10 Wrestlers Who Left TNA & Came Back Totally Different

Publish date: 2024-05-08

Not every wrestler sticks with a promotion -- not even one that made them famous -- but leaving doesn’t mean that they won’t ever come back, either. While in some promotions -- especially WWE -- a returning wrestler might often default to whatever gimmick they had when they left, that isn’t always the case.

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Over the years, TNA (now known as Impact Wrestling) has lost a number of wrestlers for various reasons, but fans have seen many of them return to the company. But they haven’t exactly reverted back to the gimmick they left with. Some have returned with a whole new gimmick and outlook, and sometimes have seemed unrecognizable.

10 Dustin Rhodes

Dustin Rhodes has enjoyed six runs with WWE, but also had a couple of stints in Impact in between. After leaving WWE in 2003, he entered the Impact Zone from 2004 to 2005 as “The Lone Star” Dustin Rhodes, with a gimmick more akin to his pre-Goldust character in WCW and got an NWA World Title shot at Jeff Jarrett.

Rhodes would then return to the promotion in 2007 as Black Reign, a palette swap of Goldust who struggled with a split personality.

9 Eric Young

Over the course of his career with TNA/Impact, Eric Young has done it all -- he’s been a scrappy babyface, a comedy character, an obnoxious pro-Canada heel, and a Knockouts Tag Team Champion for some reason.

After a WWE run as leader of the chaotic stable SAnitY, followed by a main roster burial, Young returned to Impact in 2020 as “The World Class Maniac,” a violent, deranged heel and captured his second World Title in the process. Since then, he’s formed another stable, Violent By Design, featuring Rhino, Joe Doering, and Cody Deaner.

8 MVP

Before really entering wrestling fan consciousness via his 2005-2010 run with WWE, MVP wrestled for Impact in 2003 and 2004 as a jobber named Antonio Banks, and lost televised matches to Erik Watts, Monty Brown, and America’s Most Wanted before signing with WWE the following year.

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After a stint in New Japan, MVP returned to the Impact Zone as a very different character -- and not just because he was famous now. His character was not unlike that of his current WWE incarnation, except that he was presented as an investor in the company and an on-screen authority figure. He even formed a stable, The Beat Down Clan, that was essentially a precursor to The Hurt Business.

7 Johnny Swinger

Known for his gimmick as a cocky New Yorker, Johnny Swinger wrestled for ECW in its later years and had a brief run wrestling seemingly exclusively on WWE’s Sunday Night Heat. In the early days of Impact Wrestling, he teamed up with the former Disco Inferno, Glenn Gilbertti, as The New York Connection, and made one-off appearances on One Night Only PPVs in the years since.

However, Swinger returned to Impact in 2019 with a new gimmick: that of a throwback comedy character whose mind is solidly stuck in the 1980s territory days.

6 Brian Myers

Formerly known as Curt Hawkins, Brian Myers first came to Impact Wrestling in 2015, and was pretty much rocking the same gimmick he had in WWE the year before, carrying a cane and everything. A return to WWE saw him find some success with friend/tag partner/podcast partner Zack Ryder, but a 2020 release brought Myers back to the Impact Zone.

Now Myers is a heel nicknamed, “The Most Professional Wrestler,” who seeks to jettison his old life -- so much that he’s feuding with Ryder, now going under his real name of Matt Cardona.

5 Christopher Daniels

Christopher Daniels was such a staple of TNA/Impact since the very beginning until 2014, that some fans might not even know that he left the company at one point. In 2010, after eight years with the company, Daniels was released from the company, and found himself back in the indies, working for Ring of Honor and other promotions.

The following year, he returned, but ROH commitments meant that he couldn’t wrestle as himself. Instead, Daniels spent a few months donning a mask as Impact’s resident Suicide character.

4 Doc Gallows

During his first run, Doc Gallows was one of the many disappointing Aces & Eights reveals, as his career highlights at the time included being Festus and being CM Punk’s lackey in the Straight Edge Society. This period lasted less than a year, with the one major highlight being refusing to throw himself out of the ring at Mr. Anderson’s behest during an all-Aces & Eights battle royal.

RELATED: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Impact's Aces & Eights

But by 2020, Gallows racked up tag team title runs with Karl Anderson in New Japan Pro-Wrestling and WWE and returned with Karl Anderson in tow as The Good Brothers, who were beer-drinking louts, instead of an invading biker gang.

3 Cody Deaner

The Cody Deaner that showed up in 2009 worked as ODB’s manager, and was a shrill hillbilly sidekick with the world’s greatest mullet, but ended up getting released later that year. It was a surprise to see him return to Impact a decade later as a tag team specialist with his kayfabe Cousin Jake as The Deaners.

While he was still a comedic character, he was more of a Steve Austin/James Storm beer-drinking redneck than a Joe Dirt parody, and looked completely different from his previous iteration.

2 TJP

TJ Perkins had a few runs in the Impact Zone over the years, including some appearances as the masked wrestler Puma for X Division matches. But his longest run was 2013-2015, where he wrestled as Suicide before getting a name and costume change, becoming Manik.

After a run in WWE’s new Cruiserweight division, TJP returned to Impact in 2019 as himself for the first time, as his WWE incarnation is likely the most famous now. That said, he has donned the Manik mask every now and again.

1 EC3

Debuting at 2013’s Bound For Glory PPV, Ethan Carter III was Dixie Carter’s kayfabe nephew, and quickly became one of the most enjoyable characters on the show as an overly privileged top heel for a few years.

After a disastrous WWE run that resulted in a main roster burial, EC3 was released in 2020 and reinvented himself as a crazed maniac not unlike Eric Young. Later that year, he brought the act back to Impact, where he took on Moose in a violent cinematic match.

NEXT: 10 Opponents EC3 Needs To Face In TNA

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