10 Forgotten TNA Appearances By Ex-WWE Stars
8. Lex Luger
For the duration of its existence strictly as Total Non-Stop Action, TNA never truly had a fully fleshed-out identity.
It's ironic, at the point in 2017 when the name of the promotion finally matched the weekly show as "Impact Wrestling" for good, the audience that might have appreciated that clarity was long gone. To this day, vocal minorities have extolled the show's virtues, the roster and the hybrid pro wrestling/sports entertainment middle ground it appears to have occupied. For the first 15 years though, it was never that simple.
In 2003, there was something of an elastic quality to the roster, with established star wrestlers dipping in and out while the relative unknowns used the valuable airtime to build their own brands. Terrific in theory, but the balance was never truly struck in practice. Enter Lex Luger.
Luger wrestled just once for TNA and at least lost as part of a tag defeat alongside Jeff Jarrett against AJ Styles and Sting. But he towered above 'The Phenomenal One', gave him almost nothing, kicked out at one from Styles' offence and popped up from a winning three that had been achieved with the use of a baseball bat. Babyface play-by-play Mike Tenay put Luger's storyline cynicism in its place exclaiming that Styles "can compete at this level". He was telling the truth, but this match wasn't evidence.