Prior to Against All Odds, the TNA fans witnessed Kazarian walking out on his tag team partner, AJ Styles in the finals of the Wilcard Tag Team Tournament. Before the match, the fans saw Christopher Daniels lurking in the locker room of AJ and Kazarian. Daniels was also ringside as Kazarian reluctantly left his tag team partner and friend of many years.
The next few months saw Kazarian reluctantly take orders from Daniels to prevent a secret from getting out to protect AJ Styles. All of a sudden though, Kazarian's demeanor changed as he went from a reluctant friend to an angry aggressor. The man who wanted to protect the secret was now on Daniels' side about revealing it.
Following Lockdown, the first details of the secret were revealed by Daniels and Kazarian. At first it was a few pictures with the most notable one showing AJ seemingly kissing the neck of TNA President Dixie Carter. Then came a video of AJ leading Dixie Carter into a hotel room. Following that was the audio clip being released of AJ and Dixie talking on the phone about some believably private stuff. The implication of the photos, video and audio clip was that AJ Styles and Dixie Carter were having an affair. Had AJ Styles' success in TNA been a result of a relationship with Dixie Carter?
These insinuations turned everything upside down. Trouble began brewing in Dixie Carter's marriage to her husband Serg. AJ Styles was oftentimes distracted and therefore lost many matches because of it. The implications were clearly causing problems for both AJ and Dixie and things were really getting to them both.
Enter Claire Lynch! This past Thursday, AJ and Dixie vowed to reveal the secret despite trying a few times before. It was much too difficult to do so however as both AJ and Dixie decided to leave the ring. Before they could do so however, an unfamiliar woman walked to the ring. She grabbed the mic and let the IMPACT Wrestling world know what was going on.
She was an addict. She had been having problems in her life involving drugs and alcohol and has been going down a very dark path. She couldn't turn to her family because she had stolen money from them in the past. She turned to both AJ Styles and Dixie Carter as friends. Both AJ and Dixie had been spending the past few months protecting her and helping in her recovery leading. She also stated that Dixie and AJ were NOT having an affair.
After the revelation, an angry Daniels followed by Kazarian stormed the ring. With the revelation now out in the open and with the problems aside, AJ Styles let out his fury on his former Fortune stablemates. AJ didn't need to worry about this secret anymore and he was letting loose on Daniels and Kazarian for the past five months of problems they had caused him.
We learned a few things about the character of Daniels here. He was willing to watch and stoke the fire as his former best friend and his boss' lives burnt to ashes. He did that while making jokes and drinking Apple Martinis along the way.
It also proved that AJ Styles and Dixie Carter are moral people. They would go out of their way to help a friend with many problems. They risked their personal and professional lives to do this. Eventually things got way too difficult and the air had to be cleared.
One thing is for certain, this storyline doesn't seem to be over. The way Christopher Daniels reacted to her by saying "No, No, No. Shut Up. Why didn't anyone tell me she was here" followed by a confused reaction by Kazarian leads me to believe that Daniels convinced Kazarian that the affair was real.
What kind of person is Daniels to use a real life situation such as an addiction to further his own career? How could he knowingly lie in the face of the fans and his friends to allege such major issue such as an affair? How will Kazarian react knowing that Daniels may not have been completely honest with him from the beginning? This isn't the end of the story.
The original narrative had a different ending. I rewatched the video again and have looked through feedback and feel my original theory was incorrect. The column has been updated.
