8 Wrestlers That Visibly Hated Working For TNA
The ex-TNA, WWE and AEW wrestlers that had six sides to every story, none of them good
Remember Generation Me?
The TNA upstarts that would come to be known as Max Buck and Jeremy Buck were young, but making waves in ROH and PWG when they signed for the ostensible North American number two promotion in 2010. Almost immediately, they realised that the exposure to television cameras was going to be offset by exposure to some rotten booking.
Taking the "new Hardy Boyz" scuttlebutt to the literal extreme, the two were told to act like Matt and Jeff as if comparisons weren't already going to be made, and ended up sidelined anyway thanks to the ludicrous influx of crony hires by the Hulk Hogan/Eric Bischoff regime that jumped on right around the same time. A natural feud with the Motor City Machine Guns materialised, though mostly just amounted to an endless series of matches, and eventually, singles and multi-mans that featured The Bucks taking on each other. They concluded their business with the company a year and a half later, with experiences so shoddy that they were at a point where they genuinely considered jacking the game in altogether.
All of this, but you wouldn't know it when the red light was on. Nick and Matt might have their own takes on their own performances (and likely be two of their harshest critics), but they smiled and worked through the lousy booking and only-okay matches that diffused the buzz around the one of the most gifted acts in the world.
Some? Same experiences, different energy...
8. Austin Aries
There's a garbled Hulk Hogan tweet about working yourself into a shoot and back again or whatever it was, doled out the way he used to say things in the way he liked to say them. Basically, because he really had seen and done all there was to in pro wrestling, he positioned himself at the very top of it via his online messaging, even though the dated carny rhetoric was more out of style and subject to gags than he was.
Of course, it being wrestling, there have actually been events where the words "jabronie marks without a life that don't know it a work when you work a work and work yourself into a shoot,marks" somehow make all the sense in the world. They practically felt like part of a sacred text during October 2018 when Austin Aries lost to Johnny Impact in the main event of Bound For Glory then immediately got up and left, middle fingers raised.
En route to the match, the two had engaged in a work shoot war of words that ostensibly existed to build heat for the contest, but by the time the three count was registered, it actually served to extinguish Aries' attempt and making a point. 'A Double' really was livid with lot, furious with multiple issues, and never wrestled for the company again as of writing. After the dust settled and enough people realised it was a shoot though, the only damage done was to himself.
Just over 60 matches in the subsequent seven years as opposed to the approximate 60 a year he used to clock (all during his 40s, the modern wrestler prime) spoke volumes about the reputational harm and/or his disinterest in continuing life at the top level as 'The Greatest Man That Ever Lived'.