The poor financial decisions made by a wrestling company can easily cause issues to hurt them. TNA found this out the hard way with a legacy of always making the wrong moves. Management was never secure from the company until the current regime earned a positive reputation. Dixie Carter was the person most associated with the big decisions as her parent’s company, Panda Energy, funded TNA as they lost a lot of money most years.
TNA’s roster has almost always been good, but the nature of always spending money in the wrong areas hurt them in the short and long run. The company never posed a viable threat to WWE and fell behind other companies like New Japan and Ring of Honor along the way. We will look at some of the bad decisions to cost them in the literal sense as these are the ten most ridiculous ways TNA wasted money.
10 Outspending WWE To Sign James Storm
WWE broke their unwritten rule of avoiding TNA talents on the free agent market for Samoa Joe. The success of Joe opened the door for other relevant talents like AJ Styles and Bobby Roode. Triple H was close to adding James Storm to the NXT roster after a few appearances.
TNA however reached out to Storm with a huge contract offer more than twice as high as WWE’s contract. Triple H informed Storm that he couldn’t match the deal. Storm returned to TNA to reform Beer Money, but Roode left for WWE shortly after. TNA paid Storm main event money to be a mid-carder.
9 Going Live On Television Every Week
TNA had a solid business model for television when taping the show every week in Orlando much like NXT has done in recent years. The desire of Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff to compete with WWE featured the change of the touring schedule.
A move was made for TNA to start touring with Impact airing live every week. The costs needed strong ratings and revenue for the move to be worth it. TNA would see nothing change as the ratings were essentially the same and they spent all that money for nothing.
8 Sting's Massive Contract
Sting was one of the first major stars signed by TNA when he joined full-time back in 2005. The former WCW star did not have much confidence in WWE using him and went with TNA once they offered him a huge deal. Sting was often the highest paid talent on the roster with reports of $500,000 to over $1 million per year.
The presence of Sting did help TNA by having such a star, but it wasn’t worth the money they paid him each year. To make matters worse, Sting rarely appeared on the house shows even when holding the TNA Championship which hurt the company in small yet important ways.
7 Bringing In Johnny Swinger On Multi-Year Contract
The recent regime of Impact Wrestling has found more positive results in their planning, but that doesn’t mean they don’t find ways to waste money as well. WWE, AEW and other promotions have signed most of the top names which makes it hard to find new talent.
Impact has made a strange move by signing Johnny Swinger to a multi-year contract. The former ECW and WCW talent never did much of note during his prime in the late 90s. Impact adding an older name no one really cares about to a long contract is clearly a waste of money.
6 Signing Tito Ortiz And Rampage Jackson
TNA tried to bring non-wrestling talent to the company if their name value was strong enough to create interest. UFC ‘s success would lead to many talents from the octagon making the jump to the professional wrestling world and vice versa.
Both Tito Ortiz and Rampage Jackson received a lot of money to join the TNA roster. Ortiz was the reveal of a mystery man after months of hype and fans showed zero interest. Rampage didn’t fare much better with his run in the Main Event Mafia just hurting the faction.
5 Hiring Pacman Jones To Not Wrestle
NFL player Adam “Pacman” Jones had a negative reputation for doing horrible things off the field. Following a suspension from the NFL, TNA signed Jones to a big money contract with the hope of him wrestling in a tag team with R-Truth.
The NFL contract of Jones legally prevented him from risking injury in such a physical sport. Pacman was not allowed to get physical, but TNA still put the Tag Team Championship on him as he tagged in for the pin. This entire run was a huge disappointment as TNA wasted money on an irrelevant name that couldn’t even wrestle.
4 Steel Asylum Structure
TNA was known for having odd match stipulations with reverse ladder matches and reverse battle royals. However, they also liked to come up with match ideas that would cause them to waste away quite a bit of money.
The Steel Asylum was a glorified cage match with a bigger structure that provided all negatives. Wrestlers struggled to climb it with embarrassing moments coming from this, cameras struggled to get good views and fans were not entertained with the match inside of the expensive structure.
3 Bringing Chyna Out Of Retirement
Chyna stepped away from the wrestling industry for many years after things in WWE ended poorly. Aside from a short NJPW stint and a handful of independent wrestling appearances, Chyna did not want to continue in wrestling.
TNA would convince her to come back for a strange return making light of her old WWE feud with Jeff Jarrett. Chyna and Kurt Angle defeated Jeff and Karen Jarrett in an unimpressive match. This was the only appearance of Chyna as she made a lot of money to have a short program.
2 Booking Jersey Shore Cast Members
The Jersey Shore was a huge success for MTV as a reality show, but the cast members weren’t big names by any means. TNA hoped that they had a following that would care enough to tune into Impact and become huge fans of the wrestling product.
JWOWW reportedly received $15,000 to make one appearance during an in-ring promo with the wrestling character Cookie. Another Jersey Shore cast member Angelina Pivarnick received big money to appear on Impact as well. The Jersey Shore stars added nothing as the ratings went down as TNA once again wasted money.
1 Hulk Hogan And Eric Bischoff
The biggest instance of TNA wasting money created more problems that the company would never rebound from. It was a boom or bust scenario where Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff signed big deals to not only work for TNA on-screen, but they were running the show behind the scenes.
Hogan and Bischoff were responsible for many signings and decisions that caused the company to bleed out more money. The former WCW success would not be found in TNA as they missed the mark on almost every major decision. Hogan and Bischoff were wastes of TNA money and then they wasted more of it.