To close out 2009, AJ Styles was the TNA champion, Beer Money were the tag champs, Amazing Red was the X Division champ, Tara was the Knockouts champ, and Taylor Wilde/Sarita were the Knockouts tag champs. Things were good in TNA, right? Right. Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff were about to debut on the first Impact of 2010, which was the first ever Monday night Impact. This was supposed to be the big move that boosted TNA to becoming a legit competitor to WWE. Was it a success?
The 1/4/10 Impact had plenty of positives about it, such as gaining their biggest rating ever, having two really good matches in Taylor/Sarita vs. Kong/Hamada and AJ vs. Angle for the title, the return of Jeff Hardy, who was a top draw for WWE in 2009, and basically giving the jaded WWE fans an alternative on Monday nights for the first time in 9 years. However, things quickly took a turn for the worst, and fast! Just like in WCW, Hogan's TNA debut featured the debuts of many of his friends, such as the Nasty Boys and Bubba The Love Sponge, who was never involved in wrestling before and gave TNA A LOT of negative press (neither he or the Nasties would last half a year), especially regarding Awesome Kong, as they had two confrontations based on some disgusting twitter remarks by Bubba regarding the Haiti relief fund, with Kong released after the first and Bubba released after the second, as well as Scott Hall and X-Pac, who were way past their primes, and numerous WWE Heat/Velocity wrestlers like Val Venis, Orlando Jordan, and Shannon Moore. All of these new hirings alienated most of TNA's core fanbase, especially seeing as they all debuted in the matter of two weeks. The Genesis PPV on 1/17 was a turning point for TNA, as Val Venis defeated Christopher Daniels, the Nasty Boys were put into a "dream match" feud with Team 3D, and the face of TNA, AJ Styles, turned heel on Kurt Angle in the main event, becoming a heel champ with a "Flair Jr." gimmick. Granted, AJ did as well as he could with the gimmick, but all of these decisions made the fanbase feel betrayed, even the fans in the Impact Zone, who never pay to get in. As a result of their reaction at Genesis, the Impact Zone fans are now referred to as "cast members" and are told who to cheer and boo. The Impact Zone hasn't been the same since. On the next Impact, AJ defeated Angle in TNA's own rehash of the Montreal Screwjob, dubbed by fans as the "Orlando Screwjob", making fans even more angry.
Things stay bad for a while, with bad storylines (Nastys/3D, Joe losing to Orlando Jordan only to get abducted by ninjas, and never being referenced again, Abyss gaining superhuman powers from Hogan's WWE Hall Of Fame ring, which was as bad as the shits on Raw in 2009) and bad gimmicks ("The Band", which was Nash, Hall, and X-Pac reunited, with Nash's WCW music without lyrics as their theme, making them come off as bush league, AJ Flair, Orlando Jordan) until March 8, when they began competing against Raw on Monday nights. While I admire TNA finally taking a risk in order to grow, they simply weren't ready. The 2010 Monday Night Wars only lasted two months, as TNA lost around half their viewers to Raw, despite TNA putting on some of their better shows of 2010 at this time (the show after Lockdown, the show after Destination X) and some of their best feuds such as AJ/Pope and Angle/Anderson, which was probably the best feud in wrestling that year. These two months featured the infamous Lockbox Showdown, which was an elimination match where the winners got to open boxes (one was a KO title shot, one was Tara's spider Poison, one was a contract to wrestle anyone under any stipulation, and the other was a striptease). Actually a good match but the stipulation was very convoluted and the show ended with the striptease! RVD also won the title from AJ on April 19, which angered many fans as RVD just debuted in TNA in March and his title win was extremely rushed. On May 14, TNA returns to Thursdays.
When TNA returns to their traditional Thursday night timeslot, the next few months are considered some of TNA's best programming of the year. Coincidentally, this was when Jay Lethal was on fire! After floundering for two years since the lame love triangle with Sonjay Dutt and So Cal Val under the Black Machismo gimmick, he shows up on Impact impersonating Ric Flair. This garners a huge reaction from the fans and smartly, TNA takes notice. He defeats AJ Styles at Slammiversary before finally facing the Nature Boy at Victory Road, in which he won with the figure four! Lethal gets a HUGE rub... until he loses clean to Jeff Hardy on the next Impact and loses the rematch to Flair a few weeks later, albeit interference from Douglas Williams, who was the X division champ. Yep, Lethal's back where he started... he defeats Williams on Impact in September, rarely appears, before losing it to Robbie E at Turning Point and getting released in 2011. After Victory Road, things go downhill once again, fast! RVD's title reign is very lackluster, as he lacks any motivation in the ring, and Ric Flair's stable of Fourtune (Styles, Beer Money, Kazarian, Matt Morgan, Douglas Williams) begins a feud with EV 2.0, which is a stable of ECW originals that forms after Victory Road before TNA's ECW tribute PPV in August, Hardcore Justice (RVD, Sabu, Raven, Rhino, Tommy Dreamer, Little Guido, Tony Mamaluke, Stevie Richards, Sandman). The feud was dull and lasted until November, and limited what the wrestlers in Fourtune could do in the ring as the majority of EV 2.0 lacked in in-ring talent due to age. Abyss feuded with RVD throughout the summer, and caused him to forfeit his title after "hitting him" with Janice, which was a 2x4 with nails sticking out of it. While feuding with RVD, he promoted the debut of "They", and he announced that "They" would come on 10/10/10, which was the date of Bound For Glory. The main positive of the summer was the Beer Money/Motor City Machine Guns best of 5 series, which the Guns won 3-2, culminating in an epic 2 out of 3 falls match on the 8/15 Impact, dubbed "The Whole F'n Show". If you love tag team and hgh-flying wrestling, check out the entire series!
At Bound For Glory, the main event for the title was Angle vs. Jeff Hardy vs. Mr. Anderson. During the match, Eric Bischoff, Jeff Jarrett, and Hulk Hogan interfered on the behalf of the least likely person to turn heel in the match, Jeff Hardy. Hardy wins the belt and turns heel as "They" was Bischoff, Hogan, Jarrett, Abyss, Hardy, and Fourtune. The faction would name itself Immortal. Hardy was a good heel champ and he kept the title to close out 2010. It was also revealed that Dixie indirectly signed control of TNA to Hogan and Bischoff as well.
In general, 2010 was a very damaging year for TNA. Bad press, bad ratings, bad storylines, no new stars were made, and a bunch of disappointments in general. Unfortunately, it only got worse in 2011 before any improvement occurred.
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