I’d be surprised if anyone who writes about wrestling this week covers any other subject than TNA and their precarious situation with Spike TV. In fact, the awesome Grant Cook has already done so on this very site: https://www.sltdwrestling.com/57-channelsand-nothin/ and a damn fine job he did.
Hopefully what I’ve written about TNA will be a compliment to Grant’s work. In reality it will be a poor imitation. Considering TNA have been branded a poor imitation of WWE down the years, that’s some nice irony right there.
TNA aside, there’s been other big news in the wrestling world this week, such as:
- Daniel Bryan kicked a burglar’s ass and stopped him from robbing his house – with a broken freaking neck! Hey Kurt, I’ll see your Olympic gold medal and raise you stopping a home invasion.
- Someone turned up San Diego Comic-Con, cosplaying as Sting, and managed to get himself onto the WWE panel with Hogan, Bryan and Heyman. Wrestling Observer immediately reported that Sting’s signing with WWE was imminent. Which they’ve been saying since he left TNA in February. I think the word ‘imminent’ needs to be replaced with the more accurate, “look, we don’t know when he’s signing but he will…soon…we think.”
- Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena was booked for the Summerslam main event, but everyone knows Stephy vs. Brie is the real main event. I haven’t seen a better booked or better performed feud in WWE this year than Stephy vs. Brie. Seriously, it’s been great.
- Drew McIntyre returned to the Scottish promotion Insane Championship Wrestling, cut the mother of all promos, and probably added a good few hundred ticket sales to their next shows that he’ll be working on. ICW could be the perfect platform for Drew to rediscover his true character and voice.
- The signings of KENTA and Prince Devitt were confirmed by WWE and it appears both will be allowed to use their current name. That decision is for marketing purposes in Japan and Europe. WWE aren’t changing their policy of giving developmental talent horrible, non-tough guy sounding names like Kenneth Cameron or Adrian Neville.
Those are all interesting stories and a less lazy writer would probably have chosen one of them to ramble on about. Unfortunately for you, I’m as lazy as they come. So I’m going to ramble on about TNA for a while. Let’s hope it serves as a good accompaniment to Grant’s article, which I’ve now plugged more times than the bathroom sink.
Here’s a brief history of everything TNA. Stop me if you’ve heard this before:
In 2002 the American wrestling landscape was a scorched earth, post-apocalyptic, blood-soaked hellscape. WCW and ECW were dead. WWE was about to move into mid-life crisis mode, after leaving a ton of money on the table following the Invasion angle, which ended with a match at Survivor Series between a bunch of WWE guys, Shane McMahon and Booker T. Not a Sting or Goldberg in sight.
Jeff Jarrett was equally as dead in the water as the Invasion angle. He’d not just burnt bridges with Vince McMahon, he’d dynamited them all the way to hell. With WCW gone and no hope of getting back into WWE, Jeff did what most people in his situation would have done – he opened his own promotion, with his legendary father and former Memphis Wrestling promoter, Jerry Jarrett.
And so TNA (originally NWA-TNA) was born in 2002, with its weekly PPV format, Ken Shamrock as their first World Champion, some amazingly innovative X-Division matches, and a midget whacking off into a trash can on the first show. All this took place from the Nashville county fairgrounds and was a decidedly bush league looking show, with weird booking and annoying commentary. Not much changed from day one.
The company was in the hole financially from the moment it was created. The business model of a weekly wrestling show on PPV was a complete bust. Not enough people were willing to pay for a second rate show and definitely not at $9.99 per week (which you now pay monthly to get the WWE Network). The number of PPV buys required to break even was higher than a hippy on the third day of Woodstock.
Jerry and Jeff ended up falling out due to Jeff’s insistence that Vince Russo (the man who made him WCW World Champion) be head writer. Jerry felt Russo was a clueless ass and someone he didn’t want involved in his company. Jeff disagreed and sided with Russo against his father. This lead to a split between father and son, who remained on bad terms for years after. This wouldn’t be the last time someone in TNA would side with Vince Russo.
By late 2002 TNA were financially screwed and about to go out of business. Enter stage right, Dixie Carter. The daughter of a billionaire energy company owner, Dixie’s PR company represented TNA. When she heard TNA was going to the wall, she convinced her father Bob Carter to buy the company, which she and Jeff would run.
With Jerry Jarrett selling his majority stake to Bob Carter, Jeff remained a minority shareholder in the company and was the man charged with running the wrestling side of TNA. As is tradition in wrestling, this meant Jarrett pushed himself as the biggest star in the company, had numerous World Title reigns, which eventually infuriated fans who wanted more than The Jeff Jarrett Show.
With Dixie and Jeff in charge, what followed was ten years of false starts, big names coming and going, some horrendous booking, some major mismanagement by Dixie and others, the constant and baffling employment and defence of Vince Russo, the invention of the six sided ring, the removal of the six sided ring, the reintroduction of the six sided ring, Tommy Dreamer’s various ECW revivals and reunions , and countless overhyped and disappointing announcements on Twitter from Dixie.
TNA also had some very bright spots, including a period in 2005 when the company was booked by Scott D’Amore, Dutch Mantell, Jeff Jarrett and a few others. With the show airing on Fox Sports, TNA presented a version of wrestling as a serious, competitive sport. It was something completely different from the cartoonish style of WWE. It rocked and lead to some of the best shows that TNA ever produced. The likes of AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels and other TNA home grown talent shone brightly during this time.
The TV deal with Fox ended in 2005 and TNA were without TV exposure and the income that came along with it. Eventually, TNA were able to secure a TV deal with Spike TV, who were looking for a wrestling promotion after losing RAW back to the USA Network. The deal with Spike saved TNA and allowed them to continue to operate and try, with limited success to become a successful alternative to WWE.
The arrival of Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff in 2010 was supposed to herald a new dawn for TNA. They would compete with WWE. They would bring in the best talent in the world. They would finally make the step to the much talked about, but never actually defined ‘next level.’ Brother.
This didn’t happen. Hogan and Bischoff had their own vision for success in TNA. They were wrong, so very, very wrong. All the things that TNA fans feared would happen with Hogan did. He was pushed as the star of the company, despite being barely able to walk, let alone work a match. His friends all got jobs and pushes on TV (including such ‘rating draws’ as The Nasty Boys and Bubba the Love Sponge) and the quality of the in-ring product (something TNA could always compare favourably to WWE) plunged dramatically.
That over use of Hogan and misuse of talent wasn’t the new TNA regime’s biggest mistake. That would come a few weeks later, when they went head to head with RAW. Hogan and Bischoff (no doubt remembering their glory days in WCW from 15 years ago) tried to recreate the Monday Night Wars. They failed.
It was a fight more mismatched than Mike Tyson vs. Pee Wee Herman, and Mike is allowed to bring a gun. TNA’s ratings were destroyed. The new Monday Night Wars lasted a month. TNA quickly slunk back to Thursday nights and spent the best part of the rest of the year trying to get their ratings back up to pre-Monday move levels.
When the Hogan/Bischoff era in TNA ended, the company was in financial meltdown, creatively broken and the level of apathy towards the company from fans was at an all-time high.
After pumping a reported $45 million into TNA, Bob and Janice Carter decided that Dixie’s plaything needed to either start making money, or be sold off. While they hunted around for a buyer, major cuts were made. They scaled back PPV production and live event touring. Eventually the company had to take IMPACT off the road and back to Universal Studios and the IMPACT Zone. It was a major step backwards but one that kept the company afloat.
The cuts kept coming as big money contracts for the likes of Sting, AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels were not renewed. TNA had to rebuild their roster with cheaper and less well known talent, while also signing the likes of Magnus, Samoa Joe, James Storm and Bobby Roode to new contracts in an attempt to keep the core of their roster and not lose any more name talent.
All the while the clock was ticking on TNA’s TV deal with Spike. As WWE found out recently, the TV industry isn’t exactly crying out for wrestling programming. Even a show like IMPACT that guarantees at least a million viewers per week.
There’s a whole host of reasons for this but it basically comes down to advertisers think wrestling fans are illiterate, poor and only watch or buy wrestling related shows and products. Therefore advertisers won’t pay primo money for an ad spot during IMPACT, which means Spike make less money and IMPACT becomes less valuable to them.
The TV contract is up in October. TMZ reported this weekend that Spike would not be renewing the deal. TNA said they’re still negotiating. Keep in mind they also said they weren’t looking to sell the company earlier this year – which was an outright lie. Dixie used to work in PR and she’s going to try and put a positive spin on every bad situation the company find themselves in.
A couple of things really stood out for me when this news broke. First off it’s amazing how everyone believes something TMZ reports. They’re hardly a reliable source of news and opinion. Secondly, I was stunned by the amount of fans – or ‘TNA haters’ as TNA fans call anyone who doesn’t share their love of IMPACT – who were openly celebrating the fact that TNA might go out of business.
I can’t get my head around that kind of reaction. As a wrestling fan, I want as many options as possible when it comes to watching wrestling. It’s been said a million times but the wrestling business needs TNA. The men and women who earn a living doing things we’re too fat, or too scared to do ourselves (be wrestlers), they need TNA. The fewer options there are for people to earn money in wrestling, the worse the business becomes.
As fans we want variety, we want competition, we want alternatives to the industry leader. A lot of people (the millions of WCW fans who stopped watching when WCW died) want to see wrestling that isn’t Vince McMahon’s vision of wrestling (sports entertainment).
When you go out for dinner, there are usually a few options on the menu. I don’t want to eat the same thing every time I go out, even if it’s familiar and I know exactly how it’s going to taste. Variety is the spice of life and it’s true with wrestling too.
The point I’m clumsily trying to make is all of you people who were celebrating the possibility of TNA going out of business are short sighted, uninformed and fucking clueless. TNA might not be perfect (in fact for a few months earlier this year IMPACT was practically unwatchable for me) but it’s the best option we have when it comes to an alternative to WWE at a national level.
The indy scene is great, but none of those companies offer an alternative wrestling product, on cable TV, that will appeal to mass general public. They’re all a niche product within a niche genre – just like ECW was. History tells us if you don’t appeal to the mainstream, you won’t ever make it above the regional level.
Yes, TNA have made mistakes. Thousands of bone headed, glaringly obvious, easy to avoid mistakes. Here’s a few of my favourites:
- They learned nothing from the death of WCW, financially or creatively.
- They failed to forge their own identity and spent too many years being WWELite.
- They re-launch the X-Division every year. Then forget about it 3 weeks later. It’s the only thing they do different from WWE and yet they constantly ignore it and fail to capitalise on its potential for success.
- As soon as someone is released from WWE they sign them and push them above guys who have been with the promotion for years and helped build it, which only confirms the image that WWE is better than TNA.
- They constantly hark back to the likes of ECW for cheap crowd pops, instead of coming up with original ideas and characters and shake up the wrestling business the way ECW did back in the 90s.
- They constantly talk on TV about how poorly run TNA is and how it’s failed for years, which only goes to reaffirm the public’s belief that the promotion is second rate.
- They change their creative direction all the time, but somehow always stick with Vince Russo.
Russo must have a Dixie Carter sex tape or some other incriminating material. Nothing else explains why TNA always employ and side with Russo, even going so far as to lie to Spike TV and Wrestle-One when they wanted reassurance that Russo didn’t work for the company.
Unfortunately for TNA, Russo accidently sent one of his scripts for Mike Tenay and Taz to Mike Johnson of PWInsider and their cover was well and truly blown. Some have speculated this lead to Spike deciding not to renew their contract, but that alone seems a little extreme. I’m sure there’s more to this decision than just Russo still hanging around TNA like a bad smell.
If TNA does go down in flames, let’s NOT all jump on the ‘Spike TV killed TNA’ bandwagon. TNA have had more than a decade to get this right, don’t blame Spike if they make a business decision. TNA should’ve made themselves indispensable to Spike. They didn’t. The fact is, for all Dixie Carter’s good intentions, she’s never been able to make IMPACT ‘must see TV’ or make her company a viable alternative to WWE.
To me, TNA can be summed up with two words: missed opportunities. They’ve had all the pieces of the puzzle to become a successful alternative to WWE, but they’ve never put the puzzle together. It’s frustrating as a fan. I can only imagine what it’s like for the guys who work for TNA.
The sad irony in all of this is during the last six weeks, IMPACT has been a fun show to watch, with logical angles, good matches and interesting characters coming to the fore. The shows in New York, while annoyingly heavy on ECW nostalgia, have been good and the ratings have increased and held steady for the last three weeks.
Sadly, it’s probably too little, too late when it comes to TNA and Spike TV. TNA may survive this latest problem; they’ve overcome having no TV deal in the past. That was back when the Carters were happy to pump tens of millions of dollars into the company to keep it afloat. That doesn’t appear to be an option anymore.
When WCW and ECW died, a lot of what made wrestling so exciting to watch in the late 90s died with them. The different styles, the different characters, the different looks of the shows, the different commentary teams. We had alternatives. We had a choice of what version of wrestling we wanted to watch. There were more wrestlers, having more matches and more feuds. The competition made every company work harder and the wrestlers made more money. As fans we never had it better…and we never will again
So don’t celebrate the potential demise of TNA. All you’re doing is showing your ignorance. Yes, they are an easy target and Dixie only has herself to blame for TNA’s woes. That doesn’t mean you should want to see them fail. There are people’s livelihoods at stake. You might not like TNA, you might even actively hate the company and the product they produce. That’s cool, everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Just keep in mind how much damage Vince McMahon did when he took WWE national and sped up the demise of the territory system. WCW and ECW held on for as long as they could, but eventually they were eaten up by the WWE machine. TNA might not mean as much to people as WCW or ECW did, but in terms of providing an alternative place to work and a different wrestling product for us to watch, it’s invaluable in this day and age.
I’m pulling for TNA to either negotiate a new deal with Spike, or find a new TV home. I’ve hated on TNA as much as the next smark, but that doesn’t mean I want the company to fold, and neither should you.
Wow, that got awfully preachy, awfully quickly. Still, it needed to be said. TNA going out of business isn’t a laughing matter. Remember, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Hey Grant, I’m stealing your ideas for articles and your song lyric gimmick! Booya!
You can follow me on Twitter @MFXDuckman. You can also catch the MFX podcast every week where I’m joined by my partner-in-crime Sir Ian Trumps as we dissect the week in WWE and TNA in a highly entertaining and gratuitously NSFW fashion.
This week we’re going to be joined by Andrew Carson, who is the writer and director of the soon to begin shooting UK based wrestling movie, RhumbleRama. We’re going to talk all about Andrew’s amazing story of writing a script on a train to having it optioned by a major Hollywood studio. We’ll have updates on when the movie begins shooting and more.
We’ll cover all the big wrestling stories of the week and our usual reviews of IMPACT and RAW. You can find the show on the MFX page here, or by heading to www.mfxpodcast.com
As always, thanks for reading and be sure to keep supporting SLTD and all the great people who contribute here.
Until next time…
Peace
Duckman
Recent Comments