In a shocking bit of news, Angelina Love, who is one half of the most popular female acts in wrestling right now, has been released by TNA.
Angelina Love Released
At the Hard Justice pay per view, Angelina Love defended the TNA Knockouts Championship in a tag team match (with Beautiful People stablemate Velvet Sky as her partner) against ODB and Cody Deaner.
She ended up losing the belt to ODB as the company was looking to do a comedic storyline with the top women's belt in North America.
TNA then decided to move Angelina Love & Velvet Sky into a program where the company was crowning the first ever TNA Knockouts Tag Team Championship. The original plans had called for her to play a big part in that storyline.
Unfortunately, though, plans have been changed.
Angelina Love was released from her contract by TNA on Thursday afternoon.
The wrestling world is left in shock.
Reason For Departure
Before any rumors get started, Angelina Love was released by TNA because of issues with her work visa. Since she's a Canadian citizen, she needs that in order to legally work for the company.
Prior to this release, Angelina Love did not have any major issues with TNA and vice versa. The relationship between the two was quite mutually beneficial. TNA provided her with an opportunity, and she returned the favor by becoming a star performer.
Management is said to be more disappointed with the situation than anything else. There's not any backstage heat towards Angelina Love for the visa issue, which means that it probably was just an oversight on her behalf.
Since both sides were satisfied with the situation, the 27 year old Knockout is expected to return to TNA once the situation with her visa is resolved.
Possible Deflection to WWE
Having watched wrestling for over a quarter of a century, I can assure that you can never say never in this business. While the most likely scenario is that Angelina Love will return to TNA, there is still a slight chance that she could end up in WWE.
The moment word leaked that she was released from her contract with TNA, there were people in WWE that immediately started coming up with ideas.
Technically, Angelina Love, a former developmental wrestler for WWE, is free to sign with whatever company that she wants to.
WWE is well aware of this also, so it would not surprise anyone at all to see them putting together a contract offer that would be financially superior to what TNA can afford to pay.
The same strategy worked on Gail Kim, who basically left a division where she was a centerpiece for the financial gains that WWE provided. Since returning to the company, she has yet to receive a substantial push.
WWE basically made the move to weaken the TNA Knockouts division. The plan didn't work at all since TNA was able to keep things going with the other female performers in the company.
However, that doesn't mean that they won't try to steal Angelina Love from TNA while the window of opportunity is there.
Closing Thoughts
It would be huge news if WWE could convince Angelina Love to completely leave TNA. However, that doesn't appear very likely to happen. |
