10 Obscure International Wrestling Championships
6. Australian Heavyweight Championship (TNA)
The early days of TNA were an interesting time to say the least. An amalgamation of WCW leftovers and ECW alumni with up and coming talent and promising newcomers from the indie scene, TNA was an intriguing addition to the wrestling landscape in the wake of the Monday Night Wars.
But it wasn’t all revolution and innovation in Nashville. For every AJ Styles, Low-Ki and Chris Sabin there was several confusing additions to the roster like Malice (WCW’s The Wall), Bruce (a.k.a. Kwee Wee) and the eternally-winded, 550lbs “Cheex”. Yeah...
Another name to add to that list of bizarre signings was Ashley Hudson. Trained by Bill Dundee, Hudson had been a semi regular on WCW C-Shows like Worldwide and Saturday Night during 2000 before making his TNA debut in October of 2002; teaming with Ron Harris to unsuccessfully challenge America’s Most Wanted (Chris Harris and James Storm) for the NWA World Tag Team Titles.
Three months later, Hudson found himself back in TNA - albeit very briefly - to be part of Vince Russo’s newest stable, Sports Entertainment Xtreme; which had been abbreviated to the acronym S.E.X. in typical facepalm-inducing, Russo fashion.
Re-introduced to the TNA faithful by S.E.X. “Director of Acquisitions”, Mike Sanders, Hudson was announced as Sports Entertainment Xtreme’s Australian Heavyweight Champion “because Vince Russo said so” - despite having no belt to go with the title or any particular logic for this “honour” other than the fact that he was obviously Australian (a fact hammered home by his didgeridoo music, Aussie flag t-shirt/singlet and boomerang).
The “championship” was a complete farce and after defeating Jorge Estrada in a short, five minute match Hudson and his supposed Australian Heavyweight Championship were done with TNA and never heard from again.