Ranking Every TNA Era From Worst To Best

3. The Lame Duck Era

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In late October of 2009, Hulk Hogan signed with TNA. It was an exciting, but nerve wracking time for the company. Everything would be changing when he'd make his first appearance in January of 2010, but until then, the product was a lame duck...and it was a pretty entertaining lame duck at that!

Vince Russo was still writing the bulk of the shows, but he couldn’t really do anything crazy, as he had new bosses to please, so he and the creative team just delivered us wrestling matches. No ridiculous storylines, no Crash TV, no shoot angles, just wrestling.

Turning Point 2009 gave us Samoa Joe vs. A.J. Styles vs. Daniels in the main event. The following month gave us Styles vs. Daniels. During that time we also watched the fantastic Kurt Angle vs. Desmond Wolfe feud, which is among the best they’d ever done.

Great TNA originals in the main event, and the introduction of a new, promising, non-WWE castoff star. It was exactly what we had been begging for since 2002! We had two months to enjoy it.

When Hogan/Bischoff came in, Joe jobbed to Orlando Jordan the first night in, Daniels soon jobbed to Kurt Angle in a minute and Wolfe was jobbed out to RVD in meaningless fashion. Watching a solid wrestling show quickly delve into to an awful trainwreck once again is still one of the most frustrating periods in TNA history.

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Contributor

As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at." Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week. Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com