Bound for Sitting on the Bench

from Impact Wrestling

By Chad Smart 

@ChadSmart on Twitter

Last month I wrote a piece looking at how TNA was pushing Crimson as an unstoppable force and how that push would play out at the end of the Bound for Glory series. I laid out two possible scenarios for the ending of the series, TNA decided to change it up and go a route I hadn’t thought of when looking to the future.

With Crimson still undefeated and on top of the standings in the Bound for Glory, two weeks ago Samoa Joe attacked Crimson putting him on the sidelines for the foreseeable future. With Crimson out, the winner of the BFG series will be decided at No Surrender in two matches featuring Bully Ray, Gunner, Robert Roode and James Storm. Out of those four, I really don’t know who to pick to headline TNA’s biggest show of the year in a World Title match.

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Back to Crimson, though. As I suspected, TNA doesn’t appear to have faith in him to be a top-level star just yet. My question then is why push Crimson to a position where he has to be taken out of action to preserve his undefeated streak when there were other viable options. Since not all TNA house shows feature the entire roster, why not leave Crimson off of enough shows so his final standings put him in fifth place in the standings?

If Crimson stays undefeated yet doesn’t make the final four this could be used as motivation for adding depth to the Crimson character. Feeling he was slighted by the booking committee, Crimson could then vow to take out the final four on his way to becoming champion. If TNA would save the matches for pay per views, that gives Crimson at least five more months to be built up and placed in a position where fans could actually buy into him as Champ.

Now that Crimson is on the shelf, it’ll be interesting to see how long TNA keeps him out of action and then what he does when he steps back into the ring. Will he move up the ladder or will he stay an undefeated mid-carder?  While I’m not on the Crimson bandwagon yet, I applaud TNA for trying to push some new homegrown talent instead of using stale, played out guys. Being the TNA cynic that I am, I’m going to guess once Crimson returns to the ring he will be buried in the mid-card and will be putting over recent WWE cast offs in the next six months.

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