ORLANDO - Those who wanted to see suspended Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones receive his comeuppance Sunday night will have only one complaint about his Total Nonstop Acton wrestling debut.

The beating he took wasn't legitimate.

Entering the Hard Justice pay-per-view show in Orlando, Jones was barred from doing anything that involved physical activity following an injunction successfully filed Friday by the Titans. TNA matchmakers found a loophole by showing Jones "knocked out" backstage by a mystery assailant shortly after a verbal confrontation with grappler Ron "The Truth" Killings.

If his legal team is that creative, Jones could ultimately return to the NFL. In the meantime, Jones is trying his hand at pro wrestling while facing two felony charges that helped generate his unpaid suspension for the 2007 season.

Yes, an industry whose steroid- and substance-abuse issues were exposed following the murder/suicide of World Wrestling Entertainment star Chris Benoit and his wife and seven-year-old son in June continues to wallow in sleaze. And TNA's followers weren't afraid to let the promotion know it.

Horribly miscast as a "babyface" (i.e. a good guy), Jones was heavily booed by a crowd of roughly 1,000 fans from the moment he walked inside Soundstage 21 at Universal Studios. Some at ringside even threw fake bills into the air to mock the $81,020 that Jones allegedly used to "make it rain" in February at a Las Vegas strip club. The incident led to a triple shooting and a pending felony coercion charge against him.

Jones didn't get flustered by the negative reaction and delivered his pre-scripted lines, including a claim that he would "show the world I'm the best player that ever lived." An exchange followed that resulted in Killings being removed by legitimate NFL security assigned to insure Jones wouldn't violate the injunction.

It should have been the other way around.

With the exception of a few impact plays during the past two seasons, Jones has done little but embarrass the NFL with his off-field behavior since being the No. 6 overall pick in the 2005 draft. Jones was arrested six different times in that span, although he claimed to have gotten cited only twice during a televised interview earlier this week.

This begs the question: Why would TNA want to associate itself with someone like this?

"Our business is built on conflict and controversy and larger-than-life personalities," said TNA executive/wrestler Jeff Jarrett, who spearheaded efforts to sign Jones. "The man has got all three."

TNA President Dixie Carter sounded sincere when explaining that she believed Jones — who didn't make himself available for interviews Sunday — was trying to better himself and pro wrestling could help provide that avenue.

"Quite honestly, there are a lot of guys in that ring who have had troubles in their past," Carter said while staring at a troupe of TNA wrestlers practicing their craft several hours before showtime. "When I met with him, we really saw a young man who wanted to change."

But Jones' representatives also told Carter that he would be able to actually wrestle, which was a clear-cut violation of his NFL contract. TNA learned that the hard way Friday, with one executive telling FOXSports.com that Jones was even prohibited from such benign acts as throwing objects or spitting on a wrestler because of the potential for injury. Such precautions are believed to stem from Tennessee's desire to trade or reinstate Jones to their roster once his NFL suspension ends.

So much for a potential dog-collar match against embattled Atlanta quarterback Michael Vick.

Forced to navigate a Pacman-like maze to pull off his grappling debut, TNA hastily assembled another storyline as the weeks that the 5-foot-10, 185-pound Jones privately spent training with Jarrett were wasted.

The original Hard Justice script called for Jones to deliver the following lines: "I want to prove to the world that Pacman Jones is a team player regardless of the wrongful, negative allegations thrown my way. I just want to be part of the hottest team in pro wrestling — TNA." Killings would then confront Jones in the ring and get hit before TNA security would separate the two.

"What I'm most disappointed in is the people who've worked with (Jones), they said he's the most gifted professional athlete they've ever worked with in this genre and really could have turned some heads," Carter said. "He would have been protected and the whole thing.

"It's interesting. People say wrestling is fake. We've gone from being fake to hazardous."

History has shown being associated with Jones is potentially hazardous in itself. In fact, you couldn't blame some fans if they ducked for cover when pyrotechnics blasted as Jones made his ring entrance.

To his credit, Jones was professional in his backstage dealings with TNA personnel even though some grapplers were upset that he was given his own Winnebago for a dressing room while they were forced to change inside a double-wide trailer parked behind the arena.

Decked in a black TNA ski cap and customized Pacman attire bearing a yellow face with arched eyebrows and a sinisterly "Jones" logo stamped across the mouth, Jones and two members of his entourage of fellow 20-somethings willingly did two takes to capture his storyline arrival to Universal Studios in a Hummer. Once done filming, he then asked for tips on how to best deliver his pending in-ring interview from Jarrett, who describes Jones' personality as being "larger than life."

"For the words TNA to be mentioned for four or five days straight on every national outlet, that's a positive," Jarrett said. "We've gotten mainstream press we've never gotten before. It already has succeeded. There's more people today that have heard the name TNA wrestling than at this time last week."

But that isn't to say there are more people watching a publicity-starved company trying to carve its own niche in a WWE-dominated business. The audience for Jones' debut on TNA's weekly Thursday night Impact show on Spike TV fell by roughly seven percent to 1.3 million viewers from the previous episode. Jones' appearance at Hard Justice also isn't expected to have bolstered TNA's slumping pay-per-view buy rates.

Still, Carter said TNA remains committed to Jones for a 10-week run expected to culminate at the Bound for Glory pay-per-view show October 14 in Atlanta. Jones, who TNA hopes will be allowed to get involved in minimal physical conduct by then, could lobby for NFL reinstatement after the 10th game of the season in mid-November.

Said Carter: "Ten weeks from now, if he really has continued to set forth on the path he said, it would be a huge accomplishment for him personally and a victory for this company as well."

Jones may have started on that path as he rose from his backstage assault, picked up his 18-month-old daughter Zaniyah then walked out, toward an uncertain future.


- msn.foxsports.com