TNA has been in the news a lot this past week regarding rumors of pay problems. Those issues seemed to be confirmed when TNA announcer Taz parted ways with the company this week. It was surprising to see him leave since he had been with the company for years, always seeming to defend them and talk up TNA as the best wrestling promotion in the world. He had an announcing job with WWE for years, but then he randomly left to basically do the same job with TNA.
The reason Taz left seemed to do with pay. He was supposed to arrive in Nashville, Tennessee, to do voiceover announcing work for the next batch of Impact Wrestling tapings. However, he didn’t show. The reason for it was because TNA owed him a lot of money, and he wouldn’t go to Tennessee until he was paid. All of this was assumed to be it in regards to Taz leaving. However, it is not nearly the end.
According to Daily Wrestling News , Taz was not a fan of working with Josh Mathews, TNA’s newest addition to the announce team. It made sense to bring in Mathews because of him being younger and able to be around much longer. Yet Taz enjoyed working with Mike Tenay, so working with Josh was not working for him. He wanted Tenay to be brought back to Impact Wrestling , but clearly this was not going to happen.
Mathews has a lot of WWE experience, spending around a decade with the company as an announcer and backstage interviewer. It made sense to bring him in, but it also meant you had to remove a tenured announcer. Clearly that wasn’t going to go well with everyone. Mathews is reportedly a “John Gaburick Guy,” which means he won’t be removed from Impact anytime soon.
TNA also tried out Al Snow on commentary recently. When Taz found out, he confronted Mathews about it, and Mathews claimed he had not been working with Snow at all. Taz , of course, knew it was a lie, which ended up souring him more on Mathews. Basically, TNA was trying out another guy behind the back of Taz potentially to take his spot. They had not been paying Taz much as well. All combined, clearly we can understand why “the human suplex machine” wanted to leave TNA. Who could blame the guy?
[IMG Credit: wrestlingnews.co]