Oldschool
03-26-2009, 09:08 AM
The Wrestling Roundtable: TNA - What More Can You?
Posted by Douglas Nunnally on 03/23/2009 at 02:01 AM
Douglas Nunnally: A week later, The Wrestling Roundtable is back again to discuss a very touchy subject. Well, touchy if you happen to be missing parts of your brain and actually enjoy TNA these days. Yes, we're going to discuss TNA and ways to improve what is obviously a failing product. We have with us columnists Tim Wronka & Will Hernandez and The Wrestling Asylum Administrators Daniel Ballou & Nate Granville. Now, ratings may be up for casual interest like an empty arena brawl & Foley wrestling in the main event, but buy rates are at an all-time low, morale in the locker room is low, and the overall quality of the shows have considerably dropped. So who wants to tackle this first?
Tim Wronka: Ah, yes: TNA. Honestly over the past eighteen months, I've mostly watched TNA from afar usually reading results or news stories & occasionally watching iMPACT! It's really for no other reason than sheer frustration. But what I find interesting about this discussion is that is that I really haven't seen one of these in a while. On forums, the TNA section is dead. There's hardly any more columns about "how they can improve" like there were just a few years ago. Even some of the TNA marks can't even forgive the sins of this promotion. And here were are, after all the supposed "improvements" TNA did make, and they might as well still be as interesting as their FSN days. But alas, here we are. The first thing on my list would be a total reconstruction of the creative product. That may sound cliche, but TNA's main problem is this one. For me, it comes down to simplicity. Their storylines, among other things, are very complicated half the time. Stars have no simple motives like revenge or proving themselves. For instance, with the Main Event Mafia, there's this supposed power struggle, yet the opposing side has an "executive share holder" and the founder of the freakin' company! The best part is that those titles are on-air ones as well so if there was a group like the MEM in any normal company, they'd be fired faster than you could blink. So for me, dumbing down storylines and drawing out the pace of the show would be a drastic improvement.
Nate Granville: In my mind, the root of all TNA's problems since day one has been the booking team. I don't know who is a part of it these days (I know Russo is still there, maybe Dirty Dutch & Jarrett as well as others), but what they need to do is scrap the entire booking team, fire all their creative writers, and bring in new people. As Tim said, they need to make things simpler and really think about who is important in their company. Do you really need to put over a forty-year old out-of-shape guy instead of the young star who will be carrying your company in five years? They have talent like Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Chris Daniels and others; guys who will stick with TNA no matter what and they're completely taking them for granted by making them job to older WCW guys and Kurt Angle month after month. TNA better realize soon that once they lose those guys like AJ, like Daniels, like the Motor City Machine Guns; they're nothing. They don't have a developmental camp and WWE hasn't been firing any stars lately. So once Angle, Sting, Foley, Nash, Steiner, and all these old guys can't wrestle anymore, they'll have nobody left to work with in the main event.
Douglas Nunnally: I don't know how Daniels will be carrying the company behind the Suicide mask or how Joe will be carrying it with his new physique and twenty-crowd Indy Show attire, but I agree Nate.
Daniel Ballou: My biggest problem is that when TNA has something good, they ruin it. This Front Line & MEM storyline was great, but it's not a feud anymore. Joe is off killing Davari on iMPACT!, Rhino is a joke, Team 3D is in the tag division, so that leaves AJ. I'm sorry, but the rest of the FL are all mid-carders who couldn't be taken seriously. The MEM are pretty much feuding among themselves and Mick Foley. This could've been good if it could've gotten AJ, Joe, & someone like Eric Young even more over. But like Foppa said, they're focusing on these ex-WWE guys and making the same mistakes WCW made. Another example is someone like Kaz, who was a star they built up, who had credibility so what do they do? They turn him into Suicide to promote a failed video game from September. TNA I feel tries to do too much and in the end, it turns out to be one really big mess.
Will Hernandez: First of all, you can always question the booking, but let's look at something even simpler than that. The shows themselves are boring. They can have runs of two or three commercials where they won't have a single match. The segments are usually pretty boring with the same thing we see all the time. Angry Kurt Angle saying dumb egotistical things. Sting angry at Kurt. Jeff and Mick angry at MEM and they take up so much time themselves. Then people like the Motor City Machine Guns get little air time. AJ Styles and Samoa Joe get about one segment each show while Jeff, Mick, and the MEM get about five or six total it seems. The worst part of it all is most big names are past their prime. Mick hasn't done anything great yet, Brother Ray is in the worst shape of his life, Steiner is Steiner, Nash can barely even stay healthy, Sting is declining rapidly, and Kurt is probably as boring as he's been in his entire career. Then people like Samoa Joe and AJ Styles go from their peaks to being misused and now they struggle to make them mean anything again. When your best names impress you the least, you're in trouble.
Douglas Nunnally: Totally right Will considering how little buzz Joe's title reign had last year. Moving on though, watching iMPACT! this week (which was a chore and another story), I saw one of the worst things about TNA. No Limit from NJPW and the Motor City Machine Guns had a good match. The match, however, only lasted five minutes if that. Now, with ECW delivering way more wrestling in one hour than TNA does in two and ROH is on TV delivering almost 45 minutes of wrestling, don't you think this is hurting TNA compared to the days when they first moved to two hours and we got matches going twenty-ish minutes?
Tim Wronka: That's such a great point, but the sad part is that this has been a problem for years now and yet it seems it's never fixed. Honestly, I think Doug's being generous saying TNA gave us 20 minute matches on a regular basis at one point, because I can't recall that.
Douglas Nunnally: I seem to recall some six and eight man tag matches being really good and going at least fifteen minutes. One with Rikishi I think,
Posted by Douglas Nunnally on 03/23/2009 at 02:01 AM
Douglas Nunnally: A week later, The Wrestling Roundtable is back again to discuss a very touchy subject. Well, touchy if you happen to be missing parts of your brain and actually enjoy TNA these days. Yes, we're going to discuss TNA and ways to improve what is obviously a failing product. We have with us columnists Tim Wronka & Will Hernandez and The Wrestling Asylum Administrators Daniel Ballou & Nate Granville. Now, ratings may be up for casual interest like an empty arena brawl & Foley wrestling in the main event, but buy rates are at an all-time low, morale in the locker room is low, and the overall quality of the shows have considerably dropped. So who wants to tackle this first?
Tim Wronka: Ah, yes: TNA. Honestly over the past eighteen months, I've mostly watched TNA from afar usually reading results or news stories & occasionally watching iMPACT! It's really for no other reason than sheer frustration. But what I find interesting about this discussion is that is that I really haven't seen one of these in a while. On forums, the TNA section is dead. There's hardly any more columns about "how they can improve" like there were just a few years ago. Even some of the TNA marks can't even forgive the sins of this promotion. And here were are, after all the supposed "improvements" TNA did make, and they might as well still be as interesting as their FSN days. But alas, here we are. The first thing on my list would be a total reconstruction of the creative product. That may sound cliche, but TNA's main problem is this one. For me, it comes down to simplicity. Their storylines, among other things, are very complicated half the time. Stars have no simple motives like revenge or proving themselves. For instance, with the Main Event Mafia, there's this supposed power struggle, yet the opposing side has an "executive share holder" and the founder of the freakin' company! The best part is that those titles are on-air ones as well so if there was a group like the MEM in any normal company, they'd be fired faster than you could blink. So for me, dumbing down storylines and drawing out the pace of the show would be a drastic improvement.
Nate Granville: In my mind, the root of all TNA's problems since day one has been the booking team. I don't know who is a part of it these days (I know Russo is still there, maybe Dirty Dutch & Jarrett as well as others), but what they need to do is scrap the entire booking team, fire all their creative writers, and bring in new people. As Tim said, they need to make things simpler and really think about who is important in their company. Do you really need to put over a forty-year old out-of-shape guy instead of the young star who will be carrying your company in five years? They have talent like Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Chris Daniels and others; guys who will stick with TNA no matter what and they're completely taking them for granted by making them job to older WCW guys and Kurt Angle month after month. TNA better realize soon that once they lose those guys like AJ, like Daniels, like the Motor City Machine Guns; they're nothing. They don't have a developmental camp and WWE hasn't been firing any stars lately. So once Angle, Sting, Foley, Nash, Steiner, and all these old guys can't wrestle anymore, they'll have nobody left to work with in the main event.
Douglas Nunnally: I don't know how Daniels will be carrying the company behind the Suicide mask or how Joe will be carrying it with his new physique and twenty-crowd Indy Show attire, but I agree Nate.
Daniel Ballou: My biggest problem is that when TNA has something good, they ruin it. This Front Line & MEM storyline was great, but it's not a feud anymore. Joe is off killing Davari on iMPACT!, Rhino is a joke, Team 3D is in the tag division, so that leaves AJ. I'm sorry, but the rest of the FL are all mid-carders who couldn't be taken seriously. The MEM are pretty much feuding among themselves and Mick Foley. This could've been good if it could've gotten AJ, Joe, & someone like Eric Young even more over. But like Foppa said, they're focusing on these ex-WWE guys and making the same mistakes WCW made. Another example is someone like Kaz, who was a star they built up, who had credibility so what do they do? They turn him into Suicide to promote a failed video game from September. TNA I feel tries to do too much and in the end, it turns out to be one really big mess.
Will Hernandez: First of all, you can always question the booking, but let's look at something even simpler than that. The shows themselves are boring. They can have runs of two or three commercials where they won't have a single match. The segments are usually pretty boring with the same thing we see all the time. Angry Kurt Angle saying dumb egotistical things. Sting angry at Kurt. Jeff and Mick angry at MEM and they take up so much time themselves. Then people like the Motor City Machine Guns get little air time. AJ Styles and Samoa Joe get about one segment each show while Jeff, Mick, and the MEM get about five or six total it seems. The worst part of it all is most big names are past their prime. Mick hasn't done anything great yet, Brother Ray is in the worst shape of his life, Steiner is Steiner, Nash can barely even stay healthy, Sting is declining rapidly, and Kurt is probably as boring as he's been in his entire career. Then people like Samoa Joe and AJ Styles go from their peaks to being misused and now they struggle to make them mean anything again. When your best names impress you the least, you're in trouble.
Douglas Nunnally: Totally right Will considering how little buzz Joe's title reign had last year. Moving on though, watching iMPACT! this week (which was a chore and another story), I saw one of the worst things about TNA. No Limit from NJPW and the Motor City Machine Guns had a good match. The match, however, only lasted five minutes if that. Now, with ECW delivering way more wrestling in one hour than TNA does in two and ROH is on TV delivering almost 45 minutes of wrestling, don't you think this is hurting TNA compared to the days when they first moved to two hours and we got matches going twenty-ish minutes?
Tim Wronka: That's such a great point, but the sad part is that this has been a problem for years now and yet it seems it's never fixed. Honestly, I think Doug's being generous saying TNA gave us 20 minute matches on a regular basis at one point, because I can't recall that.
Douglas Nunnally: I seem to recall some six and eight man tag matches being really good and going at least fifteen minutes. One with Rikishi I think,