TNA Wrestling might be known by modern day fans as the company who have a working relationship with WWE, or the company who have produced talents like Jordynne Grace and Joe Hendry, but there was a time where TNA was the real land of opportunity for those who didn't work for WWE.
When a wrestler left WWE in the 2000s and early 2010s, there were a few roads they could walk down in order to start the next chapter of their careers. Some will take the talents to the independent scene and the convention circuit, working for a variety of promotions in much smaller locations, but becoming more connected with the fans in attendance thanks to the intimate atmosphere while also being able to work with performers who will go on to be major superstars in the near future. Others pack up their lives and move to a different country, exploring the wrestling landscape in countries like Japan and Mexico, as well as touring across all of the wrestling hotspots in Europe like Germany, the UK, and France.
But the move most wrestlers made was to TNA as the ability to work a more relaxed schedule while also being paid a healthy salary and work for a company that airs on cable television every week was simply too good to turn down. There were also those who were moving up through the wrestling pyramid and specifically chose TNA over a company like WWE as they were still visible to the wider wrestling world, but catered to those who looked for more fast-paced action in the X-Division, as well as female wrestlers who liked that the TNA Knockouts division was treated a lot more seriously that the WWE Divas division.
With that said, even the best laid plans don't always go according to plan, and for some wrestlers, joining TNA was not only the worst decision they could have made at that specific time, but they ended up leaving the company in a worse condition than when they joined. Whether that be through injuries, lack of creative direction, or actually being given a creative direction that turned out to be worse than having nothing to do, a number of wrestlers have walked through the doors of TNA hoping for a fresh start, only to regret ever considering walking through those same doors to begin with. There have been a lot of cases like that over the years, but here are five of the most famous examples.
Cast your minds back to the spring of 2008. "The Nature Boy"Ric Flair is having one final run in WWE that he knows won't last forever as he had been told by Vince McMahon that the next time he lost a match, he would be forced to retire. This story culminated at WrestleMania 24 when Shawn Michaels told Flair that he loved him, hit him with Sweet Chin Music, and pinned Flair's shoulders to the mat for the very last time. Afterwards, he was given a standing ovation by those in attendance, and on the next episode of "WWE Raw," he was given a lengthy retirement ceremony that moved Flair to tears several times. It was a dream ending to one of the greatest careers in the history of wrestling...or so we thought.
By the end of 2009, Flair had filed for bankruptcy, had been sued multiple times by the likes of Ring of Honor and Highspots.com, and was already coming to the realization that he needed to continue wrestling just to get by. So he came out of retirement for Hulk Hogan's "Hulkamania" tour of Australia, and was offered a contract by TNA at the beginning of 2010. Originally, Flair was brought in as a non-wrestler, managing AJ Styles during "The Phenomenal One's" run was the TNA World Champion, but Flair knew that the money was in between the ropes, and decided to lace up his boots in the Impact Zone.
Looking back on Flair's TNA run is rather cruel in hindsight. It's clear as day that Flair would rather be anywhere else in the world than in the Impact Zone, but he was too deep in the hole financially to do anything, so he had no other choice but to bleed more buckets of blood than what was necessary. Every time Flair cut a promo in TNA, he was one slip up away from the scar tissue on his forehead bursting and his thin blonde hair would once again become a light shade of red. He did have some moments of magic, such as the legendary "Woo off" with Jay Lethal, and a brutal bloodbath with Mick Foley that is better than what people remember it as, but overall, the run was a mess.
Flair himself has admitted that his run in TNA was a mistake, stating the reason he went there was for the money, and while he got to hang out with some old friends, he was getting hammered from all sides financially and TNA was his saving grace at the time. Multiple wrestlers have also called Flair's run in TNA a disaster, with The Honky Tonk Man claiming that Flair's legacy might be ruined because of his time in TNA as people will only remember the end of his career, rather than the years of brilliance he had before it. TNA might be in a better spot now than in 2010, but don't expect a Flair cameo on AMC in January 2026
Another case of a retired legend almost butchering his legacy for a run in TNA, "The Hardcore Legend" Mick Foley was still semi-active by the time he arrived in TNA at the end of 2008, but where he ended up in the company is a place he should been nowhere near.
Foley originally arrived as an on-screen authority figure, but much like Flair, Foley would transition himself back into the ring by the spring of 2009. A one-off match wouldn't have been offensive because, as we've already mentioned, Foley could still work a basic match despite his obvious difficulties walking, but that wasn't enough for TNA. The powers that be thought it would be a good idea to have Foley, who had already put his body through unimaginable pain throughout his career and could barely get around, to beat Sting and become the TNA World Champion.
In the match where he became the TNA World Champion, Foley almost tore his ACL, suffered a massive concussion that he blamed on the six-sided ring for having less give than a four sided ring, and admitted that he wasn't happy with how the match turned out. All of that was documented in his fourth book, "Countdown To Lockdown: A Hardcore Journal," a book that also documents how he thought some of the stories in TNA were a little undercooked, and while he did have some praise for the likes of TNA President Dixie Carter, he picked his words carefully enough that he was able to get a legends contract with WWE after he left the company in 2011.
Between 2009 and 2011, Foley would continue to suffer injury after injury, and yet still wanted to soldier on (as was the style at the time) through his feuds with the likes of Abyss, Jeff Jarrett, and Kurt Angle. Had he not put his body through everything that he did in TNA, there would have been a slim chance that Foley would have been able to do the scrapped Hardcore match with Dean Ambrose at the WWE SummerSlam in 2012, and it's likely he wouldn't have had to retire as well. Foley was told by his doctors in 2012 that he would never wrestle again, and looking back at some of the spots he took in TNA, maybe a move to the Impact Zone didn't end up being the smartest move.
Foley still dreams of having one more bloodbath to cap off his career in style, even going as far as to try and lose 100 pounds before his 60th birthday in order to get into ring shape. However, doctors keep telling him to stay retired as one more bump could potentially cripple "The Hardcore Legend." His run in TNA didn't prevent him from returning to WWE in a non-wrestling capacity however, becoming the "WWE Raw"General Manager in 2016, but it did prevent him from ending his career in the company he always dreamed of working for when he was growing up.
A lot of long-time TNA fans will know that Dustin Rhodes was a part of the company at one point in time, but some people might forget that he actually had two stints with the company. His first came back in 2004 after his WWE contract expired at the end of 2003, debuting as "The Lone Star" Dustin Rhodes and having a run that lasted just over one year. It wasn't necessarily bad or anything, just that it was forgettable as Rhodes still wasn't in a great headspace after years of personal struggles, meaning that he couldn't fully commit to the character despite having some serviceable matches against the likes of Jeff Jarrett and Raven.
Then came his second run with the company in 2007. Rhodes' third run with WWE didn't exactly end in spectacular fashion, but by the time he joined TNA he was in a really bad place. The man himself has been open about how he didn't care about himself or his family, and really only wanted to do one thing; get loaded up on drugs and alcohol and forget about his problems. Joining TNA helped him financially at a time where he really needed the money, and having someone he was familiar with like Vince Russo being the head of creative meant that he would at least have a new character that he could become wrapped up in.
That character was none other than Black Reign, a dark and twisted version of Goldust who walked around with a rat. At the time, Rhodes actually felt like the character was a good fit for him because of the dark place he was in mentally, meaning that he could at least let some of his sadness and anger out in the Black Reign character. However, when it came to getting in the ring and working a match, Rhodes was a shadow of his former self. Out of shape and out of motivation, Black Reign is a black eye on what many now consider to be an illustrious career for the man we now call "The Natural."
Rhodes wouldn't even last a year in TNA, with his last match for the company coming in April 2008 and after that, he no showed three months worth of events and was released from his contract. What could have been a cathartic way of getting through a dark time turned out to be an even darker time for Rhodes, but if there is one thing that Rhodes can take away from his run as Black Reign in TNA, it's that he knew something had to change. Rhodes would get himself into shape, cleaned up his act, and kicked both the drugs and alcohol in time for another return to WWE by the end of 2008. Rhodes has been clean and sober for 17 years at the time of writing and has been a member of the AEW roster since 2019, even winning singles gold at AEW All In Texas 2025.
Wrestlers being comfortable about their sexuality has only recently become something that isn't taboo as various stars from across the wrestling world are proud members of the LGBTQIA+ community like "Timeless" Toni Storm,Effy, or Anthony Bowens. However, even as recently as the early 2010s, being openly gay, bisexual, or transexual wasn't exactly going to be something that would be used in the right manner, and at times it would actively get you pushed down the card, just look at what happened to Chris Kanyon in WWE with the "Boy GeorgeIncident."
Orlando Jordan is a prime example of that as he was the first openly bisexual wrestler to perform for both WWE and TNA, and his sexuality wasn't mentioned at all during his time in JBL's Cabinet in WWE. In fact, for some fans, if you didn't outright say that Jordan was bisexual, not many people would have even noticed. TNA on the other hand decided to use Jordan's sexuality and push it so far past the envelope it was meant to be pushing that it ended up just making people feel a bit uncomfortable.
Jordan would be only the many former WWE Superstars to debut in TNA in 2010 after the arrivals of Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff, who wanted to make the company more of a competitor to WWE. It wasn't until a couple of months later where he would descend from the rafters of the Impact Zone wearing nothing but yellow caution tape where people really started talking about Jordan. Essentially, Jordan's character was a hypersexualized version of himself, complete with storylines layered with suggestive language and actions towards the likes of Rob Terry which wouldn't fly in today's market, and of course, the entrances where he would squirt white cream on himself as if he was involved in a sexual act.
At one point Jordan was involved in a storyline where he was trying to make advances towards Eric Young, who himself played a character that could be best described as "mentally challenged." It's safe to say that the character didn't go over as well as Jordan would have liked, primarily because it was placed in the care of people who didn't really understand what it was, thus making a proud bisexual man portray an almost perverted sex pest.
Jordan is now semi-retired and lives out in Australia, mainly working independent shows around the country as himself. Had Jordan arrived on the scene a few years later, his gimmick would probably be handled with a lot more knowledge and sensitivity which could have allowed him to have a lot more success. If you look at someone like The Velveteen Dream in "WWE NXT," that style of character is what Jordan could have been in another universe, but it simply wasn't on the cards for him. Now if you look up Orlando Jordan, his eccentric TNA gimmick is one of the first results, and for some people, that's what he is best remembered for.
Rounding off with two men who actually left TNA in a worse state than when they arrived, many fans look back on Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff's time with the company as the biggest misstep in the history of TNA, one that they are only just recovering from now thanks to their working relationship with WWE and new TV deal.
Before Hogan and Bischoff arrived, TNA were the firm number two wrestling company in the United States behind WWE. They were a few years past their mid-2000s hot streak, but they were still producing shows that had some gems on them, despite Vince Russo wanting to book as little wrestling on his shows as humanly possible. With WWE looking weaker than ever due to their move to PG in 2008 that alienated a lot of the male demographic they spent years trying to cultivate, TNA revealed their master plan and brought in Hogan and Bischoff to turn TNA into the modern day WCW. That didn't happen.
Not only did it not happen but the company actively lost momentum that it had going into 2010. Hogan and Bischoff brought in the likes of the aforementioned Ric Flair and Orlando Jordan, as well Scott Hall, The Nasty Boys, Sean Waltman, and Sean "Val Venis"Morley in an attempt to bring eyes to the product. They moved "TNA Impact"to Monday nights to try and put an end to "WWE Raw's" run of dominance on cable television, and the straw that broke the camel's back for some TNA fans, they got rid of the six-sided ring, a decision that only the wrestlers were happy with.
In the end, everything that Hogan and Bischoff attempted failed and TNA had taken so many backwards steps that companies like Ring of Honor were making legitimate claims for the number two spots in the United States, as were New Japan Pro Wrestling and CMLL overseas. TNA's star had fallen so far and it was all because of Hogan and Bischoff, which in turn affected their stock as well. They might have had all the success in the world during the 1990s with WCW and the New World Order, but they didn't learn from that bubble bursting and tried to roll back the years in the Impact Zone at a time where a lot of people wanted something different in wrestling.
Bischoff ended up suing TNA for not paying him towards the end of his contract and has outright stated that he regretted joining the company. Hogan would simply move on from TNA at the end of 2013 and was back promoting WWE by WrestleMania 30 in 2014, and until the birth of Real American Freestyle Wrestling in 2025, no one even attempted to bring either man to a position of power in their company. The reputation of both men was ruined, but not beyond repair as they would both end up making more appearances in WWE until Hogan's death in July 2025.
