2005 TNA Super X Cup Tournament

2005 TNA Super X Cup Tournament
An adult Samoan male posing while wearing orange and black wrestling trunks.
The 2005 TNA Super X Cup Tournament winner, Samoa Joe
VenueTNA Impact! Zone
LocationOrlando, Florida
Start dateJuly 19, 2005 (2005-07-19)
End dateAugust 14, 2005 (2005-08-14)
Competitors
Champion
Samoa Joe

The 2005 TNA Super X Cup Tournament was a professional wrestling single-elimination X Cup Tournament produced by the Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) promotion. It was the second-ever Super X Cup tournament and the last held until 2017. The competition began on July 19, 2005 and concluded on August 14, 2005 at TNA's Sacrifice pay-per-view (PPV) event. Then-TNA X Division Champion Christopher Daniels called the contest the "Christopher Daniels Invitational".[1]

The tournament featured eight TNA wrestlers: A.J. Styles, Alex Shelley, Chris Sabin, Michael Shane, Petey Williams, Samoa Joe, Shocker, and Sonjay Dutt. The event was preceded by a four-way qualification match at TNA's No Surrender PPV event on July 17, 2005, in which Dutt defeated Elix Skipper, Mikey Batts and Shark Boy. Samoa Joe and A.J. Styles passed through the quarterfinals and the semifinals to make it to the tournament final at Sacrifice. Joe defeated Styles at the event, thus winning the Super X Cup trophy and becoming number one contender to the TNA X Division Championship. Despite losing to Joe, Styles was added to the title match Joe received for winning the competition due to storyline reasons. TNA held a Three Way match for the TNA X Division Championship between Daniels, Joe, and Styles at the Unbreakable PPV event on September 11, 2005, which Styles won to become the new TNA X Division Champion.

Canadian Online Explorer columnist Corey David Lacroix reviewed Sacrifice, giving the Super X Cup final a rating of 8 out of 10. Lacorix said the final "could have been a certified Match of the Year contender if someone in the back had not decided to make Daniels interfere in this contest." He went on to say the match "was a thing of beauty that got stained."[2] Wade Keller of the Pro Wrestling Torch gave the Super X Cup final four out of five stars. Keller wrote that it was a "four-star match that was begging to be given an extra ten minutes to be a match of the year candidate."[3]

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  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference SLAMSac was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference PWTorch1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).