On Thursday night's 200th episode of TNA Impact, the Motor City Machine Guns were featured in a brief segment that many may have missed.
At one point during a six-Knockout tag team match featuring ODB, Tara and Awesome Kong against Angelina Love, Velvet Sky and Madison Rayne, the cameras cut to Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin standing the crowd.
Sabin and Shelley were holding signs that said "Conspiracy Victims" and "Yes, We Still Work Here."
It's the latter that caught my attention more because after watching recent TNA shows, I had begun to wonder what had happened to my boys from Detroit.
Since I began watching TNA in 2007, the Motor City Machine Guns have been one of my favorite tag teams in modern professional wrestling.
The only professional wrestling T-shirt I've ever bought is the Guns shirt I donned at Bound for Glory IV, as I cheered on Sabin and Shelley in a steel asylum match; the same shirt I'm preparing to put on to attend an indy show.
From the beginning, I saw potential in the Guns. They had skills, athleticism and the ability to keep me entertained. The last item there is something that I'd noticed had been missing from most tag team wrestling lately.
I watched and waited for the Guns to capture TNA tag team gold. The sad truth of the matter is that I'm still waiting.
Rumors of backstage attitudes and problems with management abounded. This appeared to be the reason the Guns weren't being pushed.
Around the launch of the Main Event Mafia storyline, the Guns seemed to be better positioned. They began a slow heel turn and began to disrespect the TNA Originals and new Executive Shareholder Mick Foley.
It was clear the Guns wouldn't become part of the Mafia, but they had potential to become a successful by-product of the stable's creation.
What happened in the end?
Sabin and Shelley never even really had a full-blown heel turn and Shelley wound up wearing a turkey suit on Thanksgiving.
In January, they won the IWGP Jr. Tag Team Championships from the team of Naito and Yujiro, who came to TNA as Team No Limit.
It seemed like a long-term program could be developing between the two teams, a program that could have unfolded on both American and Japanese soil.
Instead, the program lasted all of about a month and had the Latin American Xchange thrown in as well.
After that, the Guns continued to float around TNA, joining singles competition. Shelley would capture the X Division title, which he would later lose to Suicide at Destination X.
That would lead to yet another program with potential for the Guns, one in which they joined Jay Lethal and Consequences Creed (who were in a very weird semi-heel turn at the moment) in attempting to unmask Suicide.
It seems TNA's creative team eventually just gave up on this storyline and had Suicide drop the title to LAX's Homicide instead.
Maybe the creative team realized in the end they would have to tell fans that Kaz is the man under Suicide's mask, which would create yet another mammoth-sized plot hole in TNA's booking.
One would think with all these plot holes running rampant in TNA, someone would have struck oil by now...
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