Okay, so, having had time to reflect on the first 2 weeks of TNA Impact going head to head with WWE Raw, I believe the ‘New Monday Night Wars’ are over already. TNA went live with an average show, starting with the ‘return’ to the ring of Hogan and Flair. Neither of these people are men I want to see wrestle, at least in his heyday Hogan had charisma. Flair has been an old man for at least 15 years now and should have retired when WCW went out of business. If the TNA main event had been AJ vs Abyss I would have watched that, AJ is awesome and Abyss has had a reinvigoration by his alliance with Hogan. But Hogan and Flair never needed to physically be involved. Hogan can barely walk after having hip replacement and seeing him stumble around the ring was just embarrassing. This, don’t forget, is the man TNA is putting it’s faith in to grow a new, hip audience to compete with Vince’s PG friendly product. That we had to see that match twice was just plain bad. Even worse, they had debuts scheduled for Rob Van Dam, Jeff Hardy and Shannon Moore, and screwed all of them up. Granted, very few people care about Shannon Moore, although I always enjoyed his work, but RVD and Hardy are the 2 top free agents in the business. Hogan, Bischoff and Russo have killed that dead. Dixie what have you done? RVD scored a fluke win over Sting, fair enough, both are former World Champions, Sting in the twilight of a great career and RVD hovering around his prime. But to me, if you are having that match, you tell people about it. You have a dream never been seen match and it takes 20 seconds with no build up. TNA thought the best move for RVD was not telling anyone he was on the show. That’s retarded. The man has a big fan base, do you not want him to bring that with him? Then having him fluke the win and spend an eternity being beaten down by Sting with a bat, yes again, well that really built him as a man who can help the company grow.
Jeff Hardy, made a last second run in to help Hogan and Abyss. That’s it. That’s the big return for the man who was WWE champion little over 6 months ago. Good lord.
All this is before I even make it to Raw...which was okay. Nothing special, couple of good solid matches, a so-so guest host, and a slow solid build to Mania. Raw scored average ratings while TNA on their ‘Live Debut’ featuring the returns of all those things scored a 1.2. Wow, that’s the same rating ECW was getting on minority channel SyFy. Way to go boys. Dixie claims to be delighted with the show they put on, well Dixie, you are not nearly as smart as I thought you were.
The 2nd week of head to heads was even more embarrassing. The first hour of TNA was awful, truly awful. It only picked up with an excellent X-Division triple threat. This is the last show before Destination X, the big pre Wrestlemania PPV. Nothing on the show built towards the PPV except a terrible promo by Flair and some excellent X Division stuff. TNA put on a taped show, up against Stone Cold Steve Austin’s return as Guest Host, 3 Wrestlemania rematches (including Triple H v Orton and Michaels v Jericho). Fair enough, the taped show is a fixture and probably will always be a fixture, but to go up against that line up with The Nasty Boys & Jimmy Hart (!) vs The Dudleys & Jesse Neal. Did Vince pay you to come in and destroy TNA? Granted, it featured the return of Spike Dudley (Brother Runt) which is always nice, but it’s hardly The Outsiders sitting ringside on Nitro or DX taking a tank to WCW. Sheer embarrassment for me as a viewer, and this week the ratings were even lower. I know where I would start, and it wouldn’t be having Samoa Joe kidnapped by ninja’s a month ago and then never mentioned again, seriously!
And all this is without Austin taking charge of a contract signing between VKM and Bret Hart, how do you compete with that?
For me, until TNA thinks outside the 1996 WCW box it seems to be living in then there is no competition. The WWE is not even in a classic hot period like the Attitude Era or the Hogan years. They have some good talent but they are mostly not being utilised while TNA is pushing Orlando Jordan (really?) and Hall/Waltman, oh, and of course Hogan and Flair.
The only plus sides that TNA have at the moment is the X Division, Angle, Beer Money, Morgan/Hernandez, Samoa Joe, AJ and a few other talented stars, who could be big stars, if TNA knew how to make stars. Hell Jeff Hardy is the biggest fuck up in wrestling and VKM made him world champion, and a legitimate world champion at that.
Anyway, enough ranting. Until Hall/Waltman become permanent fixtures...
No comments:
Post a Comment