Josh Alexander and Steve Maclin were going to be TNA World Tag Team Champions.
The former Impact World Champion's had an intense feud at the tail end of 2024. There was even a point where Alexander threatened to end Maclin’s career! While it was always in the plans for these two to feud, the circumstances were entirely different.
According to Alexander himself on the Johnny I Pro Show, him and Maclin were actually supposed to form a partnership first before their eventual feud at Bound For Glory.
“The original creative plans were, I was not supposed to be in the six-way at Slammiversary. Neither were you [Maclin]. I was not supposed to turn heel on Joe Hendry and do all this stuff with Joe Hendry and stuff prior to that. The original plan on paper was, we were supposed to team up [points to Maclin], I think we were supposed to defeat The System at Slammiversary for the tag belts, we were going to be tag champions, and we were going to feud with The Hardys or something, and then after we dropped to The Hardys, August, Septemberish, or something, that’s when we were going to go into this feud and go to Bound For Glory.
Obviously, things in wrestling [are] fluid, and they change all the time, no matter how disappointed you might be, but yeah, so we ended up scrapping all that. I ended up turning heel, and we kind of just had to run into this feud and build it up really quick for Bound For Glory and then pay it off for Turning Point”
Plans always change in the world of pro wrestling, but it’s always interesting to find out the original story for rivalries of this nature. Nevertheless, Josh and Steve still had a great rivalry and it’s easily one of TNA’s best of 2024.
The former TNA star’s 2024 was mainly about putting over new stars in the past year as the company knew that Alexander was leaving ahead of time. It’s great that Josh got to have so many great matches and leave on a high note despite mostly losing for the final months of his TNA career.
Who knows, maybe we’ll still get that Steve Maclin and Josh Alexander tag team title run down the line. As of know, Maclin is currently feuding with Frankie Kazarian and Alexander is still exploring free agency, though there's numerous reports that claim he’s signed with AEW.