My take on TNA Wrestling pulling wrestlers from independent dates

I want to start this by writing a disclaimer that this column isn’t about defending WWE or even TNA, but it’s more about my opinion on the whole situation. I feel like a lot of what made this story such a hot topic was based solely on speculation from those in the wrestling media and social media bloggers. So just like them, my take is also based solely on speculation and might not please everybody—especially those anti-WWE fans who are looking for anything negative to criticize the company. So with that, here’s my take on TNA pulling wrestlers from indy dates.

So at the beginning of the week, the story broke that TNA pulled Moose off his Maple Leaf Wrestling date because he was booked to wrestle an AEW guy. Then later on, it was Leon Slater and Nic Nemeth’s situations, and the reason given for all three was that it was due to partner-related issues. It didn’t take long for everybody in the wrestling media and fans on social media to blame WWE for this, because let’s face it—who’s the biggest partner TNA has right now? WWE. And that will bring a lot more clicks and views than if it was somebody else that made the decision. So in my opinion, I feel like this has nothing to do with WWE and has everything to do with another TNA partner: AMC. I’ll explain why I feel like AMC might have something to do with TNA being forced to pull guys at the last minute.

So let’s start from the beginning here. TNA has been partnering with WWE for two years now, as this partnership started in 2024 and became official last year. During that period of time, TNA talents did have matches with AEW talents. In fact, they had matches against AEW talents on a few indy shows in Montreal where they were live, and WWE never said anything. You also have to take into consideration that some of the WWE ID wrestlers did face AEW talents or have been booked on shows that featured AEW guys, and WWE never forbade them from doing those shows. So why would this have changed now?

Why would they even care that one of their partners would let their wrestlers face AEW guys now when they haven’t cared for two years? To me, it really makes no sense.

But what’s new with TNA right now? They signed a multi-year TV deal with AMC. Now you might be thinking, why would AMC care about who TNA talents face on the indies? The answer is quite simple—they wouldn’t care unless something made them realize that they might be losing money if a TNA talent loses on PPV against somebody from AEW, who they might see as competition.

So let’s go back to when this story broke. It was early this week, either Monday or Tuesday, and that’s when the ratings for both AEW Collision and TNA IMPACT came out and were lower than usual. This may have made AMC realize not only that AEW is competition to their program, but also that when they go head-to-head, TNA isn’t getting as many viewers as usual—which means less money in their pocket.

So I could clearly see this becoming a suggestion on AMC’s part, because if TNA wrestlers competed against anybody from another promotion and it was televised, they could risk their TV deal or be penalized for allowing their guys to wrestle for another televised promotion—which all three matches would qualify as.

This kind of makes more sense in my mind because, in the end, when a wrestling company signs a TV deal with a major company, those TV executives—who may know nothing about wrestling—will sometimes meddle in company affairs. We saw that with TNA before during the Spike TV era, we saw it in AEW with WBD in the past, and we’ve even seen it with WWE and their TV partners before. So this type of practice isn’t uncommon, and just by looking at the timing of all this, this feels like the more logical explanation for what happened.

In conclusion, I don’t have all the answers on this story, and my opinion—just like everybody else’s, including those reporting this as real news—is based on speculation. The only person who knows the true reason why those talents were pulled from their scheduled matches is Carlos Silva, and he’s not going to talk about it.

So while I find this situation unfortunate for the talents, and it does make TNA look bad, I still understand why it was done and kind of side with TNA on this one. The last thing a company like TNA would want is to get on the bad side of its TV partners or any business partners. So if they ask you to do something, you have to do it—even if it doesn’t please you—and that’s exactly what TNA did earlier this week.