Backstage Report On Mike Santana Cutting Off Contact With TNA Office After Title Loss
Update 11/14/2025 5:00pm EST: PWInsider is now reporting that Mike Santana is backstage at TNA Turning Point.
The era of Mike Santana as TNA World Champion came to a surprising end on the November 13 episode of "TNA Impact" as he was dethroned by Frankie Kazarian, who used the title opportunity he earned at the Bound For Glory pay-per-view on October 12. Fans across the world were left stunned by the news of Santana dropping the title so soon after his emotional win over Trick Williams at Bound For Glory, and it seems that Santana hasn't taken the news well.
According to Mike Johnson of PWInsider, as of 2pm ET, Santana had not turned up to Full Sail University for the Turning Point event that is set to take place this evening. For context, the call time for the event was 1pm ET, and Santana is scheduled to headline the event in a tag team match where he will team up with Steve Maclin to take on Nic Nemeth and the man who dethroned him last night, Kazarian.
Not only did Santana not show up at call time, but he also no-showed his scheduled meet and greet session with fans that was set to take place after last night's "Impact" taping, and has not been returning calls or messages from TNA officials. PWInsider did reach out to TNA officials for an update on Santana's whereabouts but declined to comment.
The plot has since thickened in the past few hours as many people have claimed that the whole situation is a work to build up hype for the Turning Point event, the "Impact" tapings that are set to take place on November 15, and the "Gold Rush" TV special with "WWE NXT" and AAA at The Theater in Madison Square Garden on November 18 and 25 respectively. Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select has taken to his X (formerly known as Twitter) account to also claim that the situation is a work.
In a follow-up, PWI wrote in their Elite section that given Santana's TNA contract status being up soon, "there has been an assumption from some that last night's angle with Santana losing the title was to faciliate him leaving for WWE NXT, but no one on the WWE side has confirmed that was the case." They also wrote that Santana remains unseen backstage at Turning Point, "but the longer the situation has played out today, more and more people are assuming it is some sort of angle playing off Santana losing last night."