Tommy Dreamer Details Thought Process Behind Not Crowning Mike Santana As TNA World Champion At Slammiversary 2025

Mike Santana went on to win the title later that year.

The main event of TNA Wrestling’s 2025 Slammiversary pay-per-view was a three-way match for the TNA World Championship. WWE talent Trick Williams went into the bout as champion and defended against Mike Santana and now-fellow WWE talent Joe Hendry.

That year’s Slammiversary took place in Santana’s home state of New York. His daughter and close friends Konnan, Amazing Red, and Homicide were in attendance, but Williams ended up retaining the belt.

Former TNA creative head Tommy Dreamer took to Busted Open and spoke about the thought process behind not crowning Santana at that event and waiting until Bound For Glory.

“Mike Santana’s story. I’m so close with Mike, and his daughter and his family, and when I talk about the internet, everyone wanted Mike to win at Slammiversary and it’s cool. Then who do you face at Bound For Glory? And when Bound For Glory beat Slammiversary in attendance, you know you made the right decision. It’s so easy to make everybody happy. But you also have to make people mad to get you to where you wanna go, and then when you draw more people, it’s like, you did your job right, and no one’s gonna give you that credit for it. It’s a thankless job, but I’m thanked by the people and their text messages.”

Santana is going into the 2026 Slammiversary as World Champion. He’ll be defending his title against Nic Nemeth. Santana did a media appearance and spoke about his future. His comments can be read here.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit Busted Open with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.