Matt Morgan made the decision to not sign with American Gladiators and instead remain with TNA full-time. TNA and NBC had apparently reached an agreement over Morgan being able to work for both brands, yet when he went to sign the two-year Gladiators deal in Los Angeles he was also asked to sign a six-year option, to make Gladiators his priority and to be available for live event tours. Despite the chance of making some very good money if it all paid off, Morgan decided that he wanted to be a professional wrestler first and foremost and so is sticking with TNA. Jim Cornette has been a big fan of his for a while now and had encouraged TNA to slowly build a long-term push for Morgan, although the news of the Gladiators deal forced their hand into making him a wrestler on TV rather than a management character.
Tomko got some serious heat with TNA management for working a show in Osaka, Japan, on 12 April. He missed a TNA fan-fest that day and ran the risk of missing the PPV the day after, so as punishment he and A.J. Styles lost the tag team titles to Kaz & Super Eric Young.
Rhaka Khan also has backstage heat. She attended the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony yet nothing much was made about that, since TNA figured she was fairly new to the business and thus not as politically savvy about such matters (Velvet Sky also attended, since she is dating Gregory Helms). However, she also failed to sign 1,000 trading cards at the recent TV tapings, which everybody on the roster has to do as part of a new trading card deal the company has started. She took them home to sign and then fed-ex in, which a number of the main event wrestlers also did. This rubbed some the wrong way, since she is obviously not at main event level, but matters grew worse when the trading card company contacted TNA since he signatures didn’t all look the same and in some the Rhaka Khan name was spelled wrong. She said she had gotten tired and started experimenting with her signature. Jeff Jarrett finally just sent her home from the tapings.
Jim Cornette has a book coming out later this year on the 25th anniversary of the Midnight Express, which apparently has a lot of inside information and business notes that Cornette documented during his time with Crockett Promotions and WCW.
Credit: Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 21 April 2008 (subscribe here)
