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Post by slickster on Jul 7, 2010 2:27:40 GMT -5
If TNA closes, WWE will buy its video library and pick up 5-7 guys like Jay Lethal and The Pope.
I'm not sure who would be willing to invest the money in a new nationally televised promotion.
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Post by slickster on Jul 7, 2010 2:29:49 GMT -5
Lowest Nitro got was a 1.8 on December 11, 2000 (and April 3, 2000 for a pretaped 'history of Nitro' special). The "History of Nitro" was right before the Ruschoff attempted continuity reboot, right? I'm pretty sure the December 11 2000 episode happened after most of their top talent had jumped ship. You're right about the April 3, 2000 episode. Just a guess, but maybe the December 11 rating sucked because WWE had run a 6-way Hell in a Cell match on PPV the night before and fans tuned in to see who the new WWE Champion would be?
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AriadosMan
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Post by AriadosMan on Jul 7, 2010 2:38:12 GMT -5
If TNA closes, WWE will buy its video library and pick up 5-7 guys like Jay Lethal and The Pope. I'm not sure who would be willing to invest the money in a new nationally televised promotion. Guys I would expect to be picked up: Pope Lethal Hernandez (don't laugh, he's a good big man) Doug Williams Rob Terry (not for his wrestling ability, but if Eli Cottonwood can appear on WWE TV...) Amazing Red (if Evan Bourne and Justin Gabriel can get pushes...) Guys I don't think would get picked up: EVERYONE ELSE, including some of the "obvious choices" some others always pick such as Angle (if Danielson was considered a liability for playing too rough, I doubt Angle would get a call in the PG era), Flair (WAAAAY too much water over the dam) Hogan (McMahon didn't even want him before the disastrous Monday night invasion), and Jeff Hardy (he may have been "hot" before TNA but...he isn't now. Just a guess, but maybe the December 11 rating sucked because WWE had run a 6-way Hell in a Cell match on PPV the night before and fans tuned in to see who the new WWE Champion would be? Sounds about right.
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Post by slickster on Jul 7, 2010 2:59:01 GMT -5
I'm not sure Rob Terry and the Wellness Policy would get along well.
If anyone can rehabilitate Jeff Hardy, it's WWE. They rebuilt him from the last time he left them for TNA, after all.
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AriadosMan
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Post by AriadosMan on Jul 7, 2010 3:02:59 GMT -5
I'm not sure Rob Terry and the Wellness Policy would get along well. If anyone can rehabilitate Jeff Hardy, it's WWE. They rebuilt him from the last time he left them for TNA, after all. Possibly, but it would have to be provided Linda's campaign both ends and fails to get her elected. They'd be gunshy on hiring him in any directly political situation. As for Terry...I'm pretty sure Batista was on something for most of his WWE run, so they might possibly look the other way, or they might not.
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Post by Jedi-El of Tomorrow on Jul 7, 2010 4:11:31 GMT -5
EVERYONE ELSE, including some of the "obvious choices" some others always pick such as Angle (if Danielson was considered a liability for playing too rough, I doubt Angle would get a call in the PG era), Flair (WAAAAY too much water over the dam) Hogan (McMahon didn't even want him before the disastrous Monday night invasion), and Jeff Hardy (he may have been "hot" before TNA but...he isn't now. I think they'd pick up Angle. There's way too much money to be left in an Angle DVD anthology, Angle merch and matches against guys like Punk. They'd try to get Sting, again. He might accept just for a few matches, a DVD, and Hall of Fame induction. Of course he's always turned them down, but has said that Vince has been respectful towards him. They'd pick up Joe. Outside of the matches it would give us, and if WWE pushed him like ROH did and TNA did at the beginning he could become huge, he's also friends with the top guy in the company. I could see them going after Velvet, she's over and just to put her with Maryse.
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Post by rnrk supports BLM on Jul 7, 2010 4:29:58 GMT -5
Guys I don't think would get picked up: EVERYONE ELSE, including some of the "obvious choices" I think you're missing a major name: Kevin Nash. IIRC, the last time Nash's contract expired, he got an offer from WWE to come back, and that was less than two years ago, when he was already as old and limited as he is these days. He's an established name from the Monday Night Wars and, unlike practically everyone else in the business, he's always been very careful not to burn any bridges behind him. I'd say he's one of the strongest possibilities for a guy who'll end up with one last brief WWE run.
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Post by Jedi-El of Tomorrow on Jul 7, 2010 4:39:38 GMT -5
Guys I don't think would get picked up: EVERYONE ELSE, including some of the "obvious choices" I think you're missing a major name: Kevin Nash. IIRC, the last time Nash's contract expired, he got an offer from WWE to come back, and that was less than two years ago, when he was already as old and limited as he is these days. He's an established name from the Monday Night Wars and, unlike practically everyone else in the business, he's always been very careful not to burn any bridges behind him. I'd say he's one of the strongest possibilities for a guy who'll end up with one last brief WWE run. That's right. And wasn't he also in the McMahons' press box for Mania a couple of years ago? Either that or he was a guest of Trips and Vince for Mania.
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Post by Back to being Cenanuff on Jul 7, 2010 5:52:38 GMT -5
I heard TNA may not last the hour. What would be hilarious is if they were in the middle of a match, and then right at 10:00 all the lights go off, and someone with a megaphone says, "attention TNA fans: we're closing up shop...please leave in an orderly fashion."
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Post by Confused Mark Wahlberg on Jul 7, 2010 6:24:54 GMT -5
It just seems impossible to bring in some of he biggest names the business has ever seen and not have your ratings increase in the least.
Death, taxes, and TBA getting around a 1.0.
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Post by cobrafan on Jul 7, 2010 7:32:03 GMT -5
I wouldn't be surprised if this was true. TNA hasn't been good since before the mEm storyline that went nowhere and fans started to leave. Hogan & Bischoff have done nothing but bring in their buddies short time and shown the world that in 2010...nobody gives a damn about either one.
A lot of the talent they had a few years ago has either gone to WWE or been fired...(sounds very familiar for some reason.) All they have left are a few young guys much of whom the crowd doesn't care about and senior citizens pushing their upper 50's and early 60's who the crowd doesn't want to see wrestle anymore.
It's not exactly like WCW...but damn close.
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Jul 7, 2010 8:30:24 GMT -5
People have been announcing the immanent death of TNA for most of the previous decade and it hasn't happened, so yeah. Spike are covering a chunk of the bigger contracts so I don't think they're as big a drain on TNA's resources as people seem to think, and they're making a lot more money from selling their programming internationally these days. That doesn't mean they're raking it in, but I doubt they're bleeding money at a company killing rate either. I don't think Spike would give them more airtime if they were in danger of not being able to see out the contract of the slot they already have. In the unlikely event TNA do go under, I think that's it for all hope of a real competitor to the WWE. Who'd be stupid enough to bankroll a wrestling company given that Ted Turner and Dixie Carter have both tried and failed, finding themselves throwing good money after bad in a market there's never any real guarantee of success in. In the years after the death of WCW and ECW, we've had a million promotions arrive and either die (MLW, XWF, WWA, WSX) or stagnate (ROH) with nothing coming remotely close to TNA despite the number of people in wrestling who seem to think they can do better who but never do anything about it. The closest id ROH and the only difference between them now and 5 years ago is they've lost all their top talent and have a TV show on a network few people can get. Who knows, maybe I'm wrong but if I am, why would anyone want to spend millions building up RoH or another company when they could step in and buy TNA and do what Fusient planned to do with WCW? Cut the dead wood and slim the company down, reboot all storylines then take over their time slot. The lack of a TV show was what made most bidders pull out when WCW went under, Spike love TNA so are likely to be more helpful in the event of a collapse than Warner were. I've already gone on record as saying I expect WWE to buy TNA's video library for $150,000 since it's much, much smaller than the Mid-Atlantic/JCP/WCW library they bought for ten times that amount. The difference between WCW and TNA is the wrestling DVD market wasn't as lucrative then and Time Warner just wanted shot of everything. Looking at how much money the WWE makes from DVD sales and their planned TV station and on demand video, footage of good matches featuring stars their audience have actually heard of is more valuable than a lot of what they've bought over the years for more money. What's going to be more valuable, footage of Kurt Angle versus Sting with modern production values or Al Snow and Unibomb versus a 10 years past their prime R&R express or Baron von Rasche versus Larry Z in a pink studio? I would think that the administrators of TNA to be aware of the value of the library, as well as others within wrestling. I doubt the 'E would be the sole bidder this time around.
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Post by joeiscool on Jul 7, 2010 8:38:02 GMT -5
I find it so hard to believe that this company in shambles right now actually produced a very good product at the end of last year. WCW was looking good toward the end too. not really. It was prety directionless by the end :-\
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Post by cabbageboy on Jul 7, 2010 9:19:22 GMT -5
WCW did have a direction that might have made sense. They seemed to be building to some epic Goldberg chase to repeat his streak and track down Scott Steiner for the WCW title. But yeah I do know what some mean by Heyman building a quest for the title. This Angle storyline could be such an epic, but TNA has no idea how to hype stuff. Right now Angle is just sort of beating guys. It's like "Oh, here's a guy. Angle wins. Here's another guy...Kurt wins. We're still early in this storyline, but it looks like they are on a course to have Angle get the shot at BFG rather than going through one guy a month to get to Lockdown in 2011.
Anyway, I can see why Dixie would sell the company if it's losing money and she's burnt out with it. Wouldn't Spike simply buy it out though, then maybe bring in Heyman to run it?
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Post by joeiscool on Jul 7, 2010 9:45:14 GMT -5
WCW did have a direction that might have made sense. They seemed to be building to some epic Goldberg chase to repeat his streak and track down Scott Steiner for the WCW title. But yeah I do know what some mean by Heyman building a quest for the title. This Angle storyline could be such an epic, but TNA has no idea how to hype stuff. Right now Angle is just sort of beating guys. It's like "Oh, here's a guy. Angle wins. Here's another guy...Kurt wins. We're still early in this storyline, but it looks like they are on a course to have Angle get the shot at BFG rather than going through one guy a month to get to Lockdown in 2011. Anyway, I can see why Dixie would sell the company if it's losing money and she's burnt out with it. Wouldn't Spike simply buy it out though, then maybe bring in Heyman to run it? WCW was boring by 2000
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Post by primetime110 on Jul 7, 2010 10:17:21 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure Spike would offer ROH a shot if TNA did go, thematically they're more similar to UFC than TNA's "all 90s all the time" approach. You're delusional if you think Spike is just going to slot in something that would draw a fraction of Impact's ratings. They probably never even heard of ROH. The majority of the world hasn't. They would stay away from wrestling for a long time and probably stick another CSI show in its slot. As wcw pointed out, the signs of a sinking ship aren't there. Spike could always tell TNA to lose Hogan and Sting to cut costs. Spike is not going to throw away something that built up an audience and is proven to draw a good rating for their network. Agreed. If something happen to TNA I think spike would distanced itself from wretleng. Bringing in roh to spike would be a joke. .03 ratings and hardly noone would watch.
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Post by golding on Jul 7, 2010 10:42:07 GMT -5
The saddest thing of all, *IF* this is true is that so many people saw this coming from day 1, yet somehow Dixie and company didnt. Yeah, that's some real clairvoyance there. Calling a company's end within the year from day 1, and 8 years later still holding out some arbitrary inkling that it's so.
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Post by dh03grad on Jul 7, 2010 11:12:29 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure Spike would offer ROH a shot if TNA did go, thematically they're more similar to UFC than TNA's "all 90s all the time" approach. All this is a moot point until Bob Carter or Spike (more likely the former, but possibly the latter if Spike is paying most of the big contracts) gets sick of it though. Most networks eventually cancel shows that hit a ratings plateau, even if they remain popular. If TNA tries to renegotiate their TV contract with Spike...they won't be doing it from a position of strength either. Everybody's looking to cut expenses. I'm not even sure if Vince would be that interested in acquiring their video library, unless it was REALLY cheap. TNA's existence isn't very large in comparison to most of the promotions Vince bought the footage from, and their current trajectory isn't very family friendly. Doesn't WWE already keep tabs on all of TNA's matches just so they have records in advance and don't have to spend countless hours on it? Pretty sure I've heard about this. Even if not, though, I'd say WWE would want their hands on that. TNA's more popular than ECW ever was so it wouldn't be too hard to down the line make some money off a memorial DVD, plus stuff like Angle / Sting could have a place on plenty of DVD sets due to the big names involved. Every single one of ECW's PPVs did over 80,000 buys. Angle-Joe didnt even reach that.
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Post by Ben Wyatt on Jul 7, 2010 11:14:45 GMT -5
The saddest thing of all, *IF* this is true is that so many people saw this coming from day 1, yet somehow Dixie and company didnt. Yeah, that's some real clairvoyance there. Calling a company's end within the year from day 1, and 8 years later still holding out some arbitrary inkling that it's so. I should have clairfied, I meant when Hogan and Bischoff came into the picture.
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Post by dpg on Jul 7, 2010 11:18:33 GMT -5
TNA is drawing more people to house shows than it ever has before, has increased it's TV clearence by adding various countries and seems to be selling more merch (according to them anyway) then ever too. TNA's imminent demise has been announced numerous times by Alvarez etc and is usually just a rather vague claim that is quietly covered up when it doesn't happen. No specifics are mentioned, no details, just a vague feeling they will go under. WCW had dozens of huge guaranteed contracts, TNA doesn't. WCW was dumped by it's TV channel (for whatever reason) Spike loves TNA and keeps giving them more shows. WCW stopped running house shows long before it shut down, TNA keep adding more and more. TNA is not going under.
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