10 Things Impact Wrestling Fans Should Know About The TNA Television Championship

Looking at any long-running promotion’s history will reveal a slew of defunct titles, from belts with extremely specific rules to secondary and tertiary belts whose importance waned over the years. In Impact Wrestling’s history is one of its longest running defunct belts, the TNA Television Championship, which lasted from 2008 to 2016.

RELATED: The Most Iconic Title Holder For Every TNA Championship In History

The concept of the Television Championship is nothing new, but Impact’s version of the title has a surprising history, undergoing various changes in name and rules before it was finally put to bed. Let’s take a look at the entire existence of the TNA Television Championship, including some of its most notable champions.

10 Introduced As An Unsanctioned Title By Booker T

The year 2008 marked the debut of a major storyline in Impact Wrestling as a group of veterans — including Kurt Angle, Sting, Kevin Nash, and Booker T — formed a faction called the Main Event Mafia, which was dedicated to holding down the other members of the roster. As part of the angle, Booker T introduced his own unsanctioned vanity championship, the TNA Legends Championship, making himself the first-ever title holder. As it was unsanctioned by Impact itself, Booker just defended the belt whenever he felt like it.

9 AJ Styles Was The Second Champion

Booker T’s inaugural reign as self-proclaimed Television Champion would last 143 days before coming to an end at the hands of AJ Styles. With a feud set off by Styles stealing the TV Championship belt, Styles dethroned Booker T at Destination X in March 2009, and successfully defended it in a rematch at Sacrifice. Styles winning the belt had two major results: not only did it make AJ the first Grand Slam Champion in the promotion, but in the aftermath of the win the title was officially accepted as a sanctioned belt by Impact Wrestling.

8 Eric Young Made It The Global Championship

At Bound for Glory 2009, Eric Young defeated title holder Kevin Nash in a three-way match with Hernandez to become the 6th TNA Television Champion. After a couple of weeks, Young instituted a major change in the title, renaming it the TNA Global Championship, and establishing new rules for the belt.

RELATED: Eric Young's 10 Best Matches In TNA According To Cagematch.net

At the time,the Canadian Eric Young was leader of an international heel stable called World Elite, and as part of the gimmick swore to never defend it against American wrestlers or even in America. Appropriately, he dropped the belt to Rob Terry in Terry’s home country of Wales.

7 AJ Styles Renamed It The TNA Television Title

Rob Terry’s reign with the Global Championship came to an end when AJ Styles — at the time a member of the Four Horsemen-esque faction Fortune — defeated him in the summer of 2010. Now a two-time champion, AJ Styles made another major change to the title, renaming it the TNA Television Championship. This would be the dominant name of the belt, as it stuck from 2010 to 2014. Additionally, in 2012, the belt gained an additional rule that stipulated weekly title defenses, though that only ended up lasting a few months.

6 The Longest Reigning Champion Never Defended It

In May of 2013, Joseph Park — “brother” of Impact’s resident monster heel Abyss, who had gone missing — scored a shot at the Television Championship at Slammiversary 11. Unfortunately, as the champ at the time was Devon of the faction Aces & Eights, the crew jumped Park before his match. The match still happened, but Devon’s opponent was instead Parks’ alter ego, Abyss, who won the belt in less than four minutes. Abyss never defended it, and the Television Championship was deactivated after 396 days, making him the longest title holder in the belt’s history.

5 Revived As The King Of The Mountain Championship

The Television Championship was dormant for about a year until it was brought back in June of 2015, albeit under a new name. Instead of being the Television Title, it was now the TNA King of the Mountain Championship. Introduced during Impact’s brief union with Jeff Jarrett’s Global Force Wrestling, Jarrett was the first to hold the newly named belt when he won a King of the Mountain match at Slammiversary 2015. In the year that followed, the title was only occasionally defended in KOTM matches.

4 Bobby Lashley “Unified” The Title

From 2014 to 2018, Bobby Lashley was on a major tear in the Impact Zone, and at one point held every men’s singles title in the company, including the former Television Title. It was on a August 2016 episode of Impact Wrestling that Lashley won the belt, putting his World Title and X-Division Title on the line against King of the Mountain Champion James Storm in a winner-take-all match.

RELATED: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Bobby Lashley's TNA Run

It wasn’t Lashley’s first match to carry that stipulation, however — he had previously defeated Eddie Edwards for the X-Division Title in a similar winner-take-all affair.

3 Eric Young Held Every Version Of The Belt

Including all of its name changes, the TNA Television Championship lasted roughly eight years, so only a long-time staple of the Impact roster would be able to earn the distinction of holding all four versions of the title. That staple proved to be Eric Young, who — as established — captured the Legends Championship and renamed it the Global Championship. In 2011, Young won the belt for a second time, when it was the TV Title, and enjoyed a 180-day reign. Finally, in 2016 Young won the King of the Mountain Championship when he defeated Bobby Roode, and held the belt for 73 days.

2 Replaced By The Grand Championship

After Bobby Lashley captured the King of the Mountain Championship along with the other men’s singles titles, it was announced that the belt was going to be retired. In its place came a new concept, the Impact Grand Championship, which had a brand new set of rules. Matches for the belt would be determined in rounds — not unlike the NXT UK Heritage Cup — and judges determining the winner in the event of a time limit draw. However, that rule was eventually dropped and the belt was unified with the Impact World Title in 2018.

1 Succeeded By The Digital Media Championship

After 2018, Impact Wrestling lacked a standard midcard singles belt until the fall of 2021. Rather than revive the Television Title name, Impact opted for the more modern (and somewhat silly) Impact Digital Media Championship, with the inaugural champion being determined in a tournament. An intergender title, champions thus far have included Jordynne Grace, Brian Myers, Rich Swann, and Joe Hendry. While title defenses have happened on the weekly show and pay-per-view, Digital Media Championship bouts have sometimes lived up to the title’s name and have been aired on YouTube and social media.