AJ Francis is playing the heel, but he is missing the mark

Look, I get it. We all love a guy who is willing to get on the microphone and lean into the villain role. Wrestling is built on the foundation of the loudmouth who thinks he is the smartest person in the room. But right now, AJ Francis is treating his time on the No-Contest Wrestling podcast like a scorched-earth tour of the TNA locker room.

The latest saga kicked off when Francis decided to play amateur pundit regarding recent TNA departures. He has been busy accusing fans of manufacturing fake drama around people leaving the company. It is a bold strategy to tell your audience they are hallucinating reality, but Francis seems committed to the bit. He is effectively painting a target on his own back just to prove that nobody is allowed to miss their former coworkers.

The heat is definitely real

Things reached a boiling point when Francis started giving his hot takes on Tommy Dreamer’s exit. According to reports from Ringside News, he claimed that fans are only pretending to miss the ECW legend. That is the kind of comment that makes the internet sharpen its knives. You don't just walk into a room full of marks and tell them their nostalgia is invalid.

Naturally, the response was immediate. It was not just the fans lighting up his mentions on socials. Deonna Purrazzo and Myla Grace decided they had heard enough of the commentary. As Ringside News outlined this week, both women stepped up to check him on his remarks regarding how people exit the company. When you have two respected veterans calling you out for your perspective on the inner workings of a locker room, you might want to consider putting the microphone down.

Why this matters for TNA

The core issue here is how this affects the perception of the promotion. Francis seems convinced that TNA departures are being twisted into something they are not. He believes the narrative that the company is burning is a fiction created by bored internet trolls. He is trying to defend the house, but he is doing it with a blowtorch.

Booking-wise, this is a mess. It is one thing to be a heel on television, but when the real-life behavior starts consistently overshadowing the product, you have a problem. Pro wrestling is a collaborative effort. When internal friction becomes public fodder, it devalues the talent and makes the office look like a chaotic petri dish. It creates a vibe that no one wants to work in, regardless of what the contract offer looks like.

My biggest gripe here is the lack of self-awareness. Francis is acting like the arbiter of what a TNA fan should feel. That is not his job, and frankly, he is bad at it. If you want to keep the locker room morale high, maybe stop speculating on why people are walking out the door. It makes the company look unstable rather than resilient.

If AJ wants to generate buzz, he should stick to the ring. He needs to realize that fans have long memories. You can argue with a podcast host for two hours, but you cannot argue with the dwindling goodwill of the people paying for the tickets. He is currently 1-0 in personal grudges but 0-100 in maintaining a professional reputation. It is a classic case of someone digging a hole and refusing to stop even after hitting bedrock.