According to recent reports, AJ Styles is having contract talks with TNA, and there’s about a month left before his current deal expires. Supposedly the hold up is the same issue that TNA has been having since going on the road: money. Styles has been offered, and turned down, contracts from the WWE before out of loyalty to TNA no doubt. AJ is also friends with Sting, another loyal franchise player to not only TNA but WCW. Of course the only difference there was that WCW was backed by a billionaire, so maintaining a more-than-fair paycheck was never a problem for Sting. TNA has been cutting corners lately with both hated and applauded moves like releasing Matt Morgan, Joey Ryan, Crimson, pretty much everyone from Gut Check, D’Lo Brown, Tara and Brooke Hogan. Many of those that remained have had restructured contracts. Great, do what you have to.
However one thing you should never let come down to the wire or let fall through the cracks are the contract renewals of your top stars. TNA got extremely lucky when both Bobby Roode and Samoa Joe had contract issues due to neglect on the part of ex-Head of Talent Relations Bruce Pritchard. TNA was lucky that Roode and Joe did not get their tights in a bunch and go knocking on WWE’s door like RVD. So here we are and if the reports are to be believed, both AJ Styles and Ken Anderson are in need of contract renewals. I’m in the minority here when I say I’m a fan of Mr. Anderson, so I hope they can keep him around. But I doubt the door is open for him to return to WWE, so I’m confident he will re-sign. AJ is the one I’m worried about.
Loyalty only gets you so far, especially when you have a family to take care of and your career is half over. Gail Kim left TNA years ago and made it very clear that she did not want to go to WWE, but the money they offered was something she couldn’t refuse. But can AJ really turn down WWE’s offer this time? Some would love to see him succeed on a grander scale, however I think he’d be lost in the shuffle there. TNA needs him more, so personally I hope he stays. I hope he stays and gets a TNA Title run similar to the WWE Title run CM Punk had for a year. You get what you pay for and trust me Dixie, AJ is worth every penny. The future of your company is in the quality of talent you showcase. And of course advertising but I’ll save that for another article. You can cut corners on everything from pyro to what coffee creamer you use in catering, but don’t skimp on what it takes to retain your biggest stars.
I’d like to try a new feature, something that will be at the end of my columns and may or may not even be related to the subject matter of said column. In this single paragraph feature, I’ll name who I think is deserving of being called out in the wrestling world. Let me know in the comments if it’s a feature that should stay or go.
Worst Wrestler in the World…This Week: Rob Van Dam.
RVD has no doubt reignited his career on his latest WWE run, and one can’t really blame him for being upset at TNA management for dropping the ball with poor communications on re-signing him. But during a recent vlog, he felt the need to bash to TNA roster without actually naming names. You’d think if anyone knew what it was like to be a part of a smaller, struggling company trying to make it, it would be RVD. If you have issues with TNA management over your contract, by all means air your grievances but why put down the wrestlers in TNA who bust their asses each week, who work just as hard no matter what company their in, many of whom are icons who deserve more respect than you showed them. But maybe I’m judging Rob wrong. After all, people often say idiotic things when they’re high.
I said this for a while. The captain of the ship should never have been allowed to run a company. A lot of tna fans were understandably upset that I spoke the truth about their leader, but now the results are as Warned. Brooke, gone, so cal gone, other talent gone, AJ may go, Hogan may go. The collapse is evidently approaching, and it is very sad because the remedies existed, if only the leader of the tna fans could have listened.
Thanks for reading my posts, and it was a fun time reporting on the mistakes of the company. Good luck to all the wrestlers after Tna and let’s hope we get another chance to see a rival wrestling promotion one day. Thankyou once again, and thankyou TNA for some fun times.
Thanks for the column, Dillon. I have to comment that TNA is also backed by a billionaire in Panda Energy. They certainly have deep enough pockets to make TNA the modern day WCW in terms of contract amounts, but they’re much smarter than Turner Sports is/was and aren’t giving out money to anyone who comes along.
I agree that AJ would get lost in WWE. Vince would send him down to FCW for two years and then give him a skater gimmick or something ridiculous. It would be a total waste of a pretty fantastic career so far.
Totally agree with your worst wrestler in the world call (and I like the idea of it being a part of each column, too!). RVD is a bore. He’s been a bore since his WWECW run. The guy can’t create any more new moves and has been working the same, stupid “stoner” gimmick for two decades. At some point, that gets old. I hoped that when he was in TNA he would have evolved his character to either a more serious persona or one that focused more on utilizing the ring in his attacks on his opponents (similar to the innovations he made in ECW). Neither of those things happened so I was glad to see him go.
Panda energy sure don,t look like they are helping tna. So many budget cuts means they ain’t got no ones back. So tna is on its own unfortunately. And that means the end. And I ain,t trying to put down your leader ( tna fans), good one by the way John, but panda ain,t saving nobody. I kinda feel sad for the comp as well, because the opportunity was huge if only the fans spoke up and were not submissive to what Dixie put out. If only…
What’s pathetic is that you use several different names (all coming from the same IP address because, you know, we get that information) and that now you’re using false names and false personas to agree with yourself.
So this is what we’re going to do.
We’re going to go through all of your comments from all of the false names and we’re going to mark them as coming from “John” because while I don’t know your name, that’s the one that you’ve used most often. Then we’re going to block your IP address because what you’re doing is the very definition of spam.
None of us minded you taking your half-informed, bad views of TNA and applying them to these posts. However, doing so with fake e-mail addresses, under several false personas, and now having conversations agreeing with yourself (because no one else seems to understand what the hell you’re trying to say) is unacceptable.
Bye, John!
I forgot about Panda Energy! Still, I think WCW was in an ideal situation for most of its life because its owners were also in the television business, owning 2 major stations WCW fell back on. If things go sour with Spike, hopefully Panda can continue to fund TNA until a new deal is reached. No doubt they’re helping with the road expenses, but if a billion dollar company is your “parent company” yet you have to cut quality talent, may lose more over money like AJ Styles, and can’t even help with the medical bills of your stars (Daffney, Jesse Sorensen, Zema Ion to an extent), then something’s up financially or morally at the top of TNA brass in my opinion.
I understand your points. Though it’s also worth mentioning that WWE doesn’t pay any of the medical bills of its wrestlers either since being a contracted talent simply means that you’ll exclusively perform for one promotion, but you’re not an employee of that promotion. They’re all independent contractors who have to pay for their own expenses.
I’ve always figured that if Spike TV dropped TNA (which I doubt would ever happen since they’ve invested so much in them already), that a channel like TruTV, ionTV, or WGN America would pick up the show. Eric Bischoff has enough connections out there that he could make something happen – and Lord knows there are enough channels where they could find a home!
I keep seeing a lot of comments by people on the interweb about Panda being such a big company and not paying medical bills for wrestlers.as if this is an odd occurrence.
You would be hard pressed to find any multimillion dollar company pay medical expenses for contractors.
Think about, if you get new siding on your house, do you pay medical insurance for the contracting company? Of course not.
I don’t think many of them realize how light a schedule the average TNA star has. If they aren’t on the house show schedule (and many aren’t) they are working two nights a month for 20-30 minutes, it would be insane to pay for insurance for that,
TNA needs to bring more of the ohio valley wrestlers up let go of stupid wrestlers like Robbie E just taking up space and do more with big guys like big rob terry and gunner