Abyss is rightfully a TNA legend and to many, he will be the first name they think of when hearing the letters T-N-A. He won every championship in the company, including the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. He wrestled and had storylines with legends like Sting, Mick Foley, Hulk Hogan, Kurt Angle, and had interactions with every big name that ever came through TNA.
The Character Of “The Monster” Abyss
For a time in TNA, Abyss was one of the most interesting wrestlers in the entire world, especially when his Monster aura was kept intact.
The Abyss character, appearance and personality were heavily influenced by the famous literary horrors of the Victorian era, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He had the potential to be one of the best written monsters in wrestling history. This was a character which wasn’t just thought provoking, but made the audience think and sympathise with this supposed monster in a way monsters in wrestling rarely had been before.
The problem was the gimmick didn’t get the respect it deserved. WWE never gave up on the Undertaker, his mystic was kept strong until his very last match. Abyss character deserved the exact same respect as the Undertaker character but unfortunately he never got it.
The Booking Of “The Monster” Abyss
Abyss was so good at playing this character, TNA used and abused him so much when he may have been better of used sparingly. Abyss was so good at being “The Monster,” so good at the hardcore death match style, TNA overused it. It seemed like every PPV Abyss was putting his body through hell in Monster’s Ball matches, Full Metal Mayhem matches, Matches of 10,000 Tacks, Doomsday Chamber of Blood Matches, Barbed Wire Massacre matches, First Blood Steel Chair on a Pole matches, Serengeti Survival matches and Hangman's Horror matches.
Yes, those were all real match types…
Though it wasn’t just silly matches Abyss had gone through, Abyss usually got caught up in many simply bizarre storylines as well. Abyss got caught up in more silly, nonsense, “LOLTNA” storylines than perhaps any other wrestler. In no particular order:
- James Mitchell being Abyss’s father
- Abyss being in prison for shooting his step father in the back multiple times
- Judas Messiah being Abyss’s brother
- Abyss being the herald of Immortal, screaming, “10-10-10, They’re Coming!!!”
- Abyss kidnapping Christian Cage’s wife
- Abyss being committed to a mental asylum
- Abyss being a patient of Dr Stevie
- Abyss falling in love with Goldylocks
- Abyss falling in love with Desmond Wolfe’s girlfriend, Chelsea
- Abyss killing RVD with Janice(he also used to eat raw meat in the lead up to this one)
- Abyss becomes an intellectual by reading the “Art of War”
- Abyss being a fanboy for Mick Foley
- Abyss being a fanboy for Hulk Hogan(ugh, at least it made some kind of sense with Foley)
- Abyss not just being a fanboy of Hulk Hogan, Abyss literally becoming Hulk Hogan, wearing red and yellow, coming out Hulk Hogan’s music, doing Hogan’s poses, gaining magical powers from Hulk Hogan’s WWE Hall of Fame Ring and literally saying “Whatcha Gonna Do?” This was around the time Hogan literally thought Abyss could be their John Cena…
That wasn’t all of them, those were just the big ones…
Again, full credit to Abyss, some of those stories weren’t all bad. He made some of them work!
One shouldn't blame TNA for all of this (well, maybe blame Vince Russo and Hulk Hogan a little) but let’s be fair, booking a monster heel is hard. It’s very hard, and it is ever more difficult when that monster happens to be around for so long. Every trap that TNA fell into with Abyss, WWE fell into with Kane, Big Show, Braun Stroman and even with The Undertaker at times. Monsters were never supposed to be around for a prolonged period of time; back in the day, they were usually just around for long enough for the big babyface to conquer them, and then they could move on to the next territory to do them same thing all over again.
It is a credit to Abyss himself that the character was able to remain over and relevant for almost 20 years in TNA. Abyss had a legendary career and fully deserves to be in the Impact Wrestling Hall of Fame when the time comes.