TNA… Cross the Line again

[Kamran]

They've almost reached 6,500 tickets for this, which isn't far off their record of 7,200. Although it's fair to say their tickets didn't really start moving until the NXT lot and AJ Styles were added to the card.

Their pre-show begins at midnight.

 

[Kamran]

Pre-show begins in about 20 mins, you can watch below.

Pre-Show:

• Jake Something, Steve Maclin and Mance Warner vs. Zilla Fatu, Real 1, and Josh Bishop
• TNA Knockouts World Tag Team Championship: The Elegance Brand (Ash by Elegance and Heather by Elegance) (c) vs. The IInspiration (Cassie Lee and Jessica McKay)

 

 

Main Show

• TNA World Championship: Trick Williams (c) vs. Joe Hendry vs. Mike Santana
• TNA Knockouts World Championship and the NXT Women's Championship: Masha Slamovich vs. Jacy Jayne 
• TNA X Division Championship: Moose (c) vs. Leon Slater
• TNA World Tag Team Championship - Ladder Match: The Nemeths (Nic Nemeth and Ryan Nemeth) (c) vs. The Hardys (Jeff Hardy and Matt Hardy) vs. The Rascalz (Trey Miguel and Zachary Wentz) vs. Fir$t Cla$$ (A. J. Francis and KC Navarro)
• Darkstate (Dion Lennox, Osiris Griffin, Saquon Shugars, and Cutler James) vs. The System (Brian Myers, Eddie Edwards, and JDC) and Matt Cardona    
• Tessa Blanchard vs. Indi Hartwell
• Mustafa Ali vs. Cedric Alexander
• AJ Styles to appear

[DavidB6937]

Solid show overall but I did think..

Spoiler

Not having Santana win was exactly what you'd expect from TNA - the perfect time, the perfect place, the perfect guy and... nah let's surprise people!

They're really good at building people up and then thinking it's amazing to swerve people.

Probably why they're working with WWE. Same mentality so often.

 

[Merzbow]

1 hour ago, DavidB6937 said:

Solid show overall but I did think..

  Hide contents

Not having Santana win was exactly what you'd expect from TNA - the perfect time, the perfect place, the perfect guy and... nah let's surprise people!

They're really good at building people up and then thinking it's amazing to swerve people.

Probably why they're working with WWE. Same mentality so often.

 

Spoiler

Maybe thinking that he's not long for the TNA brand and is moving over to NXT, he's been there recently.

 

[Callum1993]

6 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

  Hide contents

Maybe thinking that he's not long for the TNA brand and is moving over to NXT, he's been there recently.

 

Spoiler

I mean that logic would work if only the person who won and is holding the title wasn’t a member of the NXT Roster. 

 

[FLips]

Saw the clips this morning of AJ Francis taking a bump onto the rung of a ladder dick first and a woman in the front row absolutely pissing herself laughing at him. An easy Moleman getting hit in the groin meme to be made on the next Botchamania.

[FUM]

The production botch for that backstage segment was bad enough but slightly under the radar was displaying who was planning to interfere in Masha Slamovich’s name graphic.

[garynysmon]

Spoiler

I don’t agree with Trick Williams retaining but I also have some sympathy booking-wise as the company is obviously struggling to figure out where they go next. Trick Williams is a safe pair of hands for now.

Everyone and their mother knows that Joe Hendry is leaving for WWE, but it must also be clear that Santana isn’t long for TNA either.

Personally I’d have put the title on Santana anyway even if he has to lose it at BFG, but either way the company has been backed into a corner in regards to the main event scene.

Scott D’amore’s ‘friends and family’ style of booking had its limits, but it meant there was always at least a fighting chance of retaining key talent.

Now the whole company feels more transactional in nature, and whenever someone gets over we’re almost resigned to the fact that they’ll leave at the first opportunity.

It feels silly saying this the morning after a 7,600 attended event, but the foundations of TNA feel a little too flimsy for my liking.

The only talent atm that TNA can be confident of retaining are those that come across as massively indy or the likes of Kaz and Eric Young who are too old to be signed elsewhere.

TNA really need to sign any TV deal now, before the Hardys and Joe Hendry depart. The resulting income would be transformational for the company.

But as things stand, without a TV deal and most of the crowd pullers having gone, we could see a big drop-off in attendance/interest after Christmas without a much needed shot in the arm.

 

Edited July 21, 2025 by garynysmon

[sivy]

4 hours ago, garynysmon said:

  Hide contents

I don’t agree with Trick Williams retaining but I also have some sympathy booking-wise as the company is obviously struggling to figure out where they go next. Trick Williams is a safe pair of hands for now.

Everyone and their mother knows that Joe Hendry is leaving for WWE, but it must also be clear that Santana isn’t long for TNA either.

Personally I’d have put the title on Santana anyway even if he has to lose it at BFG, but either way the company has been backed into a corner in regards to the main event scene.

Scott D’amore’s ‘friends and family’ style of booking had its limits, but it meant there was always at least a fighting chance of retaining key talent.

Now the whole company feels more transactional in nature, and whenever someone gets over we’re almost resigned to the fact that they’ll leave at the first opportunity.

It feels silly saying this the morning after a 7,600 attended event, but the foundations of TNA feel a little too flimsy for my liking.

The only talent atm that TNA can be confident of retaining are those that come across as massively indy or the likes of Kaz and Eric Young who are too old to be signed elsewhere.

TNA really need to sign any TV deal now, before the Hardys and Joe Hendry depart. The resulting income would be transformational for the company.

But as things stand, without a TV deal and most of the crowd pullers having gone, we could see a big drop-off in attendance/interest after Christmas without a much needed shot in the arm.

 

Spoiler

Ive got a feeling they might of want to do the big title change in a 1 on 1 match at bound for glory. 

Surprised darkstate lost mind you. 

 

[Snitsky's back acne]

7 hours ago, FLips said:

Saw the clips this morning of AJ Francis taking a bump onto the rung of a ladder dick first and a woman in the front row absolutely pissing herself laughing at him. An easy Moleman getting hit in the groin meme to be made on the next Botchamania.

I initially misread that as "taking a bump off a ladder dick first" which would be quite the bump.

[JLM]

I’d say that’s accurate: 

Oof. The moonsault into the ring off the ladder where nobody caught him looked rough too. Tough night for the Cheez-It champ. 

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Big talk coming out tonight that TNA (under WWE's instructions) are going head to head with Dynamite once WWE sort them out with a TV deal. Which means you could be seeing some WWE A-listers on Impact to try and fuck with AEW.

[DavidB6937]

Shame they can't get Hulk in for the first head to head.

[Chili]

4 minutes ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

Big talk coming out tonight that TNA (under WWE's instructions) are going head to head with Dynamite once WWE sort them out with a TV deal. Which means you could be seeing some WWE A-listers on Impact to try and fuck with AEW.

I've read here and there that WWE really aren't obviously keen on AEW getting another TV deal after this latest one. It's probably not going to work (touch wood), but given they're very into the being the monopoly again with TKO, who are particularly keen on people having no negotiation power for more money with elsewhere options, strikes me that someone connected like Nick Khan could be a really fucker with dirty tricks. This wrestling war if you could call it one isn't on screen, it's going to be all the shit going on behind it. In a perfect WWE world, AEW doesn't exist and TNA are the controlled competition they don't own so they can't get fucked like when I believe Court Bauer took a case against them.

Edited August 14, 2025 by Chili

[BomberPat]

10 hours ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

Big talk coming out tonight that TNA (under WWE's instructions) are going head to head with Dynamite once WWE sort them out with a TV deal. Which means you could be seeing some WWE A-listers on Impact to try and fuck with AEW.

I assumed something like this was always in the works when WWE started working with TNA; WWE have probably handicapped themselves in terms of competitiveness by going to Netflix (I may be misremembering, but while I know it's only RAW on Netflix currently in the US, is the deal that over time everything else will move across as TV deals expire?), so they need a tame third promotion that they can get on TV to compete with AEW on their behalf. I wouldn't be surprised if they're working overtime to try and get AAA their long sought after US TV deal as well.

One would think they would need to be on the same network as WWE programming, though, because I don't see WWE's existing partners wanting them to plug shows on a rival network, so the question is whether those networks would want an additional wrestling show that isn't explicitly WWE-branded.

I don't think putting WWE top guys on Impact will make much difference to ratings. The end result of WWE playing "the brand is the draw" for years is that none of their wrestlers individually are going to make much of a dent in ratings, and they've never presented TNA as an equal partner, so it will be a tiny fraction of their audience who sees any appeal in watching wrestlers they can already see on TV every week in their regular timeslot go and slum it in the minor leagues. And TNA, historically, couldn't pop a rating with Kurt Angle, Hulk Hogan, any other big names they brought in, and I don't see that significantly changing.

But it's not really about ratings. It's about sponsors, it's about monopolising TV time, it's about crowding out AEW from any other potential revenue streams.