TNA's Moral Responsibility

Morality and ethics in the world of pro wrestling are a bit... shady... at best. It's a world filled with sleazy stories of questionable believability. If you actually buy into what you read, you would learn that Vince McMahon has helped cover up at least one murder, that Randy Savage is banned from the WWE for having sex with an underage Stephanie McMahon, that Pat Patterson has kept many a man employed in hopes of becoming a little more friendly with them, and countless others.

But this one is front and center in the headlines.

On Friday night, Kurt Angle had some type of altercation with his girlfriend who plays Rhaka Khan on TNA television. One look at Rhaka Khan will give you a world of other jokes to make about this one but apparently she called the police on Angle who was removed from the residence. She also had a protection order put in place against him, saying that she believed he was deleting her text messages and pictures detailing a history of abuse at his hands. And there's where the problem erupts.

On Saturday, she called police again, this time as Angle apparently circled a Starbucks where she was at in his car. When detained by police, they discovered he was driving with a suspended license, in violation of the protection order, and just to throw more gasoline on the fire, had a syringe and HGH in his car. Angle and his attorney claim he has a prescription for the HGH but who knows.

And after a day of speculation about whether or not Angle would appear (or be allowed to appear) on TNA's PPV last night, he did. When the show ended, Kurt Angle remained the TNA World Champion.

Now, I'm all for the innocent until proven guilty thing but... well, I would think for the sake of Public Relations alone, TNA would at least take the title off him and suspend him until the allegations were further investigated. I'm not suggesting that's the legal and appropriate thing to do here but for PR alone, it would have to be. Obviously, there have been other superstar athletes who did not take a suspension while facing criming charges - Kobe Bryant coming immediately to mind but... and I hate saying this... in a post-Benoit world in this industry, they really can't afford to turn a blind eye to allegations of abuse and potentially worse.

Kurt Angle scares me. He really does. He has seemed unstable and dangerously so ever since his WWE release. And I suppose it's quite the indictment on the industry that they need a superstar so badly, they're willing to overlook all that.

It's a tough business to be a fan of at times... a lot of times sadly.