TNA Against All Odds 2006

TNA Against All Odds 2006 took place 10 years ago to the week that I am writing this piece, and looking back on it now with so much water having passed under the bridge since, it’s actually quite a sobering experience remembering how much promise the company had at the time. In 2016, many wrestling pundits and commentators have written off TNA as something of a joke following a number of years where the company seems to have lurched from crisis to crisis and somehow managed to continue existing despite not really providing anything of real value during that time. In fairness to TNA, that perception is a little unfair, but having said that, when a product is presented with so little consistency over such a long space of time, and when that company displays numerous instances of apparent amateur public relations, it’s hard to defend them. Following the move from Spike TV to the much smaller Destination America at the beginning of 2015, TNA hoped for a fresh start, unfortunately, last year ended up being something of a Groundhog Year for the company with another saga over where their TV deal would end up (which they vehemently denied, going so far as to threaten legal action against certain wrestling news sources) and the on-screen product suffering due to practical issues with their taping schedule.

TNA Genesis 2011

In January 2010 TNA signed Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff to contracts in a bid to turn the wrestling world on its head, reprise the Monday night war and lead the company to new heights of commercial success. There were a number of changes made, perhaps the most significant of which was the company’s decision to take Impact head to head with Raw on Monday nights and attempt to engage in a ratings war with the established WWE programme. That was, of course, an absolute failure; ratings for Impact dropped to such an alarming level when on at the same time as WWE’s flagship show, that TNA was forced into a humbling retreat, back to their regular time slot despite heavy investment in talent including Jeff Hardy, Rob Van Dam, Ric Flair, Mick Foley, Mr Anderson, Sting and others. By the time Genesis 2011 rolled around however, TNA had recovered slightly from their embarrassing defeat, and with the new regime (that not only included Hogan and Bischoff, but also involved Vince Russo and Dixie Carter herself) having been around for a full year, they were presumably presenting the vision for the product that they had from the beginning.

TNA Bound For Glory 2015

That TNA Bound For Glory even took place this year was a mildly triumphant achievement for a company that has found itself on the brink of collapse more than once in recent times. Earlier this year it was widely reported that Destination America were giving up on Impact Wrestling and that the show would be cancelled as of the end of September, after which months went by without TNA addressing those reports suggesting that their position on the network was precarious. Given that Bound For Glory, the company’s biggest show of the year was set to take place after TNA was reported to be going off the air, many predicted that the show wouldn’t even happen. Just a month ago however, Dixie Carter announced that the company would be staying on Destination America until the end of 2015 and that negotiations were ongoing with Discovery about a renewal (much in the same way as she’d had to do last year at the tail end of the Spike TV deal). But given how much last year’s Bound For Glory had been affected by the company’s preoccupation with sealing themselves a new TV deal, it was believed that even though this year’s event would take place, it would surely take on a similar air of distance from the ongoing television saga.