Joe, Daniels and AJ

Once upon a time, TNA had promise and future. Their X-Division prominently featured three guys who were indie darlings blossoming before our eyes into legitimate wrestling superstars. Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels and AJ Styles were making that division hot, almost as hot as the World Title division. In fact, it had gotten to the point where a three-way match involving those three had headlined a PPV. For a company with an identity crisis, these were three guys who could forge an image for TNA to last well into the next decade.

Then, something happened. Who knows if it was Jeff Jarrett who lost faith, or whether bringing in Kurt Angle put stars in everybody's eyes and blinded the brass from the stars they had budding and turned them to the fading lights of guys like Sting, Booker T and Kevin Nash. And so it continued until Jarrett started to shack up with Angle's ex-wife while they were in the middle of a custody dispute.

So, with Jarrett, his cronies and his good ol' boys club mentality out the window, there's a fresh start on the horizon for the company. In the last set of tapings, they seem to have been making good on that. Hernandez, the British Invasion, Eric Young and *shudder* Matt Morgan are all getting good faith pushes and getting a big part of the spotlight in addition to the established stars. But what about Daniels, Joe and AJ?

On the most previous Impact, the go-home show before Hard Justice, Daniels was nowhere to be seen. He's being shunted into the insane X-Division clusterfuck match. Joe wasn't on the program until the end of the show, when the Main Event Mafia came out to congratulate Morgan for winning the title shot. In the middle of the show, they had Taz cut a promo about how Joe disappointed him and let him and himself down. He talked about how Joe was going to turn a "negative into a positive".

Meanwhile, AJ was up against Morgan AJ kept telling Sting how he keeps letting people down and how he's going to make it up to him by beating Morgan in the third and deciding match in their best-of-three series. Then, you have the announcers putting over how many matches AJ's been losing and about how if he lost, it'd be a confidence shatterer. Well, AJ lost, and lost clean.

For three talented and charismatic guys, to see how far they've all fallen in the esteem of management is a tragedy. They're passed off in kayfabe as afterthoughts, put in current programs based on them losing and being inadequate while other guys get protected. It's a damn shame, especially in the case of AJ, who is a potential franchise guy. While I say on this blog all the time that heat is elastic, some guys can just be so ruined that it would take a LOOOT of rehab to get a guy back to a level where fans are hot for him. If not in TNA though, where should the guys go?

The WWE is the knee-jerk answer, but with the state of things over there, it might not be the best choice for all of them. The WWE has a size fetish, so Daniels is out right away unless he'd want to work cruiser matches and end up like Jamie Noble. Same with AJ, since he's even smaller than CM Punk. Samoa Joe has said he didn't want to work the stereotypical Samoan gimmick, and so far, aside from The Rock, they've given that to every Samoan who's stepped foot in the ring for them at some point. Plus, they'll have their names changed, because God forbid the WWE push someone who isn't their own "product".

Still though, there would be hope if they went there. They're pushing Evan Bourne despite his lack of size, and both Daniels can bring the excitement. Joe is big enough and with rep from the right people (Punk, Bourne, etc.), maybe he can be able to come in as is instead of being shunted into a lame gimmick.

ROH is another option, since all three are alumni and now have TV. The fed is looking to move up, and names that are both familiar to their audiences and to the audiences they're looking to court would be good for them. However, their big problem would be money. TNA may not be on par with the WWE, but they do bring in a lot more revenue than a fledgling company like ROH would.

Of course, when speculating on all of this, we have to realize one thing. The way we see wrestlers isn't necessarily the way they see themselves. While we have a way of looking at things hypercritically, a lot of times, they're happy with the paycheck and the chance to go out and prove that they deserve a push. Do AJ, Daniels and Joe have input in their angles and characters? Maybe they do and maybe they don't. Are they happy with the money, schedule and retention of their name and character elements? Maybe, maybe not.

However, as a fan, it's hard to sit here and watch them waste away when they could be doing so much more and entertaining much more than they are with their limitations. Yes, it's great that Hernandez and Young are getting pushes (not Morgan... Morgan fucking sucks), but it feels like they gave up on those guys that made shivers go up everyone's spines when they were coming up in the X-Division. I want to see them shine, we all do, but where can they do it? Hopefully, TNA sees the error and when whoever comes in to book comes in, they start by doing right by AJ Styles, Samoa Joe and Christopher Daniels.