My Take Radio

TNA has been rid­ing the wave of Hulka­ma­nia recently, which while good in the­ory, has done noth­ing to improve TNA wrestling over­all. Like any fan that watches wrestling I am used to the good, the bad and the ugly pro­gram­ming that is cre­ated by wrestling pro­mo­tions. As such, this week proved to be the break­ing point for me as a fan — sim­ply because TNA is not fol­low­ing sim­ple logic which is “bad guys win” and “good guys try to get revenge”. The fans tune in to see this hap­pen. All their skits and BS in an attempt to be dif­fer­ent are just hurt­ing a poten­tially good product.

I am by no means a wrestling expert or an insider, but I have been a life­long wrestling fan and as such feel that I can appre­ci­ate good and bad equally. TNA as of late has run the gamut of shitty pro­gram­ming and good wrestling  and good pro­gram­ming with shitty wrestling. Here are a few things that have really frus­trated me in term of sto­ry­lines and booking.

The Good:

• TNA Rank­ing Sys­tem: A really good idea that removes the usual crop of tal­ent out of the main event scene and adds new and intrigu­ing matchups.
• The Pope: He has great pres­ence, is ath­letic and good on the mic.
• Matt Mor­gan: Matt Morgan’s heel turn has been a fun ride and opens up tons of poten­tial feuds.
• Samoa Joe: No face tat­toos, just straight ass-whooping which is what Joe needed to be doing from the get go.

The Bad:

• The Pope: Now, you may won­der why he’s here as well, and that is sim­ple. As soon as Pope gains momen­tum and the fans react strongly to him, TNA decides to job him out and have him lose. Pope should always be in con­tention and win on TV yet lose on PPV, sim­ply because when he does win on a PPV, the fans will then be more receptive.
• Mr. Ander­son: I’d clas­sify him as 50% bad sim­ply because even though he had a great match with Angle, he con­tin­ues to have 50/50 pro­mos. Some­times he’s on and sharp, and other times it’s a mish mash of juve­nile delivery.
• Mak­ing AJ Styles a chump and then try­ing to make him a threat to Rob Van Dam
• Crazy Ric Flair: While funny in the begin­ning, the shtick has worn out. Flair is a shadow of his for­mer self and looks ridicu­lous car­ry­ing on the way he does.
• X-Division: It’s not as preva­lent a divi­sion as it used to be and it’s sad because it was what sep­a­rated them from WWE
• Women’s wrestling: Not as good as it used to be and the matches have been short and sloppy
• Blood: The overuse of blood and blade jobs have watered down the sig­nif­i­cance of the prover­bial “crim­son mask”.

The Ugly:

• Abyss: Power ring, red & yel­low ring gear that makes him more Hogan flunky then “Monster”
• Hogan: If you are the author­ity fig­ure that’s fine, but hav­ing to see you at min­i­mum 5 times per broad­cast is a bit much.
• Lacey Von Erich: Easy on the eyes yet ter­ri­ble in the ring. Some­one please work with her so she doesn’t hurt her­self or any other Knockout.
• Let­ting Awe­some Kong & Daniels jump ship. Two tal­ented work­ers that were assets to their respec­tive classes
• Try­ing to com­pete against WWE early on instead of grow­ing and estab­lish­ing the brand.
• O-Zone: Weird, Androg­y­nous and not really mesh­ing well in the TNA uni­verse. Make him more like  Goldust circa-late 90’s and less like a joke
• The Old­siders: With their days long behind them, and now work­ing with EY since they clearly have no other way to make Young rel­e­vant. Nash makes a great author­ity guy or even Enforcer, but the need for these guys to wres­tle escapes me.

When TNA first started, I knew they were a spe­cial orga­ni­za­tion. They had a unique and inno­v­a­tive prod­uct that intro­duced us to guys like AJ Styles, Christo­pher Daniels, CM Punk, Abyss, Beer Money, Triple X, Amaz­ing Red and count­less other bright young tal­ents. Over time TNA evolved from a niche com­pany to an estab­lished brand. They went from weekly PPV’s to TNA Impact on Spike TV and have been grow­ing ever since. Over the course of this growth, we have seen some great vet­eran tal­ent come through TNA’s doors. Super­stars like Raven, Sabu, D-Lo Brown, Kid Kash, Chris­t­ian Cage and of course, their best acqui­si­tion was Olympic gold medal­ist Kurt Angle. Most of these vet­er­ans came in and helped the orga­ni­za­tion as well as helped make stars out of TNA’s young talent.

Recently though, some­thing hap­pened that has made TNA stand­out to a larger audi­ence - that being the involve­ment of Hulk Hogan & Eric Bischoff. While I appre­ci­ated the fact that Hogan was involved in grow­ing a new pro­mo­tion and even adding some main­stream media expo­sure to the brand, I was con­cerned about the appear­ances of some less than desir­able wrestlers that would jeop­ar­dize the growth of TNA’s home grown tal­ent. Hogan suc­ceeded in bring­ing in some new blood, but, mixed in with the old were Hogan flunkies and older wrestlers that frankly have no place in the pro­mo­tion. Over the last few weeks, TNA has become a mish mosh of 1990 WWE Atti­tude Era + WCW/NWO, which has turned me off from the prod­uct a bit. Now, often times I hear wrestlers say that “marks” know noth­ing about the busi­ness and should stop try­ing to know every­thing. Sadly in some cases they have a point. Nonethe­less, I wanted to take the chance to do a lit­tle arm­chair book­ing and give my own take on how I’d change TNA. Enjoy.

• Keep Hogan as an on-air, non-wrestling tal­ent but keep the TV time minimal.
• Eric Bischoff is best suited to work behind the scenes and help grow the prod­uct with­out hog­ging the spotlight.
• Kevin Nash should be involved with Hogan in a GM-type role.
• Mick Foley should work back­stage with the tal­ent and help them improve. His TV appear­ances should be few and far between.
• Ric Flair should con­tinue with AJ Styles as I see that part­ner­ship hav­ing potential.
• Christo­pher Daniels needs to be in the main event scene and even hold the title at some point.
• Samoa Joe should be in the title pic­ture often, as his matches with AJ & Daniels are without-a-doubt classics.
• Pope D’Angelo Dinero is ready for the main event - let’s move him up a few pegs.
• There should be a TV Title to free up space in the X-Division.
• Build your X-Division around Amaz­ing Red, Homi­cide, Doug Williams, Syxx Pac (If he’s going to stay clean) and Suicide.
• I would not have released Petey Williams.
• Main­tain the seri­ous edge in the Knockout’s divi­sion. Avoid going into WWE ter­ri­tory with gim­mick matches.
• No Scott Hall – Huge fan but he adds noth­ing to the product.
• Raven needs to be in TNA for his great mic work and also for those extreme matches with Abyss & Rhino.
• Don’t lose sight of your Tag Divi­sion and make the best in the world. That means no Nasty Boys!!!
• Why is Orlando Jor­dan there? Boot him.
• Sign Rob Van Dam to add some spice to the X-Division and World Title scene.
• Estab­lish a work­ing rela­tion­ship with for­eign pro­mo­tions and show­case their tal­ent against TNA tal­ent. Great way to learn things
• Keep the 6-sided ring to dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­selves from the competition.
• Cre­ate a devel­op­men­tal pro­gram to help cur­rent tal­ent improve and younger tal­ent become better.
• Macho Man should man­age Jay Lethal. Makes for a com­pelling sto­ry­line but it needs to have a solid pay­off to ele­vate Jay.

If I con­tinue this post will be way too long. Nonethe­less, these things are but small steps toward mak­ing TNA a legit threat to WWE.

What do you folks think?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the com­ments below.