Salinas Leaves TNA

by Jack Windham
September 14, 2008

Salinas has decided to give her notice to TNA, and LAX is now left without a valet who also doubled as terrific eye candy.

Salinas Leaves TNA

Sometime over the last few days, Salinas went to TNA management and informed them that she was leaving the company.

The company basically explained her absence from the No Surrender pay per view by doing a storyline where Jacqueline attacked her backstage.

Reason For Departure

According to sources, Salinas (real name Shelly Martinez) left TNA because she was upset with how the company refused to give her a pay raise.

She was recently offered a part in a movie, but her TNA schedule prevented her from taking the role.

Salinas reportedly went to TNA to ask for a raise in exchange for not doing the movie.

When the company declined, she felt that it was in her best interest to pursue the acting gig.

Dealing With It

Salinas' departure from the company shouldn't affect the storylines all too much.

As great as she was to look at, she wasn't able to elevate LAX like Konnan did.

Then again, considering how good Konnan was at portraying the image behind LAX, very few people were actually expecting her to reach that level.

The tandem can continue being a vital part of the tag team division.

If TNA really wanted to, they could go out and find another valet for LAX.

Salinas also wasn't a very big part of the Knockouts division.

She was valuable to the company because she was very good for the photoshoots.

However, she didn't do a lot of actual wrestling in the division (which was a mistake, I think).

WWE Return

There's already a few wrestling fans who are speculating that Salinas will be heading back to WWE.

I don't see that happening.

First of all, WWE simply did not feel that she fit into the cookie cutter divas that they were looking for.

Secondly, Kevin Thorn has been down in developmental for several months now.

Closing Thoughts

This sucks for me because I truly enjoyed seeing Salinas each week on television, but in the big picture, TNA should be able to deal with this departure pretty well.