Is This a Gut Check Wrestlers Should Want?

LuFisto is too good for TNA, but if this is what she wants... Photo Credit: Gregory Davis/DDS

Alex Silva was quietly released from Impact Wrestling last week. I'm not sure how many people get the significance of that name, but he was the first ever contestant on TNA's Gut Check, and he ended up getting a developmental deal out of it. He maybe appeared once on Impact after that, during the show when all the Gut Check winners (and Joey Ryan) appeared on the show as a reunion. In fact, of everyone who has made it through the highly public meat market appraisal, I think the only one who really got extended play out of it was Wes Brisco. His appraisal was worked from the start as an arc within the Aces and Eights overall story though. Christian York had some play too, but he's been almost a ghost in the last half-year.

Furthermore, it's not like these wrestlers who are looking for an in have a high probability of even making enough to make ends meet. Low-card wrestlers, especially women, have had documented problems with management compensating them fairly for years now. Even wrestlers as high-profile as Daffney, who by her career birthright as a former WCW wrestler SHOULD have been part of the protected class, have been maltreated to the point of their careers being over.

With that in mind, it concerns me to see wrestlers like LuFisto stump so hard to win their voting brackets in this much (and totally deservedly) maligned online Gut Check process. It's not that I don't think LuFisto doesn't deserve a chance to be on TV. In a perfect world, she would either be the centerpiece of a promotion that gets nationwide pub or at the very least would get to go to WWE and get financial fulfillment. That is to say, I don't think LuFisto doesn't deserve TNA. I certainly think that TNA does not deserve to waste and abuse the talents of someone as supremely gifted as LuFisto. The same goes for anyone else who tried to put their names in the hat like Sugar Dunkerton.

That being said, is it insensitive to publicly squelch these desires? In theory, the Gut Check contestants all seem to have at least an outside shot of taking an opportunity and running with it. It seems slim given the state of anyone who isn't already in the main event, but hey, Austin Aries made it, right? If we conveniently ignore that this is his third run with the company, then yeah, I guess that's a success story. But stranger things have indeed happened. Hope is a powerful thing.

But when does hope become futile? When is it more beneficial to root against someone winning a ballot to enter a company that I know will mistreat them? It's not fatalistic to think that Impact will not be kind to LuFisto should she win her ballot. TNA's rap sheet is eight miles long. Even within the context of Gut Check, they have shown that what they're looking for in talent isn't in line with what actual good companies and the fans of said wrestlers think they should. Look at their two head-to-head Gut Checks they had earlier this year. I have nothing against Lei'D Tapa, and I think she can be a good talent. But Ivelisse Velez would have been ready right then to step in and be a worthy contributor to the Knockouts Division. Magno certainly brings lucha libre excitement, but again, was he the complete package that Adam Pearce was? If anything, why not sign all four to developmental deals?

Honestly, my objections aside, if TNA is what LuFisto really wants, and if it's what her closest supporters and fans who are for her getting into TNA really want, then I hope they get it. And if she does get in, I will root for her so hard to be able to change the company from within, no matter how much of a Sisyphean task that might seem. But the fact that I can compare a wrestler's plight to rolling a rock up a hill just to see it tumble back down from whence it came speaks not only to how awful a company TNA is, but for how bad the scene is for a wrestler who isn't on WWE's radar if they want fame and financial security.

I do not write articles about how we need a new number two company because I hate TNA sight unseen. I don't get disappointed to the edge of anger over the fact that Jeff Katz has been at the very least financially irresponsible to the detriment of not only wrestling fans in general, but to people who funded him in the first place because I'm a hater. Wrestling is my passion, and I generally want to see the artists who create it be compensated proportionate to their abilities, whether it's on their paystub or in how many heads they turn at an airport. The fact that it's WWE or bust for that to be the case right now tears at my insides. WWE has such a specific thing they look for, and it shuts out perfectly talented performers like LuFisto.

So, while I hope and wish for the best for LuFisto, my heart aches that whether she gets in or doesn't, she'll more than likely be maltreated the same as Taylor Wilde, Jesse Neal, Zema Ion, Christy Hemme, Daffney, Konnan, and everyone else who has had issues with them in the past without the chance to gain more notoriety out of it. Then again, you can't make a miracle happen without putting yourself out there. Even if I don't think it's likely, I will hope against hope that if she, or any other current independent wrestling standout, gets into TNA, that they will be the one to turn that shitmire around.