TJ ‘Manik’ Perkins Discusses Why He Was Released From TNA, Their Future, More

TJ Perkins recently spoke with The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling, here are the highlights…

How his departure from TNA came about: Basically my contract had come up and there was I believe a company option and basically I was coming up as a restricted free agent (using sports terms) and they had options to retain me for another year. I don’t know if its because and I am sure they are probably restructuring their contracts because of the POP TV stuff so I don’t know if that maybe part of it. It came up for renewal and they just said that they won’t be renewing it and that was it.

Was he surprised that TNA just let him walk: Not necessarily. It’s not like I was expecting it or anything or that I was that shocked but I have a tendency to not really hold expectations I just kind of see it as changes are changes and sometimes stuff like this comes up.

Has the TNA roster been anticipating the company to flounder or turn the corner: There was never anything like that as far as people being pessimistic for lack of a better term. It’s kind of a side note but I feel like people and I think it’s a generational thing have a tendency to look at things very black and white and once you’ve chosen that path it can’t be changed and you will live and die by the sword and that’s the side that you chose. I feel like people want those things to have been issues and I think that maybe for a few people it could have been an issue but generally speaking it’s the same thing I’ve said the last two or three years, money was always good for me and the people around me and people always seemed generally happy and had fun going to work. At times maybe management could be a little more prideful in the way they make decisions because it might effect efficiency or some of the rational decision making.

The constant thought that TNA will go out of business: I feel like this generation now, everything is becoming a comparison. People kind of draw ball lines a lot more than they used to. We kind of live in a revisionist world and no matter what it’s always going to be like an undying other side to it. As far as my experiences there was never anything like that. We were never obviously comfortable with the network changes and I don’t think anybody would be. I don’t really feel like anybody thought things were dire and just went to work and were optimistic about it and it seemed like everybody had fun and a lot of the thing is people from the outside looking in don’t understand that we really don’t take it that seriously. Even if things were in a worse case scenario that we leave Spike TV and don’t find a home and we never work for TNA again. Most of us wouldn’t care that much. We would just go on and take our career elsewhere and new opportunities would open up. People debate with each other on the outside and it becomes like a war but us on the actual battlefield playing this game it’s never really been that way with us.

TNA always playing around with taking away his mask as Suicide and Manik: I never cared if I was in a mask or not or playing a character or not. I volunteered to play the role in the first place. They didn’t call me and ask me to be Suicide. I came in at a time when they didn’t have a lot of focus on the X-Division and I was just getting out of my Ring of Honor contract. When I came in I did some live events and dark matches and there wasn’t really anything for me to do. I volunteered to be Suicide. When I saw the first commercials for it, they just didn’t have an idea for it. They were probably going to only have it for one day as far as what Dixie had told me. I volunteered and created a life for that character. Even recently it was never a thing where I needed to be me or I needed to be out of it (the mask), my only motivation was that there was a time when I took over a character that was largely felt as a joke to fans and nobody cared about Suicide. Then they changed the name and took the mask off and it started to lose meaning. So we put the mask back on and you can only have those false starts so many times before fans start to lose faith in the performer. Generally speaking the performer is left holding the bag, so I felt like the second time around with James (Storm) and the group that there is this really cool moment we created where I took the mask off again and people know who I am at this point and where it was; we are going to have what we have been asking for and then it was they wanted me to put the mask back on again. It was like before you guys destroy my ability to be interesting and valuable I think we should find one path and stick to it.

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