My Take Radio

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.

Samoa Joe, CM Punk, Jay Lethal, Desmond Wolfe (Nigel McGui­ness), Bryan Daniel­son, AJ Styles, Daniels, Low Ki, Her­nan­dez , Evan Bourne (Matt Sydal), Mickie James (Alexis Laree) and Homi­cide are all names that you have heard at least once in the last few years while watch­ing WWE Raw, Smack­down or TNA Impact. But what some of you may not know is that these guys and gals all got their start in a lit­tle pro­mo­tion called Ring Of Honor, or as the fans call it ROH.

One of the most  impor­tant aspects of ROH is the “Code Of Honor”. This code not only helps make the wrestling more real­is­tic and also helps intro­duce the audi­ence to “Heel” wrestlers or bad guys for their dis­re­gard of the code.  There have been changes to the code since the start of ROH. ROH con­sid­ered it a “moral require­ment” to fol­low these rules. They were (usu­ally in this order):

1. You must shake hands before and after every match
2. No out­side inter­fer­ence: no inter­fer­ing in oth­ers’ matches or hav­ing oth­ers inter­fere on your behalf
3. No sneak attacks
4. No harm­ing the officials
5. Any action result­ing in a dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion vio­lates the Code of Honor

In 2004 the rules were changed from 5 to 3 and were as follows:

1. Shake hands before and after the match—if you respect your opponent
2. Keep the playing-field level
3. Respect the officials

 The code of honor was one of the things that made me a fan of this orga­ni­za­tion, not to men­tion the fan­tas­tic wrestling I have wit­nessed. Matches with Samoa Joe & CM Punk were clas­sics as well as matches involv­ing Homi­cide or Christo­pher Daniels and AJ Styles. It is unfor­tu­nate that so many main­stream fans have yet to expe­ri­ence Ring of Honor and see some of the future stars of pro wrestling. Guys like Tyler Black,  Austin Aries, Colt Cabana, The Amer­i­can Wolves, The Briscoe Broth­ers and many more put on mat clas­sics on a reg­u­lar basis and many of you are miss­ing it.  Here is  glimpse of what you are miss­ing out on:

ROH, unlike other orga­ni­za­tions, did not have a weekly TV pro­gram until recently. You can now catch Ring of Honor on HDnet and of course order DVD’s and mer­chan­dise from the ROH web­site. Worst case,  good ‘ole YouTube has plenty of ROH videos.