Sanada vs. Daniels in Japan

[Papa Pillman]

Wrestle-1 announced that Seiya Sanada, the TNA X Division Champion, will face off against Christopher Daniels on April 17th in Tokyo, Japan. Right now it is billed as a "special single match" and it is not clear if the title will be defended as Sanada is currently involved in a Best-of-Three series with Tigre Uno for the title.

As anyone who watched the last few Impacts has surmised by now, Bad Influence was not booked at the last set of Impact tapings, which concluded their airings last night.

This week's Impact will be "Live" in the Impact Zone on Thursday, with the following two weeks of episodes leading into Sacrifice as well as a ONO PPV taping happening over the two days that follow.

Now that we have confirmation that Daniels will be in Japan on Thursday, we could guess he will once again miss the Impact taping window this following weekend, as well as the ONO taping and likely Sacrifice as well considering that he will have no chance to appear on the show to set up a match for that event.

This news also puts Kaz's presence in question by association, and although Daniels is being advertised as representing TNA on this Wrestle-1 show, it further adds fuel to the rumors of Bad Influence's "up in the air" contract situation. Daniels and Kaz(and Sabin and Aries too as an aside) all being absent from the recent taping schedule, and this news indicating that Daniels will once again be missing Impact tapings has to seriously ramp up speculation that TNA may be losing more talent due to a reported insistence on cutting back the money being offered on contract extensions to talent with expiring deals.

Anyone have any thoughts on the Sanada/Daniels encounter(which should be excellent BTW)? Or The fact that it seems to preclude Daniels from this weekend's tapings? Or anything that this all could be foreshadowing regarding Daniels'/Bad Influence's future with the company?

 

[Fabulous Freebirds]

My guess would be that Daniels probably has a few more dates left on his contract so TNA are using that to send to Wrestle 1.

The match itself between Sanada and Daniels, if it becomes available to watch online in the future, I will check it out. But for now, I don't see myself too interested in it.

Sabin and Aries contracts expiring as well? That news to me.

 

[Papa Pillman]

Sabin and Aries contracts expiring as well? That news to me.

There has been no confirmation on that. In fact it was reported early last year that Aries had signed a long term deal(which would presumably mean atleast 18-24 months), but obviously no one knows for sure.

It was also reported, if I remember correctly, that Sabin had signed an extension during his last knee rehab. If that is the case then he likely should also have time still remaining on his deal.

But it is a fact that both were not used on the last set of tapings and therefore have missed the last several weeks of TV. Its possible that they were just given a little time off while creative set up new storylines for them heading into Slammiversary season, but their recent absence(and some cryptic tweets by Aries around the time the tapings were taking place) has lead some to speculate on their contract situations as well.

 

[pooshah96]

looking forward for this