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Post by Mr. Backlund on Mar 7, 2010 20:52:04 GMT -5
The one thing that I've learned from being on this board for almost 3 years, is that whenever TNA starts to make progress, there is a backlash from the WWE/establishment crowd. I think we are just going through another one of those periods, and it isn't much to worry about. I even got one of my friends into watching Impact weekly since around November of last year. (He's a huge Flair fan which helps). I showed Impact to him a year or two ago, and he thought it was a joke when he saw Curry Man, Shark Boy, Super Eric, etc. What progress, though? I would love something besides WWE's Disney approach, but TNA hasn't been a viable alternative for entertainment and has only gotten worse since Hogan was brought in. It wasn't perfect, but prior to going on the recent spending bonanza to bring in the "talent" now at the forefront, I found the product much more enjoyable when I would tune in from time to time. The Pope and Wolfe are the only recent additions that have netted any improvement in the product. You can make a point no one has given it a chance to settle in and find a groove yet, but there has been no progress outside of a small jump in viewership at the beginning (which has crashed hard and is below where it was prior to the first Monday episode). If anything, the product's regressed and those firmly entrenched with the E don't even need to bother saying anything because its already being said by TNA fans. The piling on of TNA gets old, but to claim its scatterbrained and has had no true encompassing vision or goal over the past few years is anything but inaccurate.
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Post by Crusty Ruffles on Mar 7, 2010 21:11:08 GMT -5
You know what bothers me about this whole thing? Flair has been wearing his on camera the entire time. Are him and AJ the heels because they just can't share?
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Post by Clarence "Showstealer" Mason on Mar 7, 2010 21:12:12 GMT -5
I swear some TNA fans are so blind in their allegiance to the brand that they're worse than the juggalos.
While I don't agree with all Caldwell said he does raise quite a few valid points, your world champion is taking a backseat to the whole ring of power angle, the X-Division is a joke, the whole style seems scatterbrained and there's still really no rhyme or reason to what they're trying to achieve.
Whether you agree with the direction of the company now or not, numbers do not lie, you're heading into the biggest moment of your company's life off of a 0.9 quarter.....REPEAT a 0.9 quarter. In two months ratings have gone from a 1.5 to a 1.14 and the steady decline of Thursday's Impact shows even that's in jeopardy. Time may be eternal but the fan's paitence is not, TNA fans would be well in their right to ask just when this new era is going to turn into results because at the moment, two months in it looks like the Hogan-Bischoff era is starting to turn into a lemon
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Post by Michael Coello on Mar 7, 2010 21:39:49 GMT -5
I swear some TNA fans are so blind in their allegiance to the brand that they're worse than the juggalos. While I don't agree with all Caldwell said he does raise quite a few valid points, your world champion is taking a backseat to the whole ring of power angle, the X-Division is a joke, the whole style seems scatterbrained and there's still really no rhyme or reason to what they're trying to achieve. Whether you agree with the direction of the company now or not, numbers do not lie, you're heading into the biggest moment of your company's life off of a 0.9 quarter.....REPEAT a 0.9 quarter. In two months ratings have gone from a 1.5 to a 1.14 and the steady decline of Thursday's Impact shows even that's in jeopardy. Time may be eternal but the fan's paitence is not, TNA fans would be well in their right to ask just when this new era is going to turn into results because at the moment, two months in it looks like the Hogan-Bischoff era is starting to turn into a lemon Caldwell is raising points, and I'm trying to refute those points. Why? Cause I feel they are without merit. Yet that's just blind allegiance? Like I said before about the world title, it's not about a frigging ring, but about the meaning behind it. A lot of the angles going on have explanations that is explained on the show. A lot of people aren't painted as stupid or as horribly booked as they are considered to be. Divisions aren't being tossed away. You know what the problem is? No one seems to bother to wait for an answer. If it's not there the minute it happens, it's a failure, and most people don't even bother to listen to explanations when they even give you them! God forbid if you don't explain why Pope lost to Jordon in a match, and what you are leading to, cause "I don't care. you made our new favorite lose to that gay dude I hate, and you did it cause you hate us. There's no other reason for it." Throws the whole idea of builds and slow burns in the goddamn trash.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2010 22:05:15 GMT -5
I swear some TNA fans are so blind in their allegiance to the brand that they're worse than the juggalos. While I don't agree with all Caldwell said he does raise quite a few valid points, your world champion is taking a backseat to the whole ring of power angle, the X-Division is a joke, the whole style seems scatterbrained and there's still really no rhyme or reason to what they're trying to achieve. Whether you agree with the direction of the company now or not, numbers do not lie, you're heading into the biggest moment of your company's life off of a 0.9 quarter.....REPEAT a 0.9 quarter. In two months ratings have gone from a 1.5 to a 1.14 and the steady decline of Thursday's Impact shows even that's in jeopardy. Time may be eternal but the fan's paitence is not, TNA fans would be well in their right to ask just when this new era is going to turn into results because at the moment, two months in it looks like the Hogan-Bischoff era is starting to turn into a lemon I disagree with Caldwell, that's why I am "siding with TNA". There have been 3 shows post-Genesis. In the first one, Styles and Pope had a promo where Pope was injured by Styles and Flair, but the central theme was to begin the build-up to their match at Lockdown for....the title. Pope missed the next show to sell the injury, and lost in the 3rd show due to said injury. It's building sympathy for him and since they still have over a month until the blow-off (Styles/Pope at Lockdown) it can be pushed aside for the time being to build Abyss up (and a potential Styles/Abyss match at Destination-X). Again, it all leads back to the title. Hogan and Flair are being used to get ratings for March 8, and the ring is hardly the central point of the show. What are people expecting? AJ to wrestle 20 minute matches every week? As Sinister mentioned, simply wait for the blow-offs. TNA is slow building a lot of their storylines. Some might be dragging (The Band/Nash-Young, Bischoff/Foley/Jarrett) but it will lead to something. Why not simply wait for the resolution? I've never seen a show more nitpicked in my life. TNA is not without fault, but come on. No need to put every detail under a microscope.
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Dragonfly
Samurai Cop
...is no Barry Windham.
Posts: 2,486
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Post by Dragonfly on Mar 7, 2010 23:03:59 GMT -5
I seeing a problem here that if someone points out valid questions and observations about TNA, they either hate the company, want it to die, a WWE fanboy, or don't know what they are talking about. Except that it's not valid observations, especially when you don't explain those observation, and especially when you use blind hatred and try to ride that for everything. That's exactly it. Not everyone likes Lance Storm's rants about TNA, but at least he explains himself. The Torch, meanwhile, seems to thrive on negativity and fatalism. Oh, and before anyone says anything, this is about more than just the alleged "TN-Hate" that we're discussing here. They do the exact same thing with NXT.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2010 23:24:05 GMT -5
I swear some TNA fans are so blind in their allegiance to the brand that they're worse than the juggalos. While I don't agree with all Caldwell said he does raise quite a few valid points, your world champion is taking a backseat to the whole ring of power angle, the X-Division is a joke, the whole style seems scatterbrained and there's still really no rhyme or reason to what they're trying to achieve. Whether you agree with the direction of the company now or not, numbers do not lie, you're heading into the biggest moment of your company's life off of a 0.9 quarter.....REPEAT a 0.9 quarter. In two months ratings have gone from a 1.5 to a 1.14 and the steady decline of Thursday's Impact shows even that's in jeopardy. Time may be eternal but the fan's paitence is not, TNA fans would be well in their right to ask just when this new era is going to turn into results because at the moment, two months in it looks like the Hogan-Bischoff era is starting to turn into a lemon I disagree with Caldwell, that's why I am "siding with TNA". There have been 3 shows post-Genesis. In the first one, Styles and Pope had a promo where Pope was injured by Styles and Flair, but the central theme was to begin the build-up to their match at Lockdown for....the title. Pope missed the next show to sell the injury, and lost in the 3rd show due to said injury. It's building sympathy for him and since they still have over a month until the blow-off (Styles/Pope at Lockdown) it can be pushed aside for the time being to build Abyss up (and a potential Styles/Abyss match at Destination-X). Again, it all leads back to the title. Hogan and Flair are being used to get ratings for March 8, and the ring is hardly the central point of the show. What are people expecting? AJ to wrestle 20 minute matches every week? As Sinister mentioned, simply wait for the blow-offs. TNA is slow building a lot of their storylines. Some might be dragging (The Band/Nash-Young, Bischoff/Foley/Jarrett) but it will lead to something. Why not simply wait for the resolution? I've never seen a show more nitpicked in my life. TNA is not without fault, but come on. No need to put every detail under a microscope. You and Sinister say a lot of the things I used to say about TNA, but can justify any further. After years of "Wait and see, wait and see" its just too much. At some point you have to actually DELIVER on all this tall talk. TNA hasn't been able to do that. Booker T, Foley, Hogan, and all the rest they brought in over the years was supposed to do something if we would just "wait and see," but its still been the same old, same old. All the crazy angles, "new stars being built" (laughable when those new stars are Joe & Styles and could carry the company if they'd just "wait and see" with them), using the old names to build the new (which has NEVER worked in any promotion), and decreasing amount of wrestling. This is TNA. This is what the promotions about. People just need to accept it and either accept TNA as it is or watch something else because the "wait and see" ship has long sailed for most of their fans.
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Post by KingPopper on Mar 7, 2010 23:42:54 GMT -5
For me TNA became hard to watch when it became two hours, it lost direction. Not so much a company but as the program its hard to watch. it got much worse when Hogan came on board.
Everything from the shows pacing, to Spike's tv breaks, to the 10 second cut ins, to leaving for break right after the climax of the show. A lot of times I've ask myself, is this the mainevent, is this the opening, whats going on here, nothing seems important or the thing you want to stay tuned for. It's like 7 related wrestling events that happen in the same company in no order.
I'm not asking them to follow WWE format of Raw which most weeks it feels like your watching reruns. But TNA really needs to make their shows feel like their leading to something, cause right now it feels like its leading to nothing.
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Post by Janitor From Mars on Mar 8, 2010 0:59:51 GMT -5
Some WWE fans just can't handle the fact that someone else is TRYING to offer an alternative to Vince's bland drivel (which it can be at times...usually when it's NOT Wrestlemania time).
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Post by ________ has left the building on Mar 8, 2010 1:23:42 GMT -5
The problem is that some people are so starved for an alternative to WWE that they are willing to ignore flawed wrestling programs in order to keep the perception. I was a diehard WCW fan. WCW could do no wrong in my eyes. I went into denial about the shows' failures and problems to the point I stopped reading anything I felt was anti-WCW. I didn't believe the company was severely hurting and near shutting down. Not until Vince appeared on camera on the last Nitro did I think it was over. It took me many months before I started watching wrestling once more due my loyalty to WCW. This so called war reminds me of the Dr Seus story "The Butter Battle Book" where the only difference between the two rivals is one butter their toast side up and the other butter side down. Right now both companies( Raw and Impact) are heavy on the talk and light on the wrestling.
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Post by HMARK Center on Mar 8, 2010 1:47:29 GMT -5
Some WWE fans just can't handle the fact that someone else is TRYING to offer an alternative to Vince's bland drivel (which it can be at times...usually when it's NOT Wrestlemania time). Let's cut out this type of tone, ok? If you think that WWE audiences have been "conditioned" to respond to things in particular ways after years of watching it, then fine, but writing people off as blind haters (and basically sheep) doesn't get the discussion anywhere, either. Like I said before, I think the notion that TNA doesn't have a solid "identity" is a fair point. They have the X-Division, for example, yet for the past 5 years they've come off as very torn as to how they actually want to push it, and where on the card they feel it should be. They could've chosen at any point to be a company that focuses on a particular style of storytelling or wrestling, yet has really become a hodge podge...some of that hodge podge is good, but elements of it aren't. I really don't think Hogan coming in has made any of this worse than it already was; frankly, outside of the lackluster previous two shows, Impact hasn't been all that different than it was for six months previous, and Against All Odds was a very well done show, by and large. Yet I can agree: TNA has wavered back and forth continuously for years now concerning exactly how they wish to be perceived. It's like launching a company without a true mission statement; you may grow, but you may not grow with a true direction in mind beyond simply "get bigger!". However, I will also fully agree with the point some posters here have been making: I don't think there is a wrestling show to come down the pike in the past five years that gets nitpicked to death the way Impact, and TNA in general, does. Things that in other promotions are written off as "Eh, it's wrestling logic, what are ya gonna do?" are decreed TNA's death knell on approximately a monthly basis, and that's been going on for years now. If they make the SLIGHTEST change to something people like, even if it's a necessary change, the immediate criticism is "they're killing everything that ever made TNA what it is!" (big accomplishment given their lack of an identity for all these years). Case in point, Kong's firing, which, I'm sorry, was necessitated by her putting her hands on a co-worker (not that I'm defending that imbecile Bubba AT ALL) is taken as "THEY'RE PHASING OUT THE KNOCKOUT DIVISION AND THEY'LL HAVE BIKINI CONTESTS SOON!", when they JUST got done establishing a title feud push for Daffney and furthering the Angelina vs. Beautiful People feud. You don't have to exactly like either angle (I'm not keen on the current Angelina/TBP feud), but it's a clear sign that the Knockout Division isn't going anywhere, and it's not about to turn into a 2000 WWF Divas "pool party match"-fest or anything. I've said it a million times: there are tons of things that are reasonable to criticize TNA over, and if you have an opinion that you can make a valid argument for, then your opinion is always welcome. But this show gets nitpicked to death, I'm sorry.
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Post by GaTechGrad on Mar 8, 2010 1:53:52 GMT -5
Just remember these wise words from Mystery Science Theater 3000:
"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes, and other science facts. Then repeat to yourself it's just a show, I should really just relax."
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Post by Michael Coello on Mar 8, 2010 10:16:37 GMT -5
I never got why the identity was such a big mystery. I saw it way back as a mix of current guys, past guys, and new guys. I don't remember a time in TNA where that didn't really apply. Why doesn't that work?
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Post by HMARK Center on Mar 8, 2010 10:58:37 GMT -5
I never got why the identity was such a big mystery. I saw it way back as a mix of current guys, past guys, and new guys. I don't remember a time in TNA where that didn't really apply. Why doesn't that work? I'm not saying it doesn't work; I've enjoyed plenty of TNA's product over the years (while there's also been long stretches where I haven't watched, as well, when I thought it wasn't any good). However, I think it's a fair point that TNA waffles a lot on what they want to push as their "identity". They did used to try to make a big selling point of the X Division, but all throughout the years their featuring of it has been pretty inconsistent; it's provided a number of great moments, but many, many times it wasn't really consistent, and for years you've gone back and forth between actual highlighted X-Division feuds and simple PPV opening match spotfests as the way to "highlight" it. It needs consistency. Heck, TNA used to also seem like it was pushing itself as the new "home of hardcore", but that wasn't fully embraced, either. That's just one example, and, again, I'm not saying it ruins the show or anything, but it does make it hard to kind of put your finger on what exactly TNA is meant to represent. Heck, sometimes the hodge podge is a GOOD thing, with a "something for everyone" type of vibe going, or the writers/creative guys making changes on the fly because they feel that the audience wasn't reacting positively towards a direction they were taking (recent case in point: Jarrett). But it does lead to a show that, again, kind of changes what it "feels" like every year or so. It's a weird argument since it's kind of vague in some areas, but I can appreciate it.
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AriadosMan
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Your friendly neighborhood superhero
Posts: 15,620
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Post by AriadosMan on Mar 8, 2010 11:30:03 GMT -5
TNA's "identity" is, if anything, far too close to WWE's. Central storyline focusing on a guy who's literally too old to wrestle (In TNA, Hogan, in WWE, Flair) CHECK. Huge amount of people in the midcard who never decisively break through to the ME, CHECK. Devalue athletic ability over a bunch of concepts about "drawing potential" that amount to trying to turn everyone into a Monday Night War style ME, CHECK. Four sided ring, CHECK.
What TNA amounts to is actually a pretty close copy of the WWE, with occasional use of the word "ass" and softcore shots of TBP to try to make it seem edgier. Its not like its some sort of pure wrestling company that' radically different in philosophy.
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Professor Chaos
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Bringer of Destruction and Maker of Doom
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Post by Professor Chaos on Mar 8, 2010 11:36:48 GMT -5
I think Pope is alright, not like the face of the company but as a solid upper card character. Everything else I agree with completely. I'd mark if they dropped the wrestling concept and turned it into a sitcom though. Hilarity would ensue.
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dpg
Samurai Cop
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Post by dpg on Mar 8, 2010 13:42:57 GMT -5
"-- The Global Title was created by Booker T and now rests with Rob Terry, who can barely execute a move." Barely seen him wrestle, never mind do a full match, so claiming he can barely execute a move is based on his size and look rather than a track record.
-- Hulk Hogan is crippled, old, slow, and a "mark" for himself - yes, he is crippled old and slow, and? -- Abyss is a gimmick, a clown, a pathetic child, and a hack- been playing that part for a long time before the 'new era' -- A.J. Styles is short and a Ric Flair knock-off - he's meant to be a jerk heel, that's what Ric Flair was. -- The Pope is uneducated and not major leagues - where did this come from? -- Jeff Jarrett is washed up with no value to the show - again, Bischoff has been trying to destroy Jeff, quite how Keller gets this is odd. -- Mick Foley is a castrated, washed-up former star - once again, Bischoff's tyring to make him quit. -- Kurt Angle is injury-prone and broken-down - that's what Anderson ahs been saying, he's a heel! -- Matt Morgan is a jerk and talks annoyingly - he's going heel, and tha talking bit is opinion. -- Hernandez isn't too bright - where did that come from?
Keller's article has plenty of good point's but as usual when it comes to TNA torch's bias comes into play. It's always had a very negative slant on everything they do, and has always been quick to report failures. It became a running joke how many times they claimed TNA was going under, people weren't being paid, even the 'Dixie Carter isn't coming back from maternity leave as she expects TNA to be shut' which dissapeared without a trace. TNA's last two shows have been poor, however the one's before that were very good, showing that they can put on a good show. Is it a coincidence that the two poor shows came after they found out about monday nights? Maybe they pulled back on storylines for extra impact when they move? I dunno, all I know is that since Bischoff and Hogan have arrived there's been a lot more positives than negatives.
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Post by slaughterama on Mar 8, 2010 15:42:07 GMT -5
I can agree with some of what he's said, but The Pope thing is a bit out of whack. I don't know how you're truly supposed to book him, but the fact is the guy has caught fire with the crowd. They love the gimmick, they love the performer, the guy can go in the ring, and he seems to just have the "IT" factor. If I know nothing, I do know that those four things are what makes a star, and isn't that what it's really all about?
I do have to agree that the company has absolutely nothing they can use in house to make an angle seem important though. They need to spend just as much time building up that being in the main event on a TNA card is actually an achievement and not just a coincidence. They need to establish that there title actually has some sort of value, because as of right now it seems to rank somewhere in between Farmville common bonus and a subscription to Reader's Digest.
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AriadosMan
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Your friendly neighborhood superhero
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Post by AriadosMan on Mar 8, 2010 15:43:53 GMT -5
Pope is one of TNA's best shots at a good ME draw, since they screwed up Joe and Jay Lethal's booking badly over a long period. He is charismatic and unique and has a good moveset.
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