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Things are happening fast and furious in the world of pro wrestling right now, but if you’re a regular consumer of content about the business, you probably know about TNA’s decision to limit/prohibit its talents from facing AEW-contracted wrestlers on independent shows.
It was a decision made after some high-profile indie matches between TNA and AEW stars had been booked, and led to those being cancelled and the shows’ cards reworked. As events around this weekend’s WrestleMania 42 get started in Las Vegas, one of those shows happened last night (April 16) — WrestleCon’s Mark Hitchcock Memorial Supershow.
The main event was supposed to feature AEW’s Ricochet vs. TNA’s Leon Slater, but for reasons that could be his alone, TNA president Carlos Silva instituted the promotion’s new role. Silva hasn’t publicly commented on it, and WrestleCon promoter Michael Bochicchio says he can’t get a call back from the guy.
Bochicchio’s replacement match certainly wasn’t a bad one, pitting Ricochet and his Demand teammates Bishop Kaun and Toa Liona against JetSpeed’s Kevin Knight and Speedball Mike Bailey and RevPro’s Michael Oku. But it wasn’t Ricochet vs. Slater, and TNA hasn’t exactly gotten a ton of great publicity out of Silva’s edict.
So before the actual main event started, the WrestleCon crowd sent a message. It takes a second to catch on but then gets pretty loud.
My favorite part is notorious nice guy Speedball realizing what’s happening and just lowering his head to wait for it to be over.
Funny moment, but probably not one Silva and TNA will lose too much sleep over if the controversy blows over after the cancelled matches are past (the other impacted show — pun intended — was CAP’s Monumental Moment, which lost MJF vs. Nic Nemeth; that’s coming up on May 1). It’s not like TNA hasn’t survived having a bad PR before.
What do you make of the SuperShow crowd’s chant? And do you think this will blow over, or is it a real problem for WWE’s Canadian-owned partner promotion?
