TNA iMPACT airs each and every Thursday evening. TNA once said that they were going to innovate and change the wrestling industry; TNA once said they were going to challenge the WWE as the number one wrestling company in the world, period! Those of you who are avid TNA fans will feel the pain of watching the product now; comparing it to what it was in 2009, let alone 2005. 2010 for TNA in mine and many others opinions has been horrific, suicidal even, because for me TNA took away the principle they once stood by, and instead of becoming the number one, they have well and truly established themselves as the number two turd punchbowl in the US. What TNA once believed in, they have now thrown to the side, and what Hulk Hogan done literally, threw everything TNA was about right into the garbage can, and yes right on prime time television. TNA once believed that young, aspiring stars such as AJ Styles and Samoa Joe could lead the Thursday night brand into the number one wrestling show ever, but for some reason the fat cats up stairs must have got greedy, and that greed must have somehow blocked their original version of TNA, limited their writing ability and somehow mustered up a feeling that the only way the big bucks were ever going into the Carter-Salinas family was if TNA had the big names: Hulk Hogan, Jeff Hardy, Mr. Anderson and Rob Van Dam, but for me, they were wrong.
TNA once relied on young stars of the X-Division and the Women’s Division to draw viewers to the product, but unfortunately for TNA despite making leaps and bounds with their younger stars, each year a few more WWE castoffs join the federation and in most cases these stars who jumped ship have all taken away from what TNA was; Fast, furious and indulging adult entertainment, such entertainment that was based around deadly Women competitors and high octane, no limits X-Division wrestlers. The shows were cramped with good wrestling matches, even from older veterans such as Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner and Sting, but as each big name joined, a little bit of that fire that TNA had is somehow lost in backstage politics and mediocre matches with once good/great wrestlers. For me this is down to the leverage new, so called bigger stars have on management and the writing teams in particular. For a start a new star has to be written into storyline and take somewhat of a centre stage on TV, thus taking away limelight from stars that have been at the TNA for a long time, stars TNA fans wanted to watch. Secondly, what new TNA signing has improved the TNA product, with the exceptions of Sting and Kurt Angle? Many stars such as Rob Van Dam have just tailgated and leached off the past success of TNA without fitting into the mould of the product, all in the name of a pay-check and a cheap title belt reign, one which devalues the efforts of past stars.
Ok, think of it this way. You and your team of workers (For the example the X-Division) have been busting your asses since 2002 to make a business successful. One board director who has more power than you knows and acknowledges that you have done a fantastic job at whatever you may be doing, then within the space of one year these directors come in and piss on your success by employing a bunch of workers who have been out of your profession for years, even decades in some cases, and you know these new workers who are undoing your hard work are being paid twice as much as you to do a worse job. What would you think, that after years of hard work and success you were being replaced by a bunch of old, failed men and told that your division is breaking up slowly so the new directors can employ even more expensive members of staff, all whom add absolutely nothing. The worst thing is, your original team knows they are ten times the worker than the new ones, but because now the company is over-un by these old castoffs, you now have no say so in the day to day running of your company and you just know the only way from here is down. Well this is the case TNA is a business in this sense, and for me, a loyal consumer of their product and merchandise I like many others have been dissatisfied by the quality of service TNA has to offer, but as a fan I’m being told the direction the brand is going in is the right one by management, and that what their now offering is much more appealing is more than a lie than telling me that at nineteen Santa is real, especially to those trusted stars who actually made TNA watchable.
The reason 2010 was so bad for TNA is because of what I’ve just said. Since Hogan and Bischoff have ransacked every aspect of TNA they have released more of the stars many TNA viewers liked, and brought in many wrestlers and superstars that couldn’t quite cut it in the big leagues of WWE or WCW. In this view TNA have hired stars that cannot and have not delivered at the top before, and these guys such as Anderson and Hardy are supposed to be the future of the product? Rubbish. Since arriving in TNA Jeff Hardy has not cut one good promo, been in one good angle, or had one good match, and despite being a mastermind on the microphone, Anderson has not fully delivered, the same goes for RVD who undeservingly won the TNA World Heavyweight Championship, and now that he doesn’t have it, he is going around saying he deserves it back? It’s all rubbish, and as far as storyline goes, nothing in TNA has been standout or spectacular, it’s just recycled rubbish from the 1990’s, and in particular old WCW storylines (Which by the way god awful, a reason WCW isn’t standing still today).
What has 2010 done for the TNA fans? Well for younger fans and families it doesn’t make much of a difference, families will still go to live events and children and young adults might not be as perceptive as an older fan, but for a slightly educated fan, regular viewer, Smarks, or mark it has been a year of rebellion against TNA. Fans who go beyond the TV shows are the ones who will define TNA’s product because they are the ones who will get online and question why on earth TNA would book a show the way it does. It is a way of venting our frustrations at the bad change in direction, and in the media they are more likely to pick up on the negative stories against wrestling promotions. Rebellious fans, unlike young, and sometimes naïve fans have the option of tuning out of the product and just watching something else, or doing something else more productive because we can see how stupid some things are. Older fans who like wrestling are also likely to go to a house show or know how to get a hold of merchandise, so it is also a potential money loss for TNA. Also fans online can also dent the credibility of TNA and expose even further the faults of the product by writing blogs, posting YouTube videos (Botchmania is a great example) and directly complaining to the promotion.
Rebellion has been evident with TNA, right from the beginning of 2010 with TNA fans chanting “We Want Six Sides” at TNA’s first PPV of the year; Genesis. After lots of speculation The Bischoff/Hogan regime got rid of the traditional TNA six sided ring, in favour of the typically traditional four sided ring, used in the WWE. As months went on the X-Division became nothing, and after promising an all X-Division PPV, we actually got “The Monster” Abyss headlining the PPV. After years of great work, TNA fired ODB and other women from the division and slowly started to dissolve the X-Division such as Daniels, paid less attention to AJ Styles and Samoa Joe, and just like WCW, TNA relied on one ‘huge’ story to focus the company on. Well here it is; “Immortal”. For me, Bound for Glory on 10/10/10 was the beginning of the end of TNA television for at least another year. It’s like in F1 (2009) with the race fixing allegations, it’s taken well over a year to get over such events and for me so will this. Just one year ago TNA had the Main Event Mafia, but now they have an even more boring, predictable group who promise failure and another year of backwards wrestling, much to the disgust of fans who loved the “Old TNA days”. That is just it. Fans are now starting to say “Old TNA”, even though the company is only nine years old, how does that make sense? Now more than ever people reference TNA as a financial security for stars who leave the WWE, and are making more and more comparison, but why not? TNA has followed the same route as WCW, and many attitude era fans know how that turned out. The only thing is, all you need to do to beat TNA is slightly nudge Hulk Hogan, and he’ll be back in hospital for back surgery, so there is no way they’d ever stand a chance of catapulting the WWE as the number one wrestling organisation. Then again, if you’re a WWE wrestler such as Matt Hardy and you know you have a safety net in TNA and you hate the WWE product and know there might be a world title for you in TNA, then why wouldn’t these mid-carders go for it?
For a long time TNA was a safe haven, and offered genuine change to an audience who were finally getting something new to watch, but my main fear now is that TNA is alienating the wrestling audience further, and keeping the industry back from having another revolution. What many fans like me don’t understand is that if TNA continued to adore the Women and X-Division they would have revolutionised the business like they promised, with AJ Styles and Samoa Joe stealing the show, but now they are forced to warm the seat for Hogan and his band of old, failed men. They never needed Hogan or anybody to secure a TV contract, they didn’t need older more established stars to get a videogame contract with Midway, they just needed to trust their younger stars, and the stars who were determine to get TNA to the top to begin with. Now what do TNA have? The same size audience, god awful Pay-Per-View outings, pissed off internet fans and a dwindling TV show that even hardcore fans don’t want to watch.
It’s not all doom and gloom though for TNA. Change is always taking place in TNA; many loyal Thursday night followers will be hoping that change will come back once and with a simple clear-out of stars we never really wanted. TNA might finally get it right, but if you’re like me, and you write or think too negatively about the business as a whole (despite loving it), especially when you know that with the current set up in TNA it is unlikely anything will change in the near or distant future, then we can only hope that when the likes of Hogan/Bischoff/Flair/RVD/Hardy and others who have ruined everything TNA is about leave, then there will still be a TNA, but hey if it happened once, it can happen again. Here’s hoping that when I scratch away at the infamous TNA logo, the purple letters of “WCW” aren’t hidden behind, waiting to bury another wrestling promotion.
Robert Austin
“In Ring Issues”
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