Candid responses from Hammerstone about his time with TNA.
After a year of working with TNA Wrestling, Hammerstone became a free agent in March. The start of his most recent stint there started with a match against Josh Alexander and wrapped with a TNA World Title match against Joe Hendry.
A new interview with Hammerstone was published by Zack Heydorn of The Takedown on Sports Illustrated and he spoke candidly about his time with the promotion. He feels that at some point, TNA stopped caring for him creatively.
At a certain point, perception is reality. So I’m sitting there and from my perception, I felt like the company stopped caring about me and maybe I needed to do something in a different way. Maybe they were looking for something that I wasn’t giving them. But also, that was never a conversation that was had. I’d be very happy to be sat down and told, hey, creatively, this is what we want to do. So we need to see more of this out of you. And I never got that. It was just like, hey, where are we going creatively? And a lot of times it’s like, well, you know what you’re doing with this guy. You know what you’re doing this, that guy. So why don’t you know what you’re doing with me?
He brought up the match he had with Alexander at Hard To Kill 2024 not being included in their end of the year awards voting list. Hammerstone stated that he felt there was a loss of faith in him.
Whether that’s a minority of fans or not (that vote on the year-end awards). I don’t care if I lose the poll. Just put me on the poll. So it got to a point where I felt like there was a loss of faith in me. And I don’t know where that came from, but I could be way off here, and I’m not blaming anybody except myself, but once you start to perceive things like that, that becomes reality. So it’s like, if this company doesn’t have faith, I mean, why should I even have faith in myself if they don’t have direction for me? Why should I try so hard? It’s not to say that I ever gave up, but mentally, I just felt beat down.
Hammerstone made his return to Major League Wrestling for the first time since 2023. He competed in the 40-man Battle Riot match that the champion Matt Riddle emerged victorious from.
