Biography
Nearly three decades into his career, Frankie Kazarian is still finding new ways to make himself the centre of TNA. On 11 October 2026 he outlasted 20 other wrestlers to win the Call Your Shot Gauntlet at Bound for Glory for the third year running, rolling up Trey Miguel at the end of a 34-minute marathon. Rather than chase the world title, he has announced that he will use the prize to challenge The Nemeth Brothers for the TNA World Tag Team Championship alongside his teenage protégé Avery Styles, son of his old friend and rival AJ Styles.
Born in Palm Springs, California, Kazarian trained briefly under Killer Kowalski in Massachusetts before debuting in May 1998 and finishing his education at Ultimate Pro Wrestling. He became the first ever PWG World Champion in 2003 and joined TNA that summer, taking part in the very first Ultimate X match. The X Division became his home: he won its title for the first time in March 2004 and went on to hold it many more times, including a spell under the mask as Suicide. A short WWE stint in 2005 produced a handful of appearances as The Future Frankie Kazarian before he returned to TNA in 2006.
His second act came in tag teams. After riding alongside AJ Styles in Ric Flair's Fortune, he formed Bad Influence with Christopher Daniels in 2012, a pairing whose comedy and craft carried them to two TNA World Tag Team title reigns. The duo took the act to Ring of Honor as The Addiction, winning the ROH World Tag Team Championship twice, and in 2018 Kazarian added a third ROH tag reign with Scorpio Sky under the SoCal Uncensored banner. When AEW launched, SCU were part of the founding roster, and on 30 October 2019 Kazarian and Sky beat the Lucha Brothers on Dynamite to become the first AEW World Tag Team Champions.
Kazarian drifted back to Impact in 2021, won the X Division title once more by beating Mike Bailey at Bound for Glory 2022, and signed full-time in January 2023. A year later he turned on partner Eric Young, declared he was a soldier who deserved to be remembered as a king, and reinvented himself as TNA's sneering self-crowned monarch. He beat Young in a Full Metal Mayhem match at Rebellion 2024, won his first Call Your Shot Gauntlet that October and claimed the TNA International Championship from Steve Maclin in 2025.
The payoff came on 13 November 2025, when he cashed in his second gauntlet win against an injured Mike Santana to win the TNA World Championship for the first time, completing a TNA Grand Slam. Santana won it back on the first Impact broadcast on AMC on 15 January 2026, ending Kazarian's reign at 63 days, and then beat him in a Texas Death match at Genesis two nights later. Now armed with a third gauntlet win and a new apprentice, the self-proclaimed king is setting his sights on tag gold once again.
