Nic Nemeth Opens Up About His TNA World Championship Match With Mike Santana at Slammiversary 2026

TNA World Champion Nic Nemeth recently reflected on his match with Mike Santana at Slammiversary 2026.

As noted previously, Nemeth defeated Santana in the main event of last month’s Slammiversary pay-per-view to capture the TNA World Championship.

Speaking on Rewind Recap Relive, Nemeth reflected on his state of mind heading into the event and how the entire locker room reunited to put on a show at Slammiversary. He opened up about his match with Santana and their approach toward building the rivalry ahead of the bout. Nemeth described the ending as “poetic.”

Below are the highlights:

On his state of mind heading into Slammiversary 2026

“I found that intriguing because I didn’t know what exactly to expect going into that match. We had a lot riding on the show. People were talking. TNA was in the news, which is almost never a bad thing, even if it’s negative toward us. But we’re in the news for a couple of weeks. What we really wanted to do is, like, ‘Hey, man, all of us that are here, even some of us that are leaving or staying or renewing or out of here, we still really love the team behind the scenes, not just the talent, everyone behind the scenes. That’s not for everybody, but a lot for us.’ We’re like, ‘Man, we’ve been a team since, to my knowledge, I’ve got here for the two and half years I’ve been here.’

It was just we really… We all unite when it comes to those pay-per-views. I’m so proud of everybody. I’ve told this story a couple different times on Busted Open and Off the Ropes. I go, ‘Four different times I’ve main-evented a TNA pay-per-view.’ I may have main-evented probably more than that, but four different times I remember distinctly sitting there going, ‘Holy sh*t! I have to follow this with headlock takeovers and drop kicks.’ I go, ‘I don’t think I can do it.’ I have that idea in your head that you’re a big phony and one of these days everyone’s going to figure out that you just got lucky for 23 years or something.”

Nemeth calls Mike Santana an “a*s-kicking badass guy”

“So you have all these things writing on it and you don’t want to let the team down. You know what it means to TNA. Then the two of us, leading up to it, we tried to make it a little personal, a little gritty, a little grimy. Even I’ve talked about myself before where I’m like, ‘No one sees me as some a*s-kicking badass guy. I absolutely can choke you the f**k out and knock you out if I have to, but that’s not me. That’s not my character.’ But when you see Santana, that’s a badass, hard-hitting dude who’s like he wears his heart on his sleeve; he has his family that he’s fighting for, and it’s a beautiful story. Sometimes having that emotion can be detrimental toward you in a world title match, but it also brings so many fans toward you. So he was a great champion, Santana, an a*s-kicking guy that took all the fights. I’m not afraid to say that.”

Nic Nemeth calls the ending beautiful and poetic

“As somebody who goes, you guys can all line up and get behind, but I’m not guaranteeing you fights here. I think I’m the absolute best pro wrestler in the world right now. I’ve thought that for about 10 consecutive years, and no one has come up to me or outwrestled me out there, and I went, ‘Damn, that guy is so much better than me.’ That has never happened once since 2008. So I really, really wanted this to mean something. I wanted to take my game up a notch with the hard-hitting stuff, say that this title means more than just a great show and a good match.

“It means that we’re kicking the sh*t out of each other because not only to be here, be on this show, and be part of this team, but to be the man who has that title and holds it up in the air. I go, ‘I really need to take it up a notch.’ Santana left it all out there as he always does, and it was almost a beautiful, poetic ending. For a minute I caught him and I was like, ‘Man, we’ve been through- It’s like that moment at the end of an ‘80s movie where for a second you’re like, ‘Maybe we’re not so different after all. I pop the collar up on my shirt and go, ‘Scr*w you! I’m still stealing your girlfriend. Bam. Put that last shot in the back of the head and go take the title on vacation, off to Rio. But I wanted it to be emotional because I kept bringing up how Santana was so emotional. So I wanted it to be emotional for everybody, then let everybody know I’m dead inside, and that’s why nobody beats me.”

Listen to his comments below:

Nemeth is set to defend his title against Jeff Hardy on the July 30 episode of TNA iMPACT.

Please credit Rewind Recap Relive and give an H/T to 411Mania for the transcription if you take quotes from this copy.