TNA Impact Wrestling Power Rankings: Is AJ Back?

Sure, the storyline is crap (the final segment nearly ruined the show) and borderline yawn inducing, but the quality of the in-ring action made this week’s episode of Impact Wrestling worthwhile.

The card, which featured everything from an entertaining Knockouts bout to an Ultimate X encounter, made sure you didn’t change the channel, but it was far from captivating or anything near the type of show the WWE pulls off every week.

Simply put, after more than 10 years, TNA still can’t find the right combination to get their company the respect it deserves. You have to if they’ll ever find it at this point.

Check out our weekly Impact Wrestling Power Rankings to see who deserves your attention in this sinking ship of a wrestling company.

5: The Aces and Eights: Bully Ray isn’t the World Champion anymore, but he’s still pertinent. Mr. Anderson’s win against Hernandez this week assures the club still has someone with a chance at The Bound for Glory Series. Regardless of how much steam they’ve lost over the past two weeks, the unpredictability of the company means they can make a comeback at any time. They can also disappear at any time as well.

4: Manik: The youngster won the X-Division title this week, but it was far from a sexy win. The match was defined by the in-ring work of Greg Marasciulo and Sonjay Dutt, but in the end, Manik snuck in and won the title. Although he’s an enigmatic performer with a slew of great offensive maneuvers in his arsenal, he didn’t show it this week. A shot at TNA World Heavyweight Champion Chris Sabin next week should change that.

3: Mickie James/Gail Kim: Is it sad that the Knockouts Division is the most entertaining in the company right now? With beautiful women who work hard in the ring, there isn’t a better company to watch the opposite sex perform in the ring. Well, as long as these two continue to face off with one another. A shallow division with less than a half-dozen performers, TNA is able to squeeze a lot out of the small roster in the Knockouts Division. If they could only do that with the dudes.

2: Main Event Mafia: Even with his loss to Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe is still in solid standing in the Bound for Glory series and Magnus, another MEM member, is in the lead. That aside, the MEM continue to play a large part in the company’s main storyline. So even with the company in dire straits financially, don’t expect them to go anywhere anytime soon.

1: AJ Styles: Easily his best match since his return, Styles mixed in his new aggressive offense with some of his old-school spot work to earn an impressive win over Jeff Hardy. Could this be the beginning of a real push for The Phenomenal One?

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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