Leon Slater is the new TNA World Champion. The 22-year-old beat Nic Nemeth in the Bound For Glory main event at the Yuengling Center in Tampa on Sunday night, becoming the youngest World Champion in TNA history.
Slater finished it with a Swanton 450. Nemeth had hit the Danger Zone during the closing stretch and still couldn’t put him away. The loss ends Nemeth’s second reign at 105 days; he won the title from Mike Santana at Slammiversary in Boston on June 28.
Slater takes the age record from Tessa Blanchard, who was 24 when she won what was then the Impact World Championship at Hard To Kill in January 2020. He got his shot by trading in the X-Division Championship through Option C, which lets the reigning X-Division Champion vacate the title for a World Championship match.
How Slater Got Here
Slater won the X-Division Championship from Moose at Slammiversary in 2025 and became the youngest champion in the title’s history. That reign lasted 298 days, tying Austin Aries for the longest ever, before Cedric Alexander ended it on May 14.
He took the belt back from Alexander at the steel cage Lockdown pay-per-view in August, then invoked Option C that same night after Nemeth and his brother Ryan won the World Tag Team Championship from The Hardys.
Nemeth spent the build praising his challenger while promising to keep the title. He told Reel Appreciation that Slater would probably be a 10-time world champion one day, but “there’s no way in hell he’s beating me” (h/t Fightful for the transcription).
Elsewhere on the card, Erick Redbeard made a surprise TNA debut during the Hardys and Syx Falls Count Anywhere match.
