10 Times Impact Wrestling Went Too Far
1. Knocked Out
A hideously sexist segment that thankfully already feels archaic despite the relative age of the scene, a 2010 show-closing festival of idiotic titillation made a mockery of TNA's entire women’s division and every performer associated with the caustic presentation.
Flailing in its self-inflicted misery, the organisation was losing hard in a short-lived rebirth of the Monday Night ratings war after making the ludicrous decision to go head to head with Raw following Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff’s January arrival. Seeped in regret by this point, a decision was made to put the Knockouts Title on the line in a multi-women match where anybody that scored a pinfall would earn one of four keys to open the quartet of random boxes at the top of the stage.
Getting the actual wrestling out of the way early in the show (because f*ck that, right?) Velvet Sky, Angelina Love, Daffney and existing Knockouts Champion Tara made their way through to the prestigious ceremony in which an open contract, Tara’s pet spider, a forced striptease and the Knockouts Title itself were randomly up for grabs.
The logic fell apart there. There was absolutely no reason for Tara to enter into a risk or reward scenario that could see her losing her title, other than to reclaim a spider. Similarly, an enforced striptease was tantamount to a low level sex crime, and felt exactly like that when Daffney was frogmarched to the ring to take her clothes off in front of the braying hordes.
The disgraceful sequence ended with the ‘Scream Queen’ getting assaulted with Lacey Von Erich’s "Ugly Stick" as the third generation star wanted the striptease spot for herself. A laughable brawl ensued around her as she skipped across the ring in negligee. Impact went off the air there and then before it left Monday Nights for good just four weeks later.