still champions to this day…having not defended the titles since…I don’t know maybe ever.
They started Open Fight Night with a lot of things going on at once. Gut Check became a reality show where Alex Silva got a contract when Ric Flair legit changed his mind after being impressed with his promo. Joey Ryan didn’t fair as well the next go around and despite being better than Silva…was denied.
Alex Shelley left the promotion after a long run.
Christian was forced to attend Slammiversary against his will for payback on the Flair to WWE hall of fame deal. Flair was long gone by then anyway.
Year 10 was another year of change in TNA. But this time for the better. Vince Russo is out and the shows are paced so much better it’s like it’s a different company. They focused on long term storylines (Joe Park, AJ, next year Bully Ray/Aces and 8’s) and they actually followed through on pushing their home grown guys as their top talent (Roode and Storm). What I’m most going to remember from this year is that it’s the first time the company has told stories where the outcome of something became important. Bobby Roode lost in his big moment at Bound For Glory…and that failure is what drove him to be the selfish prick longest reigning TNA champion in history. James Storm failed in his big moment in his hometown at Lockdown and instead of popping back up on TV smiling it off…he went home and thought about what’s next. Unfortunately for Storm, we’ll see that year 11 holds no good news to that answer. But it’s progress. Those matches mattered because they showed that they mattered and those characters are more interesting as a result. So it took 10 years. Better late than never.
