During an interview with Lauren Yaffe, Konnan spoke about his time in TNA (now Impact Wrestling), and reflects on what it was like during those days.

“I can also say my time at Impact wasn’t the best. I had to fight for everything I had. I was at the very first show they were at. Then they didn’t call me back until maybe a year later. I was in a team called 3LK, which is me, Ron Killings, and Road Dogg. We did mostly a lot of comedy stuff. When Billy Gunn came in, Dusty Rhodes was the booker. He put Billy with Road Dogg to kind of do that DX thing that they were doing in WWE, which left me and Ron Killings in no man’s land. We begged for them to put us together, and they wouldn’t.

I had to basically go every single week and complain that I wanted to do my own thing, which ended up being LAX. I picked up the name, the idea, the members, everything, and then that popped off. When I was in Impact, I actually ended up suing them for racial discrimination, so it wasn’t a good time for me the first time I was in Impact. I didn’t work for them for like 10 years until I came back in 2016 or something like that. I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t happy there. I didn’t like how it was run. It just was not a good time for me either. I used to cut these promos, and they used to say, ‘Oh my God, those promos are so passionate. They are so good.’ I said, ‘Yea, because that’s how I actually feel.’

I was talking about racism and police brutality back then. I remember one time I said something, and Dixie Carter actually came up to me and said that the Orlando Police Department had called her because I had said that the Orlando Police Department shoots first, and asks questions later. They were in there like security that day, and told whoever, and called Dixie. Back then, I really didn’t care. I was just saying what I felt, and it was very effective because nobody else’s dialogue was like that. Their dialogue was more wrestling, like, ‘I’m going to retire you. I’m going to take the belt off of you. I’m going to kill you’, all that type of stuff, and I was in a whole different direction.”