Mick Foley Left TNA IMPACT, Leaving Many Questions Behind

When Mick Foley looked into Hulk Hogan’s eyes a month ago and said there would be changes on the horizon for TNA IMPACT and the wrestling brand that was perceived to be stale and in need of a different direction, wrestling fans were teased into thinking that Hogan and his cast of characters, which include Eric Bischoff would finally stop controlling another wrestling brand.

Unfortunately, that is not going to happen.

This past week, Foley asked for and was granted his release from TNA IMPACT, sighting creative differences with management and corporate officials. This move will have an impact (no pun intended) on the direction the brand will travel from now on.

Bischoff was brought in to help with the creative direction of TNA, which he helped to define as edgy and somewhat chaotic. He helped to give the brand a more hostile look, mainly with the creation of Fortune and Immortal and has worked to help reinvent superstars and their position within wrestling, much like he had done with WCW and the beginning of the Monday Night Wars back in the mid-1990s.

But it was also Bischoff’s creative control and his vision that helped to sink the wrestling promotion and in effect, helped to sell off the competition to Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment.

Foley, who was the “network” figure who was going to keep Bischoff and Hogan from controlling the pot, now takes his ideas for better matches; more vignettes and a new look about how “wrestling matters" with him, most presumably back to the WWE where he still has ties to McMahon and the brand up north.

Does this move by Foley signal a red flag for IMPACT and the hierarchy that the ship is sinking?

Bischoff is walking a fine line in terms of his development of the brand on Spike TV and what he did back in WCW with the creation of the NWO and divisiveness he had with wrestlers back then like Ric Flair and Sting (Steve Borden). Now, Sting is the world champion and Flair works with Bischoff not against him and with Hogan as a teammate, not an adversary.

It makes for very strange bed fellows.

The recent management changes could also be a reason why we have not seen the same fever-pitched confrontations between Fortune (whose members are fighting through injury) and Immortal. Bobby Roode is nursing a shoulder injury and had become the focus of the group’s rise in popularity and Top-Tier status.

Foley left before the formation of what he promised to be a better X-Division. Jay Lethal is no longer with the company and wrestlers like Brian Kendrick and Kazarian are leading a pack of mid-level wrestlers without a life raft. Does this mean Bischoff will help to re-create an X-Division much like he used cruiserweights to help try and save WCW?

For Foley, the move is probably a good one. He saw the writing on the wall. But for wrestlers and other management, this may be a time to re-evaluate their position and decide whether or not the ship is going to sink again.