10 Impact Wrestling decisions that they still regret
Impact Wrestling has a long and uneven history. The brand launched after WWE bought out WCW, and after Jeff Jarrett, in particular, could see that there would be no place for him in the company. So, he worked with his father on starting his own wrestling company.
Jarrett purportedly decided on the acronym TNA before he decided what it was would actually stand for, in the interest of being provocative. The initials may have garnered attention in the early going, but have also made it difficult for the company to be taken seriously by some fans, and has since had a certain stigma around it.
Nonetheless, the company has persevered. What was once a show based on a weekly PPV model transitioned to a more traditional national promotion with weekly TV and monthly-or-so PPVs, to today’s schedule which still appears to be in flux. The company has seen people like Vince Russo, Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff, Billy Corgan, and Dixie Carter rotate through different kinds and levels of power. More than once, rumours of its demise have come up. Fifteen years have passed, however, and the promotion has remained in one form another.
Impact has its critics, and even its most fervent supporters have to admit that the company has made some questionable choices over time. This article looks at ten decisions they still regret.
#10 AJ Styles’s last Main Event push
The Aces and Eights storyline had its ups and downs, but one piece that seemed to be working well enough was casting AJ Styles as a modern-day reimagining of Sting’s Crow gimmick.
Like Sting had been for WCW, Styles was the loyal TNA favourite, and like Sting with the New World Order, Styles' friends were suspicious he was joining Aces and Eights. So Styles became a lone wolf with no alliances at all. While he may not have had Sting’s mystique, he did keep up his wrestling schedule and was still in his prime, such that he was more than ready to claim the world championship when his story came to a climax.
Things grew convoluted, however, when the news broke that Styles’s contract was up with Impact Wrestling, and the two sides struggled to reach a deal. In a strange, but still arguably compelling choice, Styles was recast as more of a CM Punk circa-2011 character, who may or may not walk out with his company’s world title.
The change in the direction diluted a strong story for the "Phenomenal One". Even worse, after so much of the company’s programming was centred around Styles for months, the contract situation actually wasn’t resolved and he wound up walking out just a couple months later.