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Post by angryfan on Nov 14, 2013 16:11:45 GMT -5
Everyone has made excellent points. One thing that is befuddling to me is that Jeff Hardy is their biggest star and he's not even on every show. I can understand not wanting to put the title on him given his past issues but he's still the biggest star that they have and he should always be doing something on every show IMO. I get why they don't put Hardy on every show. If he's your biggest star, then you need to KEEP him special. Before Nitro and RAW, the top stars weren't there every single week. That KEPT them special. It's a bid of a damned if you do thing. Put them out there every week, and the more hardcore fans, who will watch no matter what, will be bored with the same old same old. Leave them off the show, and the casual channel flippers will say "the guy I know isn't on, screw this" and change the channel. Such is the state of wrestling. Main eventers and "big names" matter, everyone else...not so much.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2013 16:20:18 GMT -5
Everyone has made excellent points. One thing that is befuddling to me is that Jeff Hardy is their biggest star and he's not even on every show. I can understand not wanting to put the title on him given his past issues but he's still the biggest star that they have and he should always be doing something on every show IMO. I get why they don't put Hardy on every show. If he's your biggest star, then you need to KEEP him special. Before Nitro and RAW, the top stars weren't there every single week. That KEPT them special. It's a bid of a damned if you do thing. Put them out there every week, and the more hardcore fans, who will watch no matter what, will be bored with the same old same old. Leave them off the show, and the casual channel flippers will say "the guy I know isn't on, screw this" and change the channel. Such is the state of wrestling. Main eventers and "big names" matter, everyone else...not so much. The problem being that when he's on the shows he's not really treated as special he just goes out and has a match and loses about half of the time it seems. In this day and age your top guy has to appear on your flagship show. If the WWF had SNME weekly back in the day of course Hogan would have been on every episode doing something, even if it were just a promo with Mean Gene or a run in to send the fans home happy or whatever. This is even more important for a company like TNA that is not on the level of the WWE, they don't have a lot of bona fide stars so they have to feature all of their top guys IMO.
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metylerca
King Koopa
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Post by metylerca on Nov 14, 2013 16:45:17 GMT -5
I have this theory that they're ashamed of what made them fun before.
The X-Division gave them identity and brought some of their early loyal fans (myself included) to the fray. But then they decided back then that the X-Division was secondary and not worth focusing on.
The Knockouts garnered them their best quarter hours for a big chunk of time. Then one day they shifted their focus from promoting the Knockouts to one day having one of their women pull the title out of a box.
Back then they got groans from fans not wanting to see old men reliving past glory at a wrestling version of a retirement home. But they kept on with THAT line of booking, despite people for years saying it was their main problem. And I get "retirement home" from members of my family who would walk behind me during 2005/06/07 PPVS and notice all of the ex-WWE guys half assing it in TNA. They wouldn't be intrigued, they'd laugh and walk past. They might talk about how "those guys are too old to wrestle" but nothing resembling interest in TNA. What for?
If only they'd seen what fans wanted from the beginning, they could be ahead of the curve. Their best drawing cards included Angle and Samoa Joe. No bullshit. No company on the line with Dixie in distress while the newest NWO ripoff ran rampant. It was two wrestlers who had big followings going at it one on one with no shenanigans.
And now, every segment on every Impact has to include either a run-in, a post match beatdown, or an immediate cut "to the back" to deemphasize what we just saw and instead show us what Sting is saying backstage from the vantage point of a perverted Peeping Tom. Think about it. It's not hard to notice.
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The Ichi
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Post by The Ichi on Nov 14, 2013 16:55:24 GMT -5
They're doomed to be stuck in purgatory until either another boom period happens or WWE go belly up. Neither is going to happen for a long, long time, if ever.
Also, their booking sucks.
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Post by Magic knows Black Lives Matter on Nov 14, 2013 17:49:34 GMT -5
Honestly nobody stands out. Nobody is different and the guys who are go to the bottom of the card. Look at TNA's main event scene. What's the real difference between say...Bobby Roode and Christopher Daniels? There is hardly any. Nobody has these interesting gimmicks that makes them stand out in the main event scene. The guys who do have characters are very generic. I don't watch WWE anymore so forgive me for using an older example but look at 2000. Triple H had this gimmick where he's a bad ass heel who will do anything (Including drugging the bosses daughter) to get ahead and win the World Title. The Rock had the gimmick where he's a cocky baby face who is comedic but also can kick ass when need be. Stone Cold had "Don't Trust Anybody" and was running rampant through the roster. Vince McMahon had the evil boss thing going on but there were sub stories of that character, Undertaker was a bad ass biker who would beat the tar out of you. Even in the undercard you had guys like Val Venis who was a porn star, Too Cool who were fun loving baby faces who loved to dance you had Chyna who was a real life Xena Warrior Princess and you had a ton of others who had gimmicks that made them stand out. In TNA you have Bobby Roode who is a cocky heel that wrestles good. You have Christopher Daniels who is a cocky heel who wrestles good. You have Chris Sabin who is a cocky heel that wrestles good. You have Frankie Kazarian who is a cocky heel that wrestles good. You have Austin Aries who is a cocky face who wrestles good. Gunner is your generic big man who is focused on winning. James Storm is a cowboy. Nobody stands out except maybe Bully Ray and Ethan Carter right now but everybody else is the same. How can I be expected to care if everybody is the same? I don't often agree with you but you hit the nail right on the head here.
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Welfare Willis
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Post by Welfare Willis on Nov 14, 2013 18:21:37 GMT -5
Chavo.
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Post by Hit Girl on Nov 14, 2013 18:30:46 GMT -5
As previously mentioned, Dixie Carter
All bad things in TNA stem from her.
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kidglov3s
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
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Post by kidglov3s on Nov 14, 2013 19:01:02 GMT -5
It feels like TNA lacks a sense of what's good and what's bad. The good stuff is fleeting (Aries road to the title) and the bad stuff goes on and on (Immortal, Aces and 8s).
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Post by Urfarkendarf on Nov 14, 2013 19:21:28 GMT -5
It feels like TNA lacks a sense of what's good and what's bad. The good stuff is fleeting (Aries road to the title) and the bad stuff goes on and on (Immortal, Aces and 8s). When Aces & 8s first started, it was actually really cool I felt. It was an interesting for a short while, but as its been said in this thread and I think TNA's main problem is just like with singular angles, there is no damn direction with the company. The booking comes off and is likely fly by night and their creative dont know whats going to happen from week to week before they start writing the show. The best wrestling storylines are planned in advance. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end - with room to branch out and change things if necessary. I literally cannot recall one major angle in TNA where it felt that it had a concrete middle or ending. They have beginnings, and then things meander, and they change things up so randomly that it ruins the entire product b/c that same mentality filters through the entire card. I think there are many "big" problems with TNA and a lot of them have been mentioned in this thread. One major one is leadership. While we all know WWE has its ups and downs, at the end of the day, good or bad, great or stupid, Vince makes the decisions. It's not a secret and everyone knows it. Dixie is not the right type of person to lead a wrestling company. I'm sure she's a nice lady (she comes across as one) and I bet she has had some good ideas, but her ludicrous decisions in bringing in people that have proven to run wrestling companies into the ground (Russo, Bischoff, etc) tell me that she knows absolutely nothing about this business. A poster pointed out that their characters, while good wrestlers, are all caricatures of characters. There's no depth to anyone except Sting it seems, and he's just going through the motions at this point since he's up there in age and his depth was acquired because he's been around for centuries. The biggest problem with TNA is that it is a directionless mess and they have no foresight or idea of what they want to do in terms of presentation. At this point it'd be foolish to bring back, but at the very least the six sided ring gave TNA something unique about it. Now, its a fed where good wrestlers get nothing but bad angles with no payoff and no reason for the audience to invest in seriously. At this point, perhaps the best thing that could happen is that the Carters sell. Keeping TNA alive was a good thing and kudos to them for all that they have done for the company, but they've never taken a step forward and have been stagnant for years now. Oh yeah, Abyss sucks.
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Post by grunt on Nov 14, 2013 20:10:33 GMT -5
Their problem is a lack of identity. Under Jarrett it was a mix of WCW and USWA. The in ring work was good, but everything revolved around the booker on top. Russo gets the book and it's "let's recreate crash TV" with the absurdity turned up to like 25. Under the Carters we saw Hogan and Bischoff come in, and they had THEIR ideas on how stuff should work. Through this, we had the Carters, Dixie like some hands-on Ted Turner, while mommy and daddy foot the bill. We had the X division and six sided ring as "what made them different". We lose the six sided ring, and the x-division gets changed around more than once. "Wrestling Matters" leads to "The Dixie Train". In 10 years, they've had more core changes than WWF/E has since Vince Jr. took over. That, mostly. Which is as much a problem of the industry's state right now, as it is TNA's lack of creative stability & overall direction, Spike's influence on the show, and the interwebz influence on the way bookers do their thing. Because none of what they're trying (whether good or bad) is working, ratings, attendance &/or critic-wise, TNA keeps trying new directions, hoping to strike gold at some point. Book short-term, crash tv ? Get a couple ratings spikes, and then it's back to 1.0, with people complaining that you can't book a company that way. Book long-term, year-long storylines ? Ratings don't grow, people get impatient, people complain it's too predictable. Book some swerves to your long-term storylines in order to fool the smarks that complain day in & day out on your social media pages ? People (rightly) complain that you're messing with logical booking just for the sake of it... and ratings don't grow. In a perfect world, TNA would find someone that would be able to step back, take the best of each era of TNA's existence, and fuse it into a much more stable & distinct product. Sadly, such a person's plans would probably get derailed by Spike, by some wrestler's personal clout, by the IWC unavoidably negative reaction to some thing or the other.. and in the end, nothing more would be accomplished. There would be good, bad, and 1.0s... as usual.
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Post by angryfan on Nov 14, 2013 20:28:40 GMT -5
Their problem is a lack of identity. Under Jarrett it was a mix of WCW and USWA. The in ring work was good, but everything revolved around the booker on top. Russo gets the book and it's "let's recreate crash TV" with the absurdity turned up to like 25. Under the Carters we saw Hogan and Bischoff come in, and they had THEIR ideas on how stuff should work. Through this, we had the Carters, Dixie like some hands-on Ted Turner, while mommy and daddy foot the bill. We had the X division and six sided ring as "what made them different". We lose the six sided ring, and the x-division gets changed around more than once. "Wrestling Matters" leads to "The Dixie Train". In 10 years, they've had more core changes than WWF/E has since Vince Jr. took over. That, mostly. Which is as much a problem of the industry's state right now, as it is TNA's lack of creative stability & overall direction, Spike's influence on the show, and the interwebz influence on the way bookers do their thing. Because none of what they're trying (whether good or bad) is working, ratings, attendance &/or critic-wise, TNA keeps trying new directions, hoping to strike gold at some point. Book short-term, crash tv ? Get a couple ratings spikes, and then it's back to 1.0, with people complaining that you can't book a company that way. Book long-term, year-long storylines ? Ratings don't grow, people get impatient, people complain it's too predictable. Book some swerves to your long-term storylines in order to fool the smarks that complain day in & day out on your social media pages ? People (rightly) complain that you're messing with logical booking just for the sake of it... and ratings don't grow. In a perfect world, TNA would find someone that would be able to step back, take the best of each era of TNA's existence, and fuse it into a much more stable & distinct product. Sadly, such a person's plans would probably get derailed by Spike, by some wrestler's personal clout, by the IWC unavoidably negative reaction to some thing or the other.. and in the end, nothing more would be accomplished. There would be good, bad, and 1.0s... as usual. I'd LOVE to see long term booking come back. My issue is this, it's either "two guys wrestle a never ending series of matches" or "a one sided contest, then nothing for months, then they reconnect with a passing mention of what happened before". As usual, the answer is in the middle. You have two guys feud for a bit, but even if they break off from one another, if the heel still got the upper hand, have the face just put them on notice. A shot across the bow, a few words in a promo about "I still haven't forgotten". No one with TNA or WWE does this though.
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Post by Bram wants to 'urt you on Nov 14, 2013 21:29:17 GMT -5
Overall there are two major things I think. The lack of direction or overall vision, which many people have noted already, but this is coupled with an apparent sense of entitlement.
Anyone who is a wrestling fan feels that TNA should be so much better (and so much bigger) than they are. That is simply the hopeful optimism that comes with being passionate about something.
A huge obstacle for the company however, is their own belief that they ought to be something they're clearly not. TNA seems to feel they are entitled to success, without putting in the sustained and consistent effort required to achieve that success. While they do, and rightfully so, pat themselves on the back for their successes, they never seem to acknowledge or learn by their failings.
And while ever they are subsidised, either by the Carters, Panda, Spike or whoever, they have no reason to learn from their failures, as someone else is always there to put money in the pot and keep them afloat.
I honestly think that the reason that early TNA felt so much better than the recent product was because with the Jarretts at the helm (and heavily financially invested in the product) they HAD to try and shine. The X Division and the KO's were featured in such a positive way because THAT was what was bringing in the viewers.
TNA now is largely a vanity project for Dixie, who missed out on the glory days of the WWF and WCW, but still wants to rekindle that spirit.
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Post by El Cokehead del Knife Fight on Nov 14, 2013 22:15:04 GMT -5
They don't offer any reasons to care about anything.
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Rave
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Post by Rave on Nov 14, 2013 22:23:28 GMT -5
They don't offer any reasons to care about anything. THIS. There's no effort to get the fans emotionally invested in what's going on, hence all the apathy towards the product.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2013 23:11:31 GMT -5
I get why they don't put Hardy on every show. If he's your biggest star, then you need to KEEP him special. Before Nitro and RAW, the top stars weren't there every single week. That KEPT them special. It's a bid of a damned if you do thing. Put them out there every week, and the more hardcore fans, who will watch no matter what, will be bored with the same old same old. Leave them off the show, and the casual channel flippers will say "the guy I know isn't on, screw this" and change the channel. Such is the state of wrestling. Main eventers and "big names" matter, everyone else...not so much. The problem being that when he's on the shows he's not really treated as special he just goes out and has a match and loses about half of the time it seems. In this day and age your top guy has to appear on your flagship show. If the WWF had SNME weekly back in the day of course Hogan would have been on every episode doing something, even if it were just a promo with Mean Gene or a run in to send the fans home happy or whatever. This is even more important for a company like TNA that is not on the level of the WWE, they don't have a lot of bona fide stars so they have to feature all of their top guys IMO. While I agree with you that Hardy should be the face of the company, I don't see how they can use him as a special attraction either. The roster is pretty small and Hardy has faced everyone already. His appearances should be promoted in advance and hyped up big time, but he really has nothing to sink his teeth into when he is not in the world title picture. One idea i would consider if I was TNA is putting the X-Division title on Hardy and letting him face opponents from all over the world. I know with their budget cutting that might be hard to pull off, but it would give Hardy fresh match-ups every time he was on camera, and they could promote it as a special attraction. Sort of like what Bischoff did in WCW. Bring in a Lucha wrestler that no one in the States has seen before, and let him and Hardy wrestle for 10 minutes on TV with Hardy winning clean. Every couple of weeks just recycle opponents like that. Again, tough to pull off with limited funds, but just an idea. Hardy should definitely be the top star of the promotion. No one else comes close to him.
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Post by slappy on Nov 14, 2013 23:22:58 GMT -5
I dislike most of the roster.
I really only tune in to see EC3 and then just leave it on because it's wrestling.
Heel Dixie is entertaining too.
I would like more Jeff Hardy and Jeff Jarrett.
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Post by Slingshot Suplay on Nov 15, 2013 12:28:17 GMT -5
Advertising. I didn't know what channel they were on until 2007, and that's because I sought it out.
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ededdneddy
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Post by ededdneddy on Nov 15, 2013 17:25:32 GMT -5
Pretty much everything on LOLTNA sums it all up
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Post by Andrew is Good on Nov 15, 2013 20:32:43 GMT -5
Management. If the company wasn't so poorly run, they wouldn't have squandered all the opportunities they had.
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Post by Straight Edge Scrotum on Nov 15, 2013 22:04:22 GMT -5
And while ever they are subsidised, either by the Carters, Panda, Spike or whoever, they have no reason to learn from their failures, as someone else is always there to put money in the pot and keep them afloat. I honestly think that the reason that early TNA felt so much better than the recent product was because with the Jarretts at the helm (and heavily financially invested in the product) they HAD to try and shine. The X Division and the KO's were featured in such a positive way because THAT was what was bringing in the viewers. This is it for me.
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