Tommy Dreamer Discusses Xia Brookside’s Heel Turn In TNA: “I Was Like, ‘Holy Crap, We May Have Just Fell Into Something Amazing'”

Dreamer never imagined Brookside as a heel.

At the 2026 TNA Rebellion pay-per-view, Xia Brookside betrayed her partner Léi Yǐng Lee and cost her a Knockouts World Championship match.

There has since been an in-ring segment with Brookside and Lee, which concluded with Brookside pretending to be apologetic and then laying Lee out.

TNA creative team member Tommy Dreamer and TNA World Tag Team Champion Bear Bronson discussed Brookside’s character switch while on Busted Open After Dark. Dreamer never envisioned Brookside as a heel and feels they may have fallen into something.

Bronson: “So besides us, because I’m just so — with The System, just so gung ho… We text every day and we’re so ready. But, other than us, it’s funny, I was thinking about Xia Brookside today. Because I feel like people have seen just a small part of the character that she has shown and then with this new side of her, I feel like she’s gonna blow the world away. That’s just off the top of my head.”

Dreamer: “It’s funny, I saw that same thing. I never pictured her as a heel, and then, when she walked out in that all black, and her hair and her stoicness, and I was like, ‘Holy crap, we may have just fell into something amazing,’ and that segment last week, I’m crying in the back, and there was other people. I would watch people walk by and the monitors and you’re right, we all do root for each other but I’m seeing people watch and they’re like, ‘Oh sh*t.’ So if you could hook the wrestlers, you hook the fans, and it was just really, really intense and I’m like, ‘Man, Xia may really become this next-level person…’ Because I had just always looked at her as the bubbly, cute, underdog girl, and now it’s like a whole new side for her.”

On the 5/7 Thursday Night iMPACT, Léi Yǐng Lee will be challenging for the Knockouts World Championship, and Brookside is banned from ringside.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Busted Open After Dark with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.