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.