Top 10 Times That WWE Copied TNA/ IMPACT Wrestling

Intro: There's an old saying that goes "Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery", it's often used to describe what happens when a person or group of people take something that has already been made and attempt to recreate it for one reason or another.

Professional wrestling is no stranger to this as wrestling fans, critics and the media usually accuse and criticizes other promotions for copying ideas and concepts that were introduced or made public elsewhere only to look like cheap but pale imitations in the process.

For much of it's success in the 2000's, TNA (now known as Impact Wresting) was accused of ripping off WWE for a number of concepts. However, just like what happens when any positive news about Impact wrestling is revealed to the public, many tend to forget that Impact themselves have also created original ideas, gimmicks and storylines that have been copied by some of wrestling's greatest promotions, especially in this case the WWE.

And in this list I'll be mentioning the ten times Vince McMahon and the WWE blatantly copied the ideas, gimmicks and storylines from TNA/Impact Wrestling.

10. WWE's Attempts To Make Waves In India

2017 was a rough year for both Impact and the WWE but that didn't stop the latter from copying Impact Wrestling in attempt to conqueror the Indian Market.

Because Impact has sizable foothold in the area what with the number of TV deals they have and stars that they've introduced/created it's no surprised that the WWE would try to one-up the competition by trying to make their own Indian mega star.

In early 2017, Jinder Mahal who is of Indian decent but was born and raised in Canada defeated Randy Orton at Backlash 2017 and became the WWE champion to the shock and surprise of many; It was reported by various wrestling journalists that the WWE were about have a wrestling tour through India and it was going to take place in December.

As the story goes, in order for increase the ticket sales for the up-and-coming tour and to obtain the previously mentioned Indian market, the WWE put the belt on a guy who was part Indian and spend much of his career as a jobber with the hopes of accomplishing both accolades, but as is the case for the WWE it didn't go as planned.

Neither the fans in the U.S. or even India like the Jinder Mahal: WWE champion experiment and as a result the planned tour date for India was reduced from two days to one day due to a lack of tickets sales. Oh yeah, to add more salt to the wound, the main event match was a non title match between Triple H and Jinder Mahal which Triple H won...because LOLWWE.

If that wasn't bad enough for the WWE, Impact (during the GFW period) had planned to do a set of tapings in the area months earlier and the events would be broadcast the world over making Impact the first U.S. Wrestling company to do so.

Unlike WWE, Impact already had a presence in India due to the companies partnership with Sony Six as well as having a short lived wrestling themed TV show called "Ring Ka King" from January to April 2012 which helped to introduce the world to Mahabali Shera.

Despite unproven rumors about people being paid to watch the show, the Impact Wrestling Indian tapings went on with out a hitch leaving the WWE with egg on the face following with a failed tour in India and terrible WWE title reign for Jinder.

9. The NXT Women's and UK Championship

The most recent entry on the list, in January of the year, it was report by various sources that WWE would drop the Women's part of the NXT American and U.K. titles which are held by Rhea Ripley and Kay Lee Ray. Shortly afterwards throughout various episodes of NXT and NXT U.K. both ladies would be introduced as the NXT champion and NXT U.K. champion respectively, which confused the hell of people and made many question as to why this was happening...well since this is a list talking about how WWE ripped off Impact Wrestling you can probably imagine where this is going.

In early January of this year third generation wrestler and a current Impact Wrestling superstar, Tessa Blanchard defeated Sami Callihan in the main event at the Hard To Kill PPV to become the first woman to win the World Heavyweight Championship in a major U.S. wrestling promotion with the decision being as controversial as it was history making.

Not long after that the WWE would be refereeing to Rhea and Kay Lee as the NXT Champions but without the women's part of the name....coincidence??

Although current WWE superstar Becky Lynch was supporting this idea of not having the titles be gender specific, the WWE higher ups apparently go cold feet on the hold thing and decided not to remove the women's part of the NXT American and U.K. titles on their website.

8. The Knockouts & WWE Women's Tag Titles

The tag team titles that occupied the knockouts division from 2009-2013 were not only seen as a progressive move of a company that has been all about elevating women's wrestling but also produced some good matches with teams like Sarita and Taylor Wilde, The Beautiful People, Tara and Miss Tessmacher, and more.

In 2019, the story has it that former NXT stars, Bayley and Sasha Banks had repeatedly annoyed Vince McMahon on they idea of creating a women's tag team division complete with championship belts to go with it.

Eventually McMahon relented and approved on the creation of the WWE Women's Tag Team Belts. Since it's inception the titles reigns have been very lackluster with even the current champions struggling to make the belts feel important.

While Vince himself didn't come up with the idea of the women's tag team titles being a thing in modern day WWE, it certain doesn't help the companies case as it's seen as another attempt by WWE to try a be progressive with their women's roster but in reality it's just another case of copying something that Impact Wrestling did successful back in the day... even if Eric Young was once a co-Knockouts Tag Team Champion alongside his kayfabe wife, ODB.

7. The $25,000 Wrestling Lottery Tickets

This is a strange one for sure but when hear the story behind this next entry you'll begin to see why so many people say that Impact Wrestling was and is still competition to the WWE.

Back in 2013, Impact Wrestling created scratch lottery tickets which would allow those who participated in the state of Georgia to win the grand prize of $25,000, however if you lost, you could play again but get the chance to earn tickets to a live Impact Wrestling show.

In 2016, WWE would offer lottery tickets to people in the great state of Texas with the grand prize being...you'll never guess: $25,000.

Going one step further WWE designed their tickets almost exactly as the Impact ticket's 3 years earlier with the images of their most famous wrestlers on the tickets.

So the next time anyone tells you that Impact Wrestling was never competition to the WWE just remind them that back in the mid 2010's WWE saw Impact Wrestling offering lottery tickets that could get people $25,000 and decided to copy that idea in a petty attempt to stick it to the enemy.

6. The Final Deletion & Various Bray Wyatt Gimmick Matches

Okay, now we've really gotten to the absolute blatant rip offs and copycat attempts made by the Vince McMahon and The WWE.

The Broken universe and gimmick was the creation that turned Matt Hardy into one of the most over and talked about wrestlers in the late 2010's, so of course WWE saw this and thought to themselves that they could do it better.

In 2016, around the same time the Broken Hardy stuff was running wild, the WWE aired a segment which saw two WWE factions: The New Day and The Wyatt Family face off in a match of sorts that took place at the Wyatt family compound and attempted to recreate the magic that had happened with Matt and Jeff Hardy in The Final Deletion which was a combination of hardcore and backyard wrestling but, it didn't work well for the WWE as the final product lacked any of charm or intrigue the Final Deletion had and as a result they were called out for copycatting.

But this wasn't the last time the WWE went to the well with Bray Wyatt and using the Broken Universe as inspiration. During his feud with Randy Orton which was filled with so many call backs to the Broken Hardy gimmick, a match was made at Payback 2017 which saw Orton and Wyatt fight in a "House of Horrors" match that made TNA's Fish Market Street Fight from Destination X 2008 look sane by comparison.

Unsurprisingly, people called out WWE for copying the Broken Universe once again at least until Matt Hardy returned to the WWE in 2017 and they then decided to put Wyatt in a Final Deletion match with Hardy which was good but nowhere near as good as the original.

5. Claire Lynch & Various Affair Storylines

Of all the storylines that the WWE could copy from TNA/Impact, why on god's green earth would you chose the infamous Claire Lynch storyline.

For those who don't know, all you need to know is that former TNA stars AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian were involved in an angle that started with Styles allegedly having an affair with then TNA president, Dixie Carter but was proven to be false only for another woman named Claire Lynch (no relation to Becky) to claim that she had an affair with AJ and said that she was pregnant with Style's baby until it was revealed that this was also false and it was hoax cooked up by Kaz and Daniels with the hopes of ruining AJ's good name.

It's basically like watching the pro wrestling equivalent of Jerry Springer and Maury and it's generally regarded as one of the worst storylines in company history.

However, WWE decided to remake this storyline as one of there own over and over and over again with none of the final products turning out good. the first came when in 2012 (the same year the Lynch angle happened) a storyline angle involved then GM AJ Lee and John Cena allegedly having an affair even though Lee wasn't suppose to as she was an authority figure and she wasn't allow to fraternize with the talent in that nature, this angle eventually led to AJ losing her procession as GM of Monday Night Raw and a short lived kayfabe relationship with John Cena.

Another attempt to recreate this angle came when Stephanie McMahon brought a woman named Megan Miller (who was in reality Laurel Van Ness aka Chelsea Green with Black Hair) who told the fans in attendance that Daniel Bryan was having a extra martial affair with her, all while Bryan was in a relationship to Brie Bella (both in Kayfabe and in real life).

The final attempt by the WWE (as of the writing of this article) was last year in 2019 when WWE superstar, Lana who was having an affair with former Intercontinental Champion Bobby Lashley came out on an episode of Raw and said that she was pregnant with the baby of her real life husband and wrestler, Rusev.

This was only a hoax to lure Rusev into an attack setup by Lana and Lashley as Lana would mention by the end of the segment that she wasn't really pregnant...You can probably see the blatant comparisons to the Claire Lynch angle right.

4. WWE's Evolution PPV & Knockouts Knockdown

In 2018, The WWE had it's very first all female PPV known as Evolution which saw the female athletes from the Raw, Smackdown, NXT and NXT U.K. roster take center stage.

Now the event wasn't too bad at it was a progressive move done by the leading face of pro wrestling ,however Stephanie McMahon and the WWE played this whole thing off as if this was a first time thing not just in the WWE but the first time something like this has ever happened in professional wrestling, which of course we know is completely false as there have been a number of PPV's and promotions that have all been focused on Women's Wrestling.

Arguably the biggest example of this would have to be the One Night Only TNA Knockout Knockdown events from 2013-17 which saw female wrestlers from the independent wrestling and the Knockouts Division compete in a serious of matches which would sometimes end with one of the competitors walking away with a contract that officially made them the newest member of the TNA/Impact roster.

3. Corporate Kane & Joseph Parks

In 2012, a large man wearing a suit and glasses who called himself Joseph Parks was an attorney and looking for his brother Chris aka Abyss. During his search, Joseph Parks went to OVW to become a pro wrestler and in the process he wrestled against names like Bully Ray and Devon.

However, it would later be revealed that Joseph Parks and Abyss were one in the same (even though in the later years Impact would ignore that little tidbit); The Joe Parks gimmick was a completely different change of pace for Abyss, who developed a character that was different from his weapons totting, violent persona that the fans have come to know him for...that can't be said on the other hand for Corporate Kane.

In 2013, Kane became corporate by ditching mask and all red attire and replace with a suit and tie combo before wrestling opponents in slacks during his matches with the attempt being that Kane was suppose to be a different if not more corporate character than his previous self and the reactions to Corporate Kane weren't to good at first.

While both Joseph Parks and Corporate Kane would garner a following of sorts in the following years since their introductions, it doesn't change the fact that this version of Kane was rip off of original TNA gimmick.

2. NXT Is WWE's Version Of Impact Wrestling

This entry is certainly going to piss a lot of people off but the fact has to be made. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching NXT it's basically the one if not only reason why I would watch WWE programming nowadays, however it's hard not to look at the black and yellow brand and see elements of TNA/Impact spread throughout.

Since the brand decided to great serious under the leadership of names like William Regal and Triple H, NXT has produced a product that many have said surpasses the stuff you see on the Raw and Smackdown main roster shows. But for all the great things that the brand has done over the years, it can't be argued that NXT is basically Impact Wrestling but if Impact was funded and promoted by the WWE

The exact comparisons NXT has to TNA/Impact Wrestling product are endless: You have talented wrestlers being booked poorly on WWE's main roster but are able to produce match of the year candidates on a brand that values great wrestling...check, the location for the events is predominately in Florida...check, pushing wrestlers and divisions within a way that are seen as game changing in the eyes of the general public...check, offering a product that is vastly superior to Raw and Smackdown...check times a million...And that's just scratching the surface of how NXT is Impact 2.0.

From the inclusion of the cruiserweight division to NXT, the rise of the women's revolution with the four horsewomen and signing up former TNA/Impact names like Samoa Joe, Mia Yim, Austin Aries, Bobby Roode, Trevor Lee, Roderick Strong just to name a few probably doesn't help NXT's case of being a Impact Wrestling rip off.

The brand may be impressive nowadays but just remember that the early days of the brand was less action packed and game changing and more sport entertainment like filled with subpar matches, terrible challenges like kissing contest, caring a beer keg around the ring and cutting promos on things like flowers and mustaches (yes...this is still NXT were talking about).

1. The Beautiful People & Various WWE Female Factions

So we've reached the number one entry on this list and the most infamous example of stealing another promotions ideas in pro wrestling history.

The Beautiful People are a faction that need no introduction as they are one of the most legendary factions in TNA/Impact Wrestling history, even if you've never watch them wrestle or watched the show on a weekly basis, you definitely have heard of them and so has the WWE apparently.

In 2010, the duo of Michelle McCool and Layla began calling themselves "LayCool" and began wearing matching outfits, speaking in an almost bratty like tone using word like "whatever" and "fabulous" a lot before criticizing their opponents like calling Kelly Kelly "Smelly Kelly" or the infamous Piggy James angle which saw the duo make fun of Mickie James by body shaming her with food and dressing up in a fat suit whilst making piggy noise...in other words it was Vince McMahon's cringe worthy attempt at creating his own version of The Beautiful People.

This wouldn't be the last time WWE would do this because in 2015 during the "Divas Revolution" there were a myriad of Beautiful people copycat teams running around like Team PCB (aka Paige, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch), Team B.A.D (which included Naomi, Tamina Snuka and Sasha Banks) not to mention The Bella Twins and Alicia Fox.

As a surprise to no one, all of these groups have become footnotes in the annuals of history and fodder for lists like these, while The Beautiful People's legacy as one the best stables in modern wrestling has been cemented and will stay so forever more.

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