10 TNA Rejects Doing Pretty Well For Themselves Elsewhere

5. SANADA

SANADA Los Ingobernables de Japon NJPW
NJPW

TNA has a terrible, terrible record when it comes to utilising top quality Japanese talent. I'll get on to the most glaring example of this shortly, but the company hasn't exactly learnt from its own history. In 2014 Seiya Sanada arrived to work for the company, and after an unsatisfying five-day run with the X-Division Championship Sanada turned heel by aligning with James Storm and The Revolution.

What is it with TNA putting top quality Japanese talent in abusive relationships with western heavyweights? Sanada became The Great Sanada, in a move that was purely to build towards Bound for Glory 2014, with TNA's biggest show of the year taking place in Tokyo. Sanada and Storm would lost to The Great Muta and Tajiri in the main event of that show.

Sanada was horribly underused by TNA, something that became plainly clear from the moment he shockingly arrived in NJPW earlier this year. Despite being aligned with another stable (Los Ingobernables de Japon), SANADA is quite clearly a mega-star of the future. A clean win over Hiroshi Tanahashi in this year's G1 Climax all but confirmed that.

If you're going to bank on anyone becoming a huge star over the next five years, bank on SANADA.

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Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.