For the sake of full disclosure, today’s post is just a repost of the original Bound For Glory 2006 musings that I did back in 2018, which you can view by clicking here. I wasn’t really intending on redoing this, but I gave the show another watch, and while I felt the original post still had merit, hindsight and perspective did make me re-evaluate things and I ended up with more things to say on the matter.
This was one of the few TNA DVDs that I managed to snag back when those were still a thing. The DVD itself is nothing special – they split the show into 2 discs and you had a couple extras at most. Nowhere near the spectacle of WWE’s sets whenever they used to put one out for Wrestlemania, but for watching the show, it wasn’t a bad deal. This was also notable for being the TNA PPV debut of Kurt Angle, after his signing was announced at the last one and after he made his formal TNA debut on the go-home edition of IMPACT that planted the seeds for the monster feud he’d have with Samoa Joe.
Anyway, here we go again, kids. It’s Bound For Glory 2006, circa 2018, reposted in 2026. Will wonders ever cease? Sure, they will… but that’s besides the point and I digress…
Austin Starr wins the Kevin Nash Open Invitational X-Division Gauntlet Battle Royal, which is essentially a Royal Rumble type match where X-Division guys (most of whom I either don’t recognize or completely forgot about) would show up at regular intervals and it’s essentially the usual Rumble rules until two guys are left, at which point it becomes a regular match. Austin Starr is the repackaged Austin Aries, who made his big return from suspension due to his showing up late for a PPV event once upon a time. This rebrand lasted until Aries’ exit from TNA a few months later… yeah, oops. Nash is on commentary making quips and observations during the match and I’ll be honest; Nash’s way with words has grown on me over the years. I might not agree with his takes on things, but never let it be said that he can’t be entertaining on the mic when he wants to be.
The general idea was that Nash and Alex Shelley (he of MCMG fame) wanted to reshape the X-Division in Nash’s vision of how it should be… or something to that extent. It’s been a while, but those were some funny bits that I got a genuine kick out of. This KNOIXDGBR thing is silly shit, but it’s entertaining silly shit that put a bit of a smile on my face. Okay, it’s not a technical master nor is it a particularly good story, but it was genuinely fun to watch and I enjoyed it tremendously. Imagine that; fun at a wrestling show. Who knew?
Team 3D defeated America’s Most Wanted (future TNA champ James Storm and future TNA/NXT/WWE US champ Bobby Roode), the James Gang (a.k.a. the Old Age Outlaws – though really 60+ year old Billy Gunn in 2026 ain’t half bad for short bursts) and the Naturals, whose names I can’t be bothered to recall even half a decade after writing this originally. This was (and remains) a thing that happened. Nothing good, nothing bad, just there. And that’s all there is to say about that.
Samoa Joe defeated Raven, Runt (the former Spike Dudley), and Abyss in a monster ball match; basically anything goes and one fall to a finish. For some reason, they have Jake The Snake as a special referee who does nothing of note. Samoa Joe, of course, needed a big win to build momentum for his eventual jobbing to Kurt Angle in their first encounter at the next PPV (I think it was Genesis or something; I don’t recall) and so let’s put him in a match with three other guys doing the usual table spots and slow ass brawling. Joe looked too good and out of place with these other guys, but I guess they needed something for him to do and even now, I question if this was really the best they could have done with one of their top names that they spent almost two years building up to be this monster so that they can spend the next couple years pissing that all away and then you wonder why in the later years of his TNA run, he was largely (allegedly) unmotivated.
Eric Young defeated Larry Zybysko with the help of an international object to keep his job or something. Hard to believe this is the same guy who would show up on NXT as one of those Sanity people (it took me EIGHT YEARS to find out the name of that stable he debuted in NXT in 2016… goddamn, that’s sloppy!) because the two are literally night and day. The match itself was only a couple minutes, it didn’t last long, and at the very least, the “right guy” won and TNA would be spared the further adventures of Larry Z on their wrestling program of choice.
Oh, and then Jim Cornette shows up to rule that Samoa Joe is banned from interfering in the main event or else… we don’t know what because Joe and Kurt end up having another fight and things get heated. The really sad thing is that this feud already feels like a potential World Title feud than the thing they had going on in the World Title picture and it’s a shame that they didn’t go in that direction because… well… oops.
X-Division Champion Chris Sabin defeated Low-Ki, who’s going by Senshi for some reason that still eludes me, but I do know that this was the name he had from his April 2006 return to TNA until his eventual exit a year later. And he did other stuff, I guess. So yeah, this was a good little match with some fast-paced action and a healthy dose of near-falls to keep the excitement up. There used to be a time when I didn’t mind all those near falls before it became a trope that EVERYONE fell back on and it became annoying. Eh, whatever. Fun match.
Christian Cage defeated Rhino with a shitload of chairshots on a bunch of rubble with Rhino underneath in a street fight. Now that’s how you “bury” someone, har har. A young John Cena clearly took notes watching this match. There were a couple silly moments here and there that very nearly took me out of the match, but otherwise I enjoy this one. It was a nice, fierce little brawl. Christian Cage would evolve to Father Of The Years while Rhino is still chugging along. Good for him.
LAX defeated NWA World Tag-Team champions future WWE Champion AJ Styles and future ROH World champion Christopher Daniels to win the titles. LAX in this show comprises Homicide and Hernandez, both of whom I haven’t been always that familiar with, but was aware of because they’d pop up every so often over the years. In any event, this was a tremendous match. Styles and Daniels are always top form, but LAX were also very talented guys in their own right and whatever push they were getting at this time has to have been well-deserved.
Sting defeated NWA World champion Jeff Jarrett to win the title, with new TNA signee Kurt Angle serving as special enforcer and eventual referee. The match also stipulated that if Sting lost, he would retire from wrestling… and obviously typing this in 2026, you’d have to wait almost two decades for that retirement to come along. It also didn’t help that Sting debuted a “new look” where he had his Crow paint with red highlights and wearing a shiny coat, pants, and no top – which partly gave away the ending. He looked fine for the most part, but this look wouldn’t last long.
A couple key things here; this would be the end of Jeff Jarrett’s stranglehold on the NWA World title, as he would never win another World title in TNA for the remainder of his first run. I suppose that such a finale should have been treated with more gusto and had someone with some hindsight been booking this TNA show, you’d have Jeff Jarrett drop the title to Samoa Joe, let him have a couple months with the belt before you eventually have him lose it to Kurt Angle when they have their eventual first match. To me, that would have been a proper “passing of the torch” and also would have given that feud a bit more spice, even if it wasn’t really necessary.
But instead, you have Sting vs. Jeff Jarrett in the main event having one more match for the ages and for what it’s worth, I didn’t really mind the match. It didn’t have the blatant stupidity of their Halloween Havoc 2000 match with all those fake Stings, which I appreciated. This was more of an old-school wrestling match than anything and in that regard, it was fine. Kurt Angle taking out the referee for doing his job and then becoming the ref for the match himself was a funny little bit. As much as I enjoyed the match, was it really the right match to close out this Bound For Glory PPV event that’s supposed to be TNA’s equivalent to Wrestlemania? Nothing against Sting, but this was a chance to build towards TNA’s future and instead, they chose to spotlight a guy who wasn’t necessarily past his prime, but wasn’t exactly the young buck he used to be.
On the other hand, given that Sting’s World title reign would end a month later under questionable circumstances, maybe this is the right PPV to depict TNA’s future plans or something. I don’t know.
Yeah, you know what? This was a largely enjoyable show for the most part with a couple fun matches and some largely entertaining stuff. Kurt Angle’s involvement was a selling point that ultimately proved to be minimal and there’s some slow spots here and there, but the middle part of the show more than made it a good showing. Sometimes, old TNA will surprise me by putting on a genuinely good show and for the time, it would’ve been a nice jumping point for new fans to follow the promotion on. How they follow up on the nice starting point is another story… but that’s neither here nor there.
