TNA Hall of Fame

I think that we all probably know by now that, after 10 fantastic years, TNA has decided to start its own Hall of Fame. We will find out who the first ever inductee is when it is announced at Slammiversary X.

When the news was announced, Dixie Carter said “This 10 year milestone is an incredible achievement for TNA, in honour of that we felt it was time to begin recognizing the contributions of those who have made the greatest impact on our success."

Here I am going to list all of the possible inductees which I and my wife have thought of during discussions over the past few days along with some of the reasons behind the names. I also spoke briefly about this with Brad and Greg on the Single Leg Takedown Podcast which you can listen to on iTunes or SoundCloud. Let’s kick things off with the most obvious names.

Jerry and/or Jeff Jarrett

Jerry and Jeff Jarrett started the National Wrestling Alliance - Total Non-Stop Action on 19^th June 2002. The first ever live show almost started in disaster as in the dark match before they went live a wrestler broke one of the ring ropes. However the ring crew managed to fix the ropes and the show went on.

This set the scene for TNA over the course of its life in a way as TNA has hit many bumps in the road, but the clever people behind the scenes (including Jerry and Jeff) have managed to avoid the worst.

Jerry has always been an amazing promoter in the wrestling business and as Jeff grew up there was nothing else he could have done with his career besides wrestle. Jeff has had a long and illustrious career winning many titles and awards, most notably the WCW Heavyweight Title and NWA Heavyweight Title.

Although he has not appeared on our screens on Impact Wrestling for a while, Jeff has been busy working on other branches under the TNA name most notably Ring Ka King. Below you will find a Q&A which he did for Impact Wrestling Australia where he talks about what he has been up to behind the scenes.

I believe that these two deserve to be numbers 1 and 2 in the TNA Hall of Fame as without them we simply would not have a TNA to talk about today. Jeff has been fairly quiet on the social media front from what I have seen, with just some tweets from him saying that there are exciting things in the pipeline. Could being inducted in to the Hall of Fame be one of those things? Over the past few days he seems to have come out in the public eye more and with Velvet Sky tweeting the following earlier on, does she know something that we don’t?

Sting

Sting began his wrestling career way back in November 1985 (almost 27 years ago) teaming up with Jim “Ultimate Warrior” Hellwig. It took him a while to get over with the crowds but once he did everyone slowly realised that Steve Borden has a special gift for wrestling. It is said that Sting is the single greatest wrestler to never have signed a deal with WWE.

I personally put Sting in my greatest ever top five. He has given everything to the wrestling audience and even though he is currently aged 53 he can still wrestle with the greats in TNA. I think that Sting not only deserves to be inducted into the TNA HoF, but I think that WWE will one day induct him into their HoF.

Sting doesn’t think he should be the first inductee into the TNA hall of fame as when talking about it in a Slammiversary press conference call he mentioned that the likes of Jeff Jarrett and AJ Styles should be recognised before him.

AJ Styles

AJ may only be 35 years old but he has been wrestling since 1998 (14 years). AJ was the very first person that Jerry and Jeff signed to a contract after seeing some of his matches on the Indie’s. TNA was pretty much built around AJ and he is one of only two men (with James Storm being the second) who still actively wrestles for TNA and has done since the very first show.  

‘The Phenomenal One’ was the first TNA X Division Champion, the first TNA Triple Crown Champion (by holding the NWA Heavyweight title, the NWA World Tag Team title and the TNA X Division title) and the first TNA Grand Slam Champion (by adding the TNA Legend’s title, which is now known at the Television Title). Typically wrestlers’ are only put into a HoF after they have retired but AJ is still in his prime and does not seem ready to stop anytime soon.

I think that he deserves to be inducted but imagine the look on Kaz and Daniels’ faces if AJ were to be entered in to the HoF with the storyline that they are all currently involved in.

Hulk Hogan

Yes I know that Hogan hasn’t done much in TNA but I think that he may sweet talk Dixie Carter into it just so he can stick it to Ric Flair. I sincerely hope that he doesn’t though.

Whilst I appreciate that Hogan has done a lot for wrestling during his career and has made some changes to Impact Wrestling we are yet to see the full fruits of his labour in my opinion. He has been inducted into WWE's HoF for what he has done in the past and for what he is to do for TNA in the future he may well be inducted into their HoF too in years to come.

Robert and/or Dixie Carter

Although Dixie is the President of TNA Wrestling, Robert (or Bob) is the Founder and Chairman of Panda Energy International. Panda Energy bought shares in TNA in 2002 and in 2009 bought the entire company. This makes Bob Carter the Owner of both Panda Energy and TNA Wrestling. One of the Carter’s should be inducted into the HoF because as with Jerry and Jeff, without the Carter’s investment I would not be writing this post right now.

Christian Cage

Although he is a current WWE Superstar, Christian arguably had his best years in TNA besides the Edge and Christian vs. The Hardy’s feud which he had in WWE. He spent a good portion of his career in TNA, had better feuds and received much better crowd reactions in my opinion.

If Christian announced that he is to come back to TNA who would not get excited? I was extremely disappointed when he signed back with the WWE back in 2009 as they have never appeared to know what to do with him. He will always be ‘mini Edge’ to the WWE in my view whereas in TNA he is ‘Captain Charisma’ and ‘The Instant Classic’.

And so that concludes our thoughts on who could be inducted in to the TNA Hall of Fame. No doubt we will come up with other ideas and reasons as to why people may be in the picture until it is announced tonight. We came up with several more ideas just writing this post!

What are your views on TNA starting a HoF and who do you think should be inducted first?

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