Whenever I check in to see what is happening with TNA Impact Wrestling, it seems a title has changed, is changing or is being vacated. It has been particularly difficult to stay in touch with whoever the X Division champion is for a number of years now, with piddly reign after piddly reign sullying the credibility of the title. The X Division title has changed hands 19 times in the last three years. Of course, the Option C deal where the champion can cash it in for a World Title shot hasn't helped, but that has only led to four vacations so far. The World Title has fared better, but not by enough. Twice in the last three years has the winner of the Bound for Glory main event vacated the strap within days of winning it. The story of AJ Styles in 2013 was extremely well done by TNA, only for everything to fall apart by their inability to tie him down to a contract. Matt Hardy's win this year was an emotional moment, but it has become the joyful of equivalent of masturbation. A moment of euphoria, followed by many more moments of 'what the hell is going on?' And let's not even start with the tag titles. The Wolves won their first titles on February 23rd 2014, and just 18 months later are now five times champions. That speaks for itself. By moving the titles around so often, they become weak. I'm certainly not advocating 400+ day reigns for each one, but title changes should feel like big deals, not minor plot points.
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.
