Ryan Nemeth Explains Why He Initially Turned Down TNA

Details about why Ryan Nemeth was not initially interested in joining the promotion.

Since 2024, Ryan Nemeth has been part of TNA Wrestling, and present day, he is one-half of the TNA World Tag Team Champions alongside his brother, TNA World Champion Nic Nemeth.

Ryan was interviewed by Death Arts Xiii By Ash and shared that he initially turned down the overtures that TNA made to him.

“I had politely said no thank you a few times because I was a little turned off by everything in wrestling, in my personal life, which made it seem like I don’t wanna have anything to do with this anymore, ever again. It’s just so brutal, you know?” He laughed. “You could find some gossip about that and maybe some half-facts but the truth is I had some really horrible things continuing to happen to me in wrestling which really turned me off from it entirely and so, when someone from TNA reached out and said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in this?’ I said, ‘The company looks great and this idea seems great but I am not in a place where I wanna get back involved with this kind of stuff anymore at all,’ and that conversation went on for a few weeks or months, and I said, ‘Here’s the deal: I don’t wanna be put into random eight-man tag matches on the internet that nobody watches and be a meaningless person who’s there to get beat up. I don’t wanna do that, first of all,’ and the TNA person said, ‘I have an idea for you and your brother. It’s a storyline. I can’t guarantee anything but we could try it out and see how it goes,’ and I said, ‘Alright. Some time has passed; this actually sounds cool.’ To have a company have an idea versus, ‘Would you like to be cannon fodder for the people we really care about?’ It was a company saying, ‘You are special and we’d like to utilize that in our TV storylines.’ That was exciting to me so it was risky, but I said, ‘Sure, let’s try it,’ and we’re kind of both giving each other a tryout. TNA was seeing how I am. I was seeing how TNA is, and luckily, for everybody, it worked out great so, that’s the gist of it, I think. At first, I was trying to not do it because I was kind of badly burned from wrestling, behind-the-scenes stuff.”

Ryan was featured on the 9/17 Thursday Night iMPACT, during which he fell in defeat to Leon Slater. Slater will be challenging Nic Nemeth for the TNA World Championship at Bound For Glory.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit Death Arts Xiii By Ash with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.