SRS Editorial: What was up with the Santana/TNA work? A lame move by TNA

Note: the following is an editorial from Sean Ross Sapp.

Well, that was a weird situation.

If you checked out the Debunkathon on Friday, you saw us mention that a Mike Santana/TNA story going around was a work. I care about transparency and being honest to our audience, so I'm going to provide as much context as possible.

At no point in my career before November 14 did I have an official, exec or PR rep from any wrestling company provide myself info to advance a storyline, while pretending it was real. I know there are a lot of misconceptions about the relationship of media with pro wrestling and higher ups, and I'm happy to speak on my experiences. There have absolutely been times where companies say "this may seem unusual, but it's an angle, and will be paid off very quickly," to limit concern. WWE reps were transparent with us about Brooks Jensen's controversial storyline last year.

I tweeted about this, and many people didn't seem to understand. There was a former wrestler who posted "Dirt Sheets saying promoters or wrestlers have never contacted them / messaged them back to leak information, push info, rumors, a story or a headline is lying lmfaooo. I’ve had multiple Dirt Sheets in my DMs digging for info & I assure you there are snakes that give them info." That wasn't what I said, nor even related. Of course promoters contact us to leak information. We've been on camera with over a thousand people in the industry, and there are hundreds more we're in contact with. Very specifically, we never have had a rep, exec or official contact us with information, pretending it's "real" when it's not.

If you think "what about that time when..?" Nope. Not then. Not whatever else you're thinking of either. It's just not really the relationship between these companies and media. It erodes trust. I often say that I don't get lied to much, if at all by officials, but there's plenty of times they simply don't answer. That's their right. They don't owe the media information, the media owes their audiences information.

So on November 14, we were contacted by a TNA official who said "FYI ...
Mike Santana did not participate in Thursday night’s post-show Meet & Greet. He also has not arrived at Full Sail University, and Talent call-time was 1pm, nor has he replied to TNA calls or text messages. TNA executives were unavailable for comment, but said tonight’s Turning Point Main event is now in doubt."

I responded with a picture of a frog dressed as a wizard that said "doubt," and immediately let members of my team know not to cover this unless TNA tweets it out officially. It wasn't true, and isn't the kind of thing companies ever offer up to us, and if they did it would be on background (able to report it without naming the source), or off the record (for our knowledge but unable to report without separate sources on the record or on background). That wasn't the case here. Shortly after I sent that reply, another outlet was fed the news and ran it. We contacted them to let them know it was a work. By then, at least two other media members were provided that info, one of whom ran it verbatim.

I'm not one to finger wag unless people are being dishonest, making things up or just stealing content (transcriptions or original work), but if you're ever fed information from anyone, much less a company official, and your first internal question isn't "why?," you're not doing a good job. This was an angle from the start, and that's fine, but you can also say "TNA has provided the following statement," as opposed to angling for us to report it as a scoop. First off, we'd be far more concerned about the well-being of the individual than some pretend wrestling title.

I had people compare this to the MJF Double or Nothing 2022 weekend. Nope. Not the same. I'll happily explain why on this week's Fightful Report Podcast, but no info was provided by an AEW official in that story. I've had people say "Why is media spoiling this TNA storyline?" then lying that AEW stories never get spoiled. That's just weirdo shit, but hey, TNA officials were providing that info. They wanted it out, and it got out. They wanted to work some sort of unusual multi-layered angle that implied that Mike Santana -- one of the most responsible, hard working, and professional guys in wrestling -- no showed a meet & greet and blew off TNA because he was mad that they booked him to lose his TNA World Title in a scripted match. Okay, then. No wonder so many people were confused. The approach didn't make sense. Save that for your Twitter account or TV, and then let us know quietly that he's safe, and the angle will be paid off imminently. No biggie.

I saw people say "What about WWE feeding people incorrect info about WrestleMania or some other show?" Quite a bit actually. I'm not sure who people think "WWE" is, but that isn't the kind of information company officials or PR reps send to people like me. I don't know why they would, either. There will always be bad info, but there's usually just more of an incentive to not say anything than providing knowingly false information. That can always have exceptions, but if someone feeds us false info, it almost always gets filtered out by the follow up work in verifying. Still, that's not happened with officials or those in a PR capacity to further an angle. That's stuff that just emerges from other people in the company. I know that's hard for many wrestling fans to believe, especially when places like WWE have had a very odd, front facing "don't believe the internet dirt sheets" attitude on screen, and a cordial relationship most other times.

I'm not above covering things in storyline. We do storyline articles on Fightful every day. I've done dozens of in-character interviews. Sometimes they're very fun. This wasn't that. This was an unusual attempt to do a work-shoot angle by working the media. To the point that one outlet had their scheduled interview with Mike Santana canceled and were provided that same comment that we were. So not only did the official actively try to work one of the most respected publications in wrestling history in Pro Wrestling Illustrated, they took away content they'd planned for as a result.

I won't even get into the morbid parallels that something like that can share with horrible moments in the past. Plenty of fans already made those comparisons, and fortunately, nothing remotely like that was afoot.

I realize this is a non-issue to most of you, and that's okay. I don't expect everyone, or even most people to care about this kind of thing. But I do care about the integrity and respecting the intelligence of our audience that supports us and wanted to be as transparent as possible. This was an irresponsible, weird violation of trust by an official in pro wrestling. There are plenty of people who will find that as a pretentious stance from someone who reports things that wrestling companies don't want out there, but I'll put it like this. That bad intel that I mentioned almost always gets filtered out? Plenty of that is information debunked by officials themselves. How could anyone covering TNA -- much less those provided that information -- trust them after that attempt?

Either way, I'll talk about this at length on the Fightful Report Podcast this week. Thank you for your support.

Sean Ross Sapp