Exactly How Good Was Taz?
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.
It's been an overachievement of a run, but only in terms of how crowded the marketplace was when he arrived. Not because his resumé didn't speak for itself...
CONT'D...