This Sunday, Impact Wrestling returns to the Nashville Fairgrounds, A.K.A., The Asylum, that they spent the first 2 years of their existence when they were NWA-TNA. There were many trying times for the then-fledgling promotion. These five moments are the ones that I personally remember most about the era of Impact Wrestling that was NWA-TNA.
5. Traci Brooks Debuts and Attacks Lollipop
(April 30th, 2003)
This has nothing to do with the wonderful Traci Brooks being my close personal friend or anything, honest. In the early days of Impact Wrestling under the NWA-TNA banner, they actually had cage girls dancing. Lollipop was one of the cage girls and in one single night drew the ire of the original TNA Knockout. Traci ended up spending a decade with the company, managing numerous X-Division champions and Lollipop left the organization soon afterwards.
4. Hair vs. Hair: Shane Douglas vs. Raven
(September 17th, 2003)
This match may not be memorable for being a great feud or even being a great match, but it is sure as heck memorable. This concluded the violent feud between Douglas and Raven that went back to their ECW days. You might remember is as the match that Raven vomited during and Father James Mitchell digging deep into Raven’s scalp to get every hair follicle off of Raven. It was the only haircut I’ve witnessed that turned into being a bloody mess.
3. Ron Killings Becomes NWA World Heavyweight Champion
(August 7th, 2002)
In all of the years that the NWA has been operating, they had never had an African-American champion, and to this date, they still have never recognized an African-American world champion. On a summer Wednesday night in August, Ron Killings (R-Truth now in WWE), a longtime journeyman wrestler broke that mold and defeated Ken Shamrock and hold onto the belt for 3 months.
2. 1st Ultimate X match, Michael Shane vs. Frankie Kazarian vs. Chris Sabin
(August 20th, 2003)
The Ultimate X match may be a little overused now, but back in 2003 this proved how insane and barbaric of a match it could be. Three of the young lions in the early days of NWA-TNA went after it for over 20 minutes. I honestly thought that this match would catapult all three into WWE contracts, but only Kazarian made it to WWE and that was briefly. Michael Shane won, but his you would never know it due to the crimson mask that he was sporting afterwards.
1.NWA-TNA’s first steel cage match, America’s Most Wanted vs. Triple X
(June 25th, 2003)
This is the match that brought NWA-TNA into the forefront and put them on the map as a player in the early days of the promotion. While they had the re-treads of Jeff Jarrett, Raven, and Shane Douglas around to populate the main event, they went with 2 unknown teams and 4 relative unknowns at the time to the wrestling world (James Storm and Elix Skipper spent some time in the dying days of WCW) to be a part of the hottest tag team feud of the millennium.
This cage match has been called one of the best of all time and it still holds up to this day. I am shocked that right after this match that Vince McMahon didn’t throw the pocketbook at both teams to revive their tag team division that had been really torn apart because of the original brand split.
There are the top five Asylum years moments, but what are yours? let us know below
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