Tell me that didn’t just happen. Tell me that Mike Santana is still the TNA World Champion and that Frankie Kazarian winning the title off him on last night’s episode of TNA television is a fever dream that I’ll wake up from at some point. Please!
Wait, you can’t? Thanks a lot, folks.
You can’t count on a lot in the pro wrestling business these days, but one thing is always a certainty. TNA will TNA.
On this week’s episode of TNA — the first since the company hiatus following Bound For Glory last month — Santana lost the TNA World Championship to Kazarian after a surprise roll-up pin in what was his first, and now only title defense.
Yes, after a beautiful celebration with his daughter in the ring and a near-year chase of the championship, which crescendoed at Bound For Glory — and did some of the best business TNA has done in years, Santana dropped the belt much to the dismay of the fans in attendance. And no, they weren’t dismayed in the good way. This wasn’t “ahhh you got us and we hate the guy that won, so let’s boo him.” This wasn’t heel heat.
No, this was a baffling booking decision that only one company could make. TNA.
I get it — the money is in the chase. That’s true a lot of the time. Not now.
I was a stark defender of Santana losing his championship match this summer. The chase was on at that point and the logical move was to hold on the Santana title win and give that to fans in a singles match on the biggest show of the year — Bound For Glory. That’s a symbolic win and one that signifies that Santana is “the guy.” Good business and a smart move.
Once you crown “the guy,” though, you run with him. Maybe not forever, because the money IS in the chase, but you run with him for enough time to give the audience a ride. You let them enjoy their champion with the belt. while he vanquishes bad guys for weeks on end. That’s wrestling.
Stone Cold Steve Austin was a top star that was regularly in hot pursuit of the world championship. His reigns weren’t Roman or Hogan in nature. He won the belt, defended it for a bit, was screwed over, lost the belt, and then chased it down again.
Can you imagine WWE taking the title off Austin on the first Raw after WrestleMania 14? Of course not, because it’s batshit crazy. Santana isn’t Austin and Bound For Glory isn’t WrestleMania, but they’re analogous.
TNA is going to try and spin this storyline into a shoot, or a worked shoot, and blah blah blah. It doesn’t matter.
It’s bad and that’s all there is to it. There isn’t heat on Kazarian for being a heel. The heat resides on the shoulder of the company. On TNA, it’s creative, it’s direction, and it’s inability to get out of it’s own damn way.
