TNA has been around since 2002, but the company didn’t actually get its own belt until 2007. During the first five years of existence, TNA used the NWA title, appending their own initials after a colon. Because of that, TNA wasn’t 100% in control of the direction of the title, at least in terms of how it was presented. With the NWA title, you have 60-some-odd years of history, and it’s tied to several companies, eras, and audience expectations. The problem with a belt like that is it comes with a pre-defined notion as to what it means. With the new TNA World Title, first hoisted by Kurt Angle at Slammiversary 2007, the company had a chance to define a title in its own way. They did so by taking Kurt Angle, who had so far played relatively fair in his 8 months in the company, and turned him into their top villain. The first noun attached to the title was weapon, as Angle clocked Samoa Joe with it. Many other terms have become attached to the belt over the years: power, suffering, and, for a small time, hideous. I’m going to append my own term to it: cursed. The TNA World Heavyweight title is cursed. It ruins men.

The TNA World Title is cursed in two ways. First, it turns its owner evil. If you were a good guy while chasing the belt, you’ll be a bad guy defending it. Secondly, winning the belt signifies ascension to the top of TNA, a place where the owner will seemingly work forever. In a feat almost no pro wrestling organization can claim, almost every single TNA World Champion still works for TNA, and none are better off having heeded the siren song.

Only 10 men have held this title, and all 10 share the curse. 

1. Kurt Angle: Angle turned evil the second he touched the belt, and would continue his villainy until he lost it for good in mid 2009. He would become a sort of hero again in 2010, battling the man who stole his wife and family through 2011. But when he got a chance to win the title again, he turned again, joining Hulk Hogan’s Immortal. Kurt Angle has never held the TNA title has a hero.

2. Samoa Joe: TNA pushed Joe as their No. 1 hero through 2007 and into his win at Lockdown 2008. His turn was subtle and subjective, as he would regularly “go too far” to defend his belt throughout the summer. After losing the title to Sting, he never returned to the same heroic character, playing a mercenary and victim to circumstance. In the fall of 2011, he still doesn’t like Sting very much.

3. Sting: Sting had held the belt a few times without turning, and could have spoiled my theory if not for his run as a respect-motivated psychopath in 2008-09. And though he was technically a good guy during his title reign in 2011, his motives weren’t clear, he “spoke cryptically,” and he started wearing his facepaint like Heath Ledger’s Joker.

4. Mick Foley: Foley beat Sting for the belt and almost immediately let the power go to his head, threatening to only defend the belt once a year. His villainous turn was due entirely to holding the title, as he would return to his good guy nature immediately following. Foley is the only wrestler to hold the belt that has actually left the company.

5. AJ Styles: AJ had played a villain before, but it wasn’t until a few months into his respectably lengthy reign that he joined Ric Flair and turned, becoming another guy in a big faction (something that’s plagued his career). 

6. Rob Van Dam: Here’s where it gets tricky. Rob held the title for several months without being a bad guy, and he still isn’t. But let’s look at TNA through its own logical lens for a minute. Who hoisted Rob up as champion in the first place? Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff. If, as they claim, they were never there for benevolent purposes, you have to link their push of Rob as part of their “plan” all along, which makes Rob both a pawn of evil and a putz. Plus, his main feud was against Sting, who was actually right about all the deception stuff.⁠¹ 

7. Ken Anderson: Anderson didn’t hold the belt for very long, which is strange. He also straddled the line between hero and villain during the winter of 2010-11, so it only sort of fits. Technically, Anderson isn’t cursed in the same way as the others, but in fact far worse. Anderson’s story was about the concussion Jeff Hardy gave him, and how he was never really cleared to wrestle, but he did anyway because of “the title, the title, the title!” This is another part of the curse: those who’ve tasted it always want it, even though it’s not good for them. WWE’s “Night of Champions” 2010 main event featured a very poetic vignette that implied the desire to hold gold in wrestling as chasing a siren’s song. They weren’t talking about Ken Anderson, but they were totally talking about Ken Anderson. 

8. Jeff Hardy: I honestly believe that TNA had never considered its prominent title a cursed item until they decided to give it to Jeff Hardy. They positioned Hardy as champion amidst court dates, drug charges, unprofessional conduct, and increasingly poor performances. First off, the title turned him evil, as he joined up with Bischoff and Hogan to reveal ‘they’ at Bound for Glory 2010. His transformation was far more bad cowboy than the other champions, as his dress and attitude shifted into the dark. Because Hardy and the TNA title were really made for one another, the belt was trashed and replaced with a purple faceplate. Finally, the belt resembled not an item of glory but avarice, a real cursed item, something to be sealed away to protect the hearts of corruptible men. Hardy’s run ended in the shortest and most disappointing main event in recent history (and, maybe, history). Sting felled Hardy with no effort, and then Hardy was sent home. He returned six months later, having attended rehab and a short prison sentence. He is a hero again, possibly being groomed for another championship run. Obviously, there is no actual correlation between the TNA Title and Hardy’s behaviour and self-harm, though you can certainly wonder out loud about a company that would enable and encourage a beleagured man. TNA’s cursed title is, if anything, indicative of an overall attitude with the company. Bestowment of metaphorical glory in place of a real thing can still make good men do bad things.⁠²

9. James Storm: You can absolutely argue that James Storm has done nothing villainous, and his entire championship reign contained no traces of the curse. But I will argue that a) Storm’s reign was two weeks, and only contained two matches, and b) one of those matches lasted three minutes, where he hit one move. That second match is the clincher: if James and Bobby are such good friends, why would Storm take the match in the first place? The whole thing had a very WrestleMania IX feel to it, where Hogan took Bret Hart’s place to defeat Yokozuna, a moment I’ve argued is when Hogan really turned evil. It highlights a feature of the curse many others suffered from but never as clearly: opportunism. Also, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that Storm will be a proper villain within three months.

10. Bobby Roode: Roode is my favourite kind of villain. He’s a good man, pushed by society into a corner, and made a choice to stick up for himself. TNA went out of its way over the summer to paint Roode as a family man who tries really hard. He was clearly and absolutely screwed by Kurt Angle during their match at Bound for Glory, and you really had to feel for him as he cheered on his best friend defeated Angle with really no effort. He got a chance to fight his best friend for the title, which is something they both said would be fantastic. They agreed to put on a great match, and they delivered. And then, Bobby Roode saw the beer bottle, and put together that the ref wouldn’t see it if he smashed it over Storm’s head. He could win, and in that moment, winning a bastard title was more important than retaining a friendship.

Thus is wrestling, defined by Barthes:

Conversely, foul play exists only in its excessive signs: administering a big kick to one’s beaten opponent, taking refuge behind the ropes while ostensibly invoking a purely formal right, refusing to shake hands with one’s opponent before or after the fight, taking advantage of the end of the round to rush treacherously at theadversary from behind, fouling him while the referee is not looking (a move which obviously only has any value or function because in fact half the audience can see it and get indignant about it). Since Evil is the natural climate of wrestling, a fair fight has chiefly the value of being an exception. It surprises the aficionado, who greets it when he sees it as an anachronism and a rather sentimental throwback to the sporting tradition (‘Aren’t they playing fair, those two’); he feels suddenly moved at the sight of the general kindness of the world, but would probably die of boredom and indifference if wrestlers did not quickly return to the orgy of evil which alone makes good wrestling.

TNA has made conscious decision after conscious decision to make its champion a bastard villain, and over and over again they still tout the importance of the belt as a desired treasure. They have never mentioned that the belt does any good things, and its only real defined quality is power, which Zelda fans know isn’t the triforce you want. It’s somewhat like the one ring, too, except far chinsier and way less desired.

K Sawyer Paul is an author and publisher living in Toronto. He tweets and tumbls. In the wrestling world he is known for This is Sports Entertainment and The Footnotes of Wrestling. 

Edited by Jason Mann.

1.  Which helps explain a bit why Fake Vince loves the guy. ↩

2.  TNA re-re-redesigned the World title for Sting, and it looks like a regular old belt again. It’s unfortunate, because the new design is less glorious looking than the title Eric Young currently lugs around, and has far less character than Hardy’s. It looks cheap, like it’s made of the cheapest boxing-belt material they could find. ↩