TNA will crown a new X-Division champion at Bound for Glory following Leon Slater’s decision to pursue the company’s top prize.
Director of Authority Santino Marella announced Thursday that six wrestlers will compete for the vacant championship at the October 11 pay-per-view from the Yuengling Center in Tampa, Florida.
The BFG six-way competitors will earn their places through qualifying matches scheduled for upcoming episodes of TNA Impact. No competitors or qualifying matchups had been announced at the time of Marella’s statement, but earlier it was announced that tonight’s Impact in Brampton, Ontario will feature two X-Division qualifiers – Joe Alonzo vs. KC Navarro, and Rohit Raju vs. Fabian Aichner
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The championship became vacant after Slater exercised Option C, a longstanding TNA provision allowing the reigning X-Division champion to relinquish the title in exchange for a TNA World Championship opportunity. Slater will use that opportunity to challenge world champion Nic Nemeth at Bound for Glory. TNA has confirmed the match as the main event of its biggest annual show.
The decision came shortly after Slater regained the X-Division Championship from Cedric Alexander at Lockdown. Slater defeated Alexander in a Last Man Standing match contested inside a steel cage, concluding a rivalry built around an unusual threat to his place in TNA history. Under the match’s stipulation, a Slater loss would have erased his entire first championship reign from TNA’s official records. He would no longer have been recognized as the youngest X-Division champion or as a co-holder of the record for the longest single reign at 298 days.
Slater’s victory preserved those accomplishments and began his second reign. He then invoked Option C later that night, surrendering the newly regained championship to secure his match with Nemeth. The development leaves Slater chasing the TNA World Championship while opening one of Bound for Glory’s most prominent matches to six other members of the roster.
TNA has not announced when the qualifying series will begin. The company presents its first live post-Lockdown edition of Impact from the CAA Centre in Brampton, on Thursday night.
