10 Moments When TNA Was The Hottest Wrestling Company In The World
6. Lockdown 2008
Lockdown was a typically overcooked TNA concept that had no right to work, but so often did. The annual all-cage match pay-per-view often relied upon more stipulations to be thrown into the 'Six Sides of Steel' in order to differentiate one match from another, but the finest iteration of the show took place in 2008, and ironically featured the most stripped down version of the contest as one of the company's highest drawing main events ever.
After years of experimenting with different cages (depending on match variants up and down the card), TNA tapped into the monstrous popularity of UFC to frame the card like an MMA event, with the evening's action taking place in scaled-back dimly lit black chain-link cage.
The aesthetic was designed to aid the evening's topliner, in which Kurt Angle defended the TNA World Heavyweight Title against Samoa Joe. The pair engaged in some epic struggles for Kurt's first programme, and had assembled some spectacular matches since, but the contest was considered one of the 'Samoan Submission Machine's last chances to relieve the 'Olympic Gold Medallist' of the belt and was thus afforded a serious build unlike virtually anything in company history.
On the night, the pair paid off the company's efforts with an exhausting technical classic. Electing to wrestle without boots and in fight shorts, Angle took the MMA theme up a notch before gamely put Joe over clean as a sheet with the Muscle Buster following countless failed submission efforts.