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Every upstart wrestling company needs something unique to stand out from the rest of the industry and attract viewers. For Impact Wrestling, especially in the early TNA days, it was the X-Division that served this purpose.
For all intents and purposes, it was the fast-paced, wrestling heavy style of the Cruiserweight division. Yet, there was something that made the X-Division cooler. For a good while, the company promoted it spectacularly as something that one would only find in TNA and nowhere else. The wrestlers in the ring backed that claim up, and it was one of the biggest reasons that TNA would ultimately establish themselves as a genuine alternative to the WWE.
That was until the company would end up ruining everything that was special with the X-Division. Today, it is no longer viewed in the same light by wrestling fans as it was about a decade and a half ago.
TNA Didn't Give The X-Division The Respect That It Deserved
Initially, the X-Division had been promoted quite well by TNA and helped them set it apart from the rest of the card. But that would start to change after a few years.
There is no hiding from the fact that one of the main purposes of the X-Division was to showcase the smaller guys on the roster and hopefully find some break out stars amongst them. Soon though, many heavyweights would start to get involved in the picture as well. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it did not.
The storyline leading up to Abyss winning the X-Division championship was one instance where it did not work out at all and ended up making the entire division weak. Now, it might not have been a long run with the belt, but it still did a lot of damage to the image of it.
It made the fans question why they should be invested in the X-Division wrestlers if they were so much weaker than the heavyweights, and it never really recovered after that.
The Quality Of TNA's X-Division Talent Would Decrease Over The Years
Looking back, some of the early X-Division wrestlers went on to become the who's who of wrestling in the following years. AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe, Jay Lethal, Frankie Kazarian, and several other wrestlers, who would go on to become big names in the industry, had all held the X-Division Championship within the first five years of its existence.
It is safe to say that out of them, the likes of Styles, Joe, and Lethal would go on to become main event level talent in the industry, in TNA and beyond, while the likes of Daniels and Kazarian would go on to achieve huge success themselves, and were instrumental in the early success of AEW.
In the later years, the X-Division would continue to be the home of some great wrestlers, but they were not up to the mark, when compared to the likes of the original class.
TNA Overdid It With The X-Division At Times
The X-Division became a symbol of innovation for TNA, but not all innovation is great. TNA would learn that the hard way.
At times, it just felt like a lot of ideas were thrown into the X-Division to see what stuck. This led to a number of things happening that made very little sense and hurt the overall image of it.
Gimmick matches became overused, and while most people remember the Ultimate X Match, which was a grand success, there were a lot more which were not. The in ring action also became impossible to top after a while as the fans had seen the X-Division stars do almost everything to each other.
TNA Made The X-Division Just Another Mid-Card Belt
At one point in time, the X-Division was seen as a legitimate stepping stone to becoming a main event player in TNA, similar to the role that the Intercontinental title had played in the WWE in the 1990s and the early 2000s. The likes of Styles and Joe would prove themselves in the X-Division before getting a push higher up the card. Daniels was also a feature there, although he never won the World Title.
That became less and less frequent as the years went by though and the X-Division was reduced to just another belt, with the wrestlers in the division having very little hope of mobility up the card in the future. After 2010, the only true main event level success that the X-Division produced was Austin Aries with his Option C.