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Stop us if you’ve heard this one…
LOLTNA. That has become the Scarlett Letter(s) of Total Nonstop Action Wrestling when a bad booking decision, or a bad corporate decision, or a bad financial decision, or a bad all-of-the-above decision happens within the company.
It seems, often, that for every step forward that TNA takes, it takes two steps backwards; much to the chagrin of fans who really, really want to believe in the company.
Because for every thing that might be perceived as “wrong” with TNA, there are a lot of things that are very, very right. TNA is, for all intents and purposes, the third biggest wrestling company in the world. The company has a roster of so many incredibly talented men and women who, like their fans, actually believe in the company. They want the company to get bigger, to do better, to be more.
But for every step forward — for every Joe Hendry or AJ Francis, or for every time their women’s division is considered the best in the world, or for every partnership with WWE — there’s Moose. Or Tessa Blanchard.
To say the two (incredibly talented) performers are problematic would be a massive understatement. Moose, a former TNA Heavyweight Champion and current X-Division Champion, has a bit of a spotty past. And by “spotty past,” we mean, “was arrested and charged with battery after allegedly throwing his wife down a flight of stairs.”
Several media outlets covered the arrest, as Moose (real name Quinn Ojinnaka) was playing for the Atlanta Falcons at the time of his arrest, which occurred in 2009.
According to NFL.com, “Police said Ojinnaka’s wife confronted him about contact with a female friend on Facebook. Police said he tossed her down some stairs and threw her out of their house in Suwanee late Tuesday.”
Now, that was 15 years ago and people make mistakes and, hopefully, learn, grow and mature from them. Moose, on the other hand, tends to revel in controversy.
Such was the case recently when, in another LOLTNA moment, the company re-hired Tessa Blanchard. Blanchard was fired from the company in 2020, when she was the reigning World Heavyweight Champion; an incredible feat and one of the good steps that TNA made…except for the fact that it was Blanchard who was the champion.
Right before Blanchard’s firing, several of her colleagues came out, accusing Blanchard of bullying and racism, even alleging that she spit in the face of a black woman, and used the n-word. Newly-crowned WWE Women’s United States Champion Chelsea Green was among them.
Blanchard was ostracized and basically cast out of the mainstream professional wrestling realm. And while nothing concrete was ever prevented, it’s hard to prove that somebody said something. Or spit on somebody. So it became a case of she said/she said, and most people believe what all of the other “she’s” said.
Since then, Blanchard has more or less floundered. Women of Wrestling tried to make her the face of their organization, but she proved herself to be a frustrating presence there, as well. She spent some time in Mexico as well. But it was announced last week that TNA had re-hired the former World Champion, despite misgivings from countless fans and, reportedly, even some of her co-workers.
Still, Blanchard re-emerged and attacked Jordynn Grace. And many fans online were not happy about. So, being the mature, empathetic, self aware person that he is, Moose decided to snap a (horribly framed) selfie of he and Blanchard to, presumably, “pwn the noobz.” Or, more accurately, “trigger the IWC.”
Not content with simply snapping a photo to prove that his maturity hasn’t grown at all since ’09, Moose also decided to body shame a fan online, who must have struck a chord when she called out the two of them.
In life, in most cases, people deserve a second chance. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody says and does things that, later on, we regret. People grow. People learn. People mature. And when they know they’ve screwed up, they try to rectify the problems they created, so as to make amends. Or, at the very least, they apologize. Neither Blanchard, nor Moose, have done any of that and they are, in fact, going out of their way to antagonize fans. Whether that becomes a winning ticket for TNA and makes the company money, or continues to divide and alienate fans who have been with the company since 2002, remains to be seen. There’s a difference between “heel heat,” and “go away heat.” Or, in this case, “You’re both actively terrible people and we don’t want to support you or the company you work for because it makes us sick to our stomachs because you’ve shown no growth in your personal life and you’ve done nothing to make amends to the people you’ve hurt…heat.” Hopefully, for TNA’s sake, it isn’t the latter.
Follow Nick on Twitter/X at @WesternRebel and on BlueSky at @westernrebel.bsky.social.
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