TNA Just Lost Its Biggest Asset... (TNA News)
Mike Santana has finished up with TNA.
Having lost the TNA World Championship to Nic Nemeth at Slammiversary this past weekend in an excellent main event, it appears that Mike Santana's time with TNA is done.
Via PWInsider, Santana essentially finished up with the Anthem outlet at Slammiversary. The former two-time TNA World Champion is not scheduled for this week's TNA TV tapings from Albany, New York, and his current TNA deal is due to expire in the "upcoming days".
This follows plentiful rumours and reports that Mike Santana would be on his way to WWE when his TNA deal was up this summer, with it previously believed that his contract was expiring sometime in mid-July. Those same reports suggested that not only was WWE interested in Santana, but the hope was to have him on the main roster by the end of the year.
For his part, Santana hasn't shied away from the WWE speculation. In fact, when asked about such talk during a recent interview with McGuire on Wrestling, he said how thankful he was to TNA for giving him an opportunity to reinvent himself over the past two years, and that, where the future is concerned, he's always looking for an opportunity to grow, whether that's in TNA or elsewhere. As Mike put it in that chat, "the top of one mountain is the bottom of another."
Of course, Mike Santana has already competed under the WWE banner several times, lacing up his boots for six matches on NXT programming, plus competing against NXT talent on TNA iMPACT. The 35-year-old's most recent NXT appearance was back in March, teaming with OTM to pick up a win over DarkState, with Santana receiving a monstrous reaction from his hometown New York crowd on that night.
For those who've not kept up with Mike Santana, his story has been a phenomenal one over the past two years. After exiting AEW in 2024 following plenty of creative unrest, Santana opted to bet on himself as a singles act, having spent his career as a tag team specialist up until that point. A darn fine tag team specialist, one of the best tag teams in the game with Ortiz, but a tag team specialist, nonetheless. Being extremely open about getting himself sober, Santana has gone on a tear since returning to TNA after that AEW departure, becoming a genuine main event player, a PPV headliner, a pivotal part of the company, a multiple-time World Champion, and legitimately one of the best wrestlers on the planet right now.
The story of Mike Santana is one of struggle, one of determination, one of ambition, one of success. And now, the TNA chapter of that story looks to be closed, and it appears the WWE chapter is just about to get started.