The less said about his time in TNA, the better, though assessing the good and bad is sort of the point here. Seemingly trapped in a constant struggle to give a sh*t about a product that didn't seem to give a sh*t about itself, he was often better in a heel managerial role alongside Samoa Joe and later Aces & Eights than he was at the desk.
What did stick out was just how much authority his voice now brought to a wrestling show. Any wrestling show, even one with energy and stakes as low as mid-2010s Impact. Yet again mastering the stuff that can't be taught, Taz now boasted gravitas as his chief trait. Well, when he wasn't cheerleading for the Knockouts to shake their a*ses about, anyway.
After departing in 2015 right around the time TNA/Impact almost entirely fell out of the regular wrestling conversation forever, he was gone from mainstream televised wrestling almost entirely until seamlessly fitting into AEW as an announcer and eventually leader of Team Taz starting in late-2019. Now a voice of the product, he's as embedded as any of the originals that helped form the company.
Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation for 10 years. Alongside the production of daily written, audio and video content covering WWE and AEW, he also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years.
As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot on the UK's wrestling podcast charts with over 10,000 episodes and 70,000,000 total downloads. He also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House!, Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast, and has guested on long-running Sunderland AFC podcast Wise Men Say.
With WhatCulture, he has provided in-person coverage of some of the biggest pay-per-views and Premium Live Events in wrestling history, including WrestleMania, Survivor Series, All In & Double Or Nothing in destinations such as New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. He has also been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana, 411Mania and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling.
Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in music and culture magazines The Crack, Pilot as well as Sunderland AFC's premiere fanzine A Love Supreme. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it every other Saturday at the Stadium Of Light, and at Cribs gigs nationwide.
