TNA deservedly take a whole lot of flak for some of the booking decisions they have made in the last decade or so, but every now and then even they can't mess up such an obvious story. At the beginning of 2012 Austin Aries was the TNA X-Division Champion, portraying a heel. He had started to gain considerable support from crowds however, becoming a de facto babyface in the process. All the while Bobby Roode was on a long run as TNA World Champion, seemingly moving towards an inevitable match at Bound for Glory against former tag partner James Storm. The predictability of that match had become a little stale though, and the support for Aries was impossible to ignore. As such, the 'Option C' clause was introduced, allowing the X-Division title holder to trade in the belt for a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship. Aries was the first to be given the option, the first to take it, and the first to win the title off the back of it. The match was as good as any TNA main event of the last five years, helped a lot by the absolutely nuclear crowd throughout. They had sensed that it was time to pull the trigger on Aries, and both Aries and Roode played their roles to absolute perfection throughout. For WWE fans, this is the Austin Aries match to seek out in order to get a short taster of what makes this man so special. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWM225hpxHA
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.
