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TNA, or Impact Wrestling as they are known, is having a hard time at the moment. In fact, has been having a hard time a lot in recent years, whether it be wrestlers leaving the company, bad business decisions or poor attendance, which has left the company under a lot of criticism. But now and the past, they've had one hell of a roster that have given us some of the greatest matches and moments over the last 16 years.
Now while Impact Wrestling, in my opinion at least, is very entertaining today (and has always been), most fans will tell you it has never been anywhere near as good as WWE. To be honest, I find fault with this. In fact, I think their have been quite a few things in wrestling that Impact has not just been great at doing, but did better than WWE at. And the following are what I think are the top 5.
#5 Invading Faction
WWE's most notorious Invasion angle will always be the WCW/ECW Alliance angle of 2001. As bad as it was, it doesn't really count as an 'Invading Faction' storyline as they were posing as they were still active companies intending to put WWE out of business and take over WWE's time slots.
WWE's biggest 'Invading Faction' storyline came in 2010, The Nexus. And yes, for a while, it was the hottest thing in wrestling and it's first couple of months were well thought out. However, after the group's big loss at SummerSlam, things went on a bit of a downward spiral and once leader Wade Barrett departed the group and CM Punk took over, the whole thing went to hell and just fizzled out.
Over in TNA Impact Wrestling, these angles have actually fared off a little better. They had a pretty entertaining invasion angle during their first few months of existence back in 2002 when Vince Russo debuted his 'Sports Entertainment X-treme' faction, would had an entertaining few months before it fizzled out, but most notably, TNA had a very well received angle from 2012 - 2013 with the Aces & Eights faction. It was one of the better ideas to come from the Hogan-Bischoff administration.
The group appeared as masked bikers during their first four months in the company. TNA would often used different stand ins including independent stars and various TNA employees in order to protect the identities of the group members. Overall, about half of the unmasking's were leaked out prior, while the other half were legitimate surprises. The group feuded with every big face name including Hulk Hogan, Sting, Kurt Angle, AJ Styles and even a revived Main Event Mafia.
Unlike most faction angles, especially in TNA, this one was given an official proper, fitting and good conclusion when the group was forced to disband on the November 21, 2013 edition of Impact Wrestling.
#4 'Broken' Matt Hardy
After over 20 years in the business, Matt Hardy managed to re-invent himself to an incredible degree back in 2016.
In May of that year, Matt debuted a new persona as a "Broken" man with part of his hair bleached blonde along with a strange sophisticated accent, who would refer to defeating his opponents as 'Deleting' them. While most looked at the whole angle as a wrestling B-Movie, it still managed to get incredibly over. The whole gimmick was really the talk of the wrestling world in 2016, with the ever entertaining and hilarious skits every week written and produced by Matt himself and Jeremy Borash, as well as his crazy 'Deletion' matches.
When Matt and Jeff Hardy parted ways with Impact Wrestling in early 2017, they left the Broken Universe behind them as certain aspects of it were tied to Impact and Anthem. When Matt finally gained the rights to it in November 2017, the character made is way to WWE TV, with mixed results. While Matt does have a lot of creative control over the character, WWE did not use it to the best of their power.
Matt's promo's and segments remained the same after just one fully Broken one (featuring he battling a fish in chess), and his feud with Bray Wyatt ended badly when the two formed a tag team. Today, Matt's in-ring future remains in question. It wasn't all bad as we did get 'The Ultimate Deletion' on RAW which was highly entertaining, and the House Hardy Halloween special which was also a fantastic watch, but the character still fared off far better in Impact Wrestling.
#3 High Flying Wrestling
There had been some high flying wrestling in WWE throughout the '90s, but it only came in small doses compared to WCW, so back in 2002, WWE decided to take a crack at their own cruiserweight division, hoping to replicate the success of it in WCW. However after just a few short months, they seemed to lose interest in it and high flying matches in WWE became very sporadic, from 2002 - 2007, when the original WWE Cruiserweight division came to an end.
When TNA debuted in June 2002, they presented themselves as an alternative to WWE and promoted high flying wrestling very heavily on all of their advertisement. And to be honest, they were correct in doing so as the X Division was generally the highlight of each and every show throughout their fist few years in business. We saw many death-defying moves on a weekly bases and new, very inventive match types created by TNA, such as the Ultimate X. The high flying action was incredible and would outshine WWE's cruiserweights in every way possible.
It wasn't until the WWE Cruiserweight Classic in 2016 that WWE gave another crack at high flying wrestling as a constant thing every week. WWE did have some high flying action in the years prior, but it was never on a continuous basis. The X Division remains one of Impact Wrestling's highlights every week still to this day.
#2 Women's Wrestling
Women's wrestling in WWE in the '90s wasn't all bad, for a little while at least. Alundra Blayze had good matches with Bull Nakano and Bertha Faye, but WWE never cared for it and cancelled the division in 1995. When it returned in 1998, it wasn't much better and between 2002 - 2015, it was a mixed bag.
TNA didn't have a women's division when they first started. It wasn't until 2007 when they signed a dozen women's performers and formed it. Gail Kim became the inaugural Champion at Bound For Glory that year and spent the next year having some of the best women's matches in wrestling history, with Awesome Kong.
From here onward to this present day, TNA would have many more fantastic women's matches featuring Gail, Kong, Mickie James, Tara (Victoria), Velvet Sky, Angelina Love, Madison Rayne, ODB, Taryn Terrell, Rosemary, Su Young and many many more.
The women's division of WWE NXT since 2012 and women's division on the WWE main roster since 2015 have been delivering some of the best women's matches ever, but as far as a movement for women's wrestling on the mainstream, Impact Wrestling beat them to it.
#1 The Entire Year of 2006
Much of 2006 for WWE was like a failed throwback to the '90s. We had the reunion of Shawn Michaels and Triple H as D-Generation X, which was nowhre near as entertaining as their first run 9 years earlier. Back in 1997, DX was groundbreaking, pushing the envelope as far as possible. The two young guys were highly entertaining in their 18 TV rating antics, while in 2006, they were two 40 something-year-olds making toilet jokes, and they weren't very funny.
WWE also gave us that flop of an ECW revival, a pointless Kane vs. Fake Kane storyline, Rey Mysterio being booked very poorly as World Champion, the late Eddie Guerrero's name popping up in storyline, Kurt Angle parted ways with the company, and Vince McMahon beat God in a match, among other questionable and poor booking decisions.
And even though their ratings didn't match up to WWE, TNA Impact Wrestling was presenting pretty damn quality TV. The 'Icon' Sting had come out of retirement and joined the company, the previously most underused star in WWE, Christian, was a major main event player, and the company even managed to sign Kurt Angle. Joining these three, the TNA roster also consisted of such other talent as AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Jeff Jarrett, the Dudley Boyz, Eric Young, Bobby Roode, Raven, Rhyno, Gail Kim, Alex Shelly, Chris Sabin, Jay Lethal, LAX, America's Most Wanted and many more. Even legends like Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner were contributing the company in very positive ways.
Storylines such as L.A.X, Jeff Jarrett vs. Sting, Kurt Angle's arrival and feud with Samoa Joe, Paparazzi Productions, and the rise of Christian Cage were all far superior to what WWE had to offer. Almost everything TNA did in 2006 was far better than what WWE was putting out. I think you could argue which company was better in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, but 2006 belonged to TNA and should have been their launch to be WWE's equal.
What makes Sting special? His first AEW opponent opens up RIGHT HERE.
