10 Wrestlers You Forgot Were X-Division Champion
TNA Impact Wrestling debuted in 2002 as an alternative to WWE. This happened after WCW went out of business, and WWE became almost a monopoly for televised professional wrestling in the industry. TNA wanted to find a niche to make them stand out with something different, and they created the X-Division Championship to do that.
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The idea of the title was to take the non-heavyweights and give them a championship to fight for. It was not so much a new Cruiserweight Championship, because there was no weight class. Instead, it was about the athleticism, and the title was meant for those wrestlers who could perform amazing feats. Not all wrestlers who held the title were created equal, though, and here are 10 wrestlers you might have forgotten were X-Division Champions.
10 MIKE KANELLIS
In 2016, the X-Division didn't look like the same high-risk division that once had men like AJ Styles representing it. More brawlers and technical wrestlers like Trevor Lee and Eddie Edwards ran with the title. Then, in June 2016, Mike Bennett went on to beat Eddie Edwards for the title.
Sadly for Bennett, he held the title for one whole day before losing it in an Ultimate X match back to the man he won it from, Eddie Edwards. It is easy to forget that the man who is now known as Mike Kanellis in WWE ever held the prestigious title.
9 X-PAC
X-Pac spent the majority of his career in WWE. However, he did drift outside twice. The first time, he went to WCW and was part of the nWo invasion, where he worked in the Cruiserweight division. He returned to WWE shortly to join DX, but he left after that and ended up in TNA Impact Wrestling.
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This was the early days of TNA during the weekly PPV events, and he won the vacant X-Division title in 2002 in a ladder match. He held it for two weeks and lost it to AJ Styles.
8 BOBBY LASHLEY
If there is one man that does not signify what people expect from the X-Division, that man is Bobby Lashley. He is a super heavyweight and the title was meant to help other wrestlers stand out from. However, the reason he won it makes plenty of sense.
Eddie Edwards wanted the TNA World Heavyweight Championship and agreed to put his X-Division Championship up for a chance. Lashley won the match and ended up with both titles. 30 days later, Lashley gave up the X-Division Championship after he ended up holding all three TNA singles titles at the same time.
7 DRAKE MAVERICK
When WWE superstar Drake Maverick was in TNA Impact Wrestling, he was known as Rockstar Spud. Most fans remember him merely for his role as a suck-up to TNA President Dixie Carter and the best friend of EC3. While he mostly worked in skits and sketches on the show, and occasionally interfered in other matches, he was also a wrestler.
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In 2015, Rockstar Spud shocked the world when he used the Feast or Fired Championship opportunity to beat the legendary Low Ki for the X-Division title. He held it for 43 days and then won it another time for less than one day, where he gave it up for a world title shot.
6 HOMICIDE
Homicide was mostly known as a tag team wrestler in his days in TNA Impact Wrestling. In Ring of Honor, he had several great singles matches, but when he arrived in TNA, it was almost exclusively about the Latin American Xchange (LAX). He won the tag team titles there three times.
However, he was also the X-Division Champion at one time. This came about because Homicide won a Feast or Fired briefcase and got a chance at the title. He ended up beating Suicide for the title and held it for 52 days before dropping it to Samoa Joe.
5 ABYSS
Much like Bobby Lashley, Abyss is one of those wrestlers no one would have expected to compete in the X-Division. However, honestly, as one of the longest-tenured wrestlers in TNA, he deserved to win every title in the company at least once. He was the fourth-ever Triple Crown Champion and the second-ever Grand Slam Champion.
His run with the X-Division Championship in TNA came in 2011 when he beat Frankie Kazarian on an episode of Impact. He ended up holding the title for 55 days and eventually lost it at the Destination X pay-per-view to Brian Kendrick.
4 MICHAEL SHANE
One reason that people might not remember that Michael Shane was an X-Division Champion is that most people might not even remember who Michael Shane is. For those who have forgotten, the wrestler later known as Matt Bentley is the cousin of Shawn Michaels and had a short career, mostly in TNA, before retiring at the age of 29.
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Shane had a long title reign during the TNA weekly PPV days when he beat Chris Sabin in 2003 and held the title for 140 days. His second title reign was a controversial one as he and Frankie Kazarian both grabbed the title at the same time in an Ultimate X match. That reign lasted 14 days.
3 ROB VAN DAM
Rob Van Dam is currently one of the top heels in Impact Wrestling, playing a veteran who is coasting on his name and fame, preferring to party and refusing to use the moves that made him famous. In his younger days in ECW, RVD was the exact type of wrestler that the X-Division was made for.
However, when Van Dam made his way to TNA, he was coming off a reign as the WWE Champion and was a main event caliber guy, winning the world title in TNA in 2010. However, one year later, he won the X-Division title from Zema Ion and held it for 137 days.
2 SHAWN DAIVARI
Shawn Daivari is best known for his days in WWE, where he worked as the manager for The Great Khali. Since that time, it was his brother Ariya Daivari who has become the bigger star, working in the 205 Live division of WWE. However, Shawn Daivari is also a former X-Division Champion.
The reason people likely don't remember this is because he used a different name in TNA. After leaving WWE, he changed his ring name to Sheik Abdul Bashir, keeping his anti-American gimmick, and won the X-Division title from Petey Williams in 2008.
1 KURT ANGLE
Possibly the most successful wrestler to ever hold the X-Division Championship is the Olympic gold medal winner, Kurt Angle. While names like AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, and Samoa Joe revolutionized professional wrestling during their title reigns, Angle slipped in one run during his time with TNA Impact Wrestling.
The run made sense too. One of the best feuds in TNA history, based on match quality, was Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe. In 2007. Angle was the TNA World Champion and IWGP Champion, and Joe was the X-Division Champion and TNA World Tag Team Champion. The two men fought with every title on the line, and Angle won.
