12 Wrestlers Who Did Their BEST Work In TNA & IMPACT

8. Mr. Kennedy

EC3 Impact Wrestling
ImpactWrestling.com

There is a parallel world in which wrestling is still one of the most popular forms of mainstream entertainment. In that world. Mr. Kennedy is the top star. The multi-time World Championwas always going to be a star, but the decision to book him as Vince McMahon’s illegitimate son was a masterstroke, establishing Kennedy as a top heel before a babyface turn saw an iconic feud with Triple H captivate an entire generation of fans. Repeating your name has never been this cool.

Except parallel worlds don’t exist, at least not to collective knowledge. Kennedy didn’t become the biggest star in wrestling, he became another lost cause. What should have been world titles became fantasy booking nostalgia. Kennedy was let go by WWE in 2009, only to be snapped up by TNA less than a year later.

TNA wasn’t about to sleep on the rechristened Mr. Anderson, and he was soon thrust into the promotion’s main event scene. Anderson went on to win two world titles in TNA, headlining pay-per-views as both a heel and a babyface before sliding down the card. He wasn’t the business mover that TNA hoped he was going to be, but that had more to do with the company than the performer.

Mr. Kennedy is one of the great ‘what if?’ stories of modern professional wrestling. He may have been a bust as a top guy in WWE, he may have been a generation-defining star, he may have been just fine. He didn’t stay long enough for us to see.

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.