TNA Introduces A New Championship With MMA-Style Rules

Are you all caught up on your non-Final Deletion related TNA wrestling? If you’re not, here’s where we are at: Bobby Lashley is the champion. Like, all of the champions. Like, every singles male title in the company. They’re his.

Before the latest tapings, Lashley held the World, X-Division, and TNA King of the Mountain Championships to become the first wrestler to hold three singles titles at once in TNA.

Now, here is where it gets confusing. The King of the Mountain championship, which was introduced during the GFW invasion angle and originally won by Jeff Jarrett (!) is no more. Reports out of the latest set of Impact tapings are that the title has been retired and in its place is the new TNA Grand Championship, which will feature MMA-style rules. Those rules include rounds with time limits and judges to determine a winner if a match goes the distance.

There are some conflicting reports about this new title, with some outlets saying that the TNA World Championship and KOTM titles have been merged and others saying only the King of the Mountain title has been retired, so we’ll just have to wait and see for sure once the tapings are on Pop TV.

Does this all sound very stupid for a pro wrestling company? Yes, yes it does, but I’ll give them this: at least it’s different. The first Grand Champion will be determined by an eight-man tournament, and apparently, the first match in this format has already taken place (spoiler alert) with Drew Galloway beating Braxton Sutter in the third round via submission.

On one hand, I kind of like the storytelling options incorporating judges and point systems can have in a pro wrestling environment. On the other hand, uh … this is fake sports, guys! There’s a reason we don’t keep score.

As long as the show doesn’t replace its world title, I suppose it can’t possibly be less important than the King of the Mountain championship was, so we’ll see where it ends up going.