It's been nearly 10 years since Hogan's TNA run began

[Kevin Hamilton]

Them goin to Monday was the end of their relevance.

[Citizen Snips]

Man.

Hostage Taking Bird is probably either dead or a senior citizen now.

[BrodietheSlayer]

Feb 1, 2018 21:52:19 GMT -5 King Devitt: What Plants Crave said:

As a die hard 2008-2009 was so much fun to watch.

Hell the PPV before they took over finally had "Daniels" in the main even if i recall correctly.

It took literally one show to ruin all of it.

I stuck with it, but it was f***ing horrible.

I hated Hogan in the 80's as a wee lad, I hated Hogan in the 90's, I hated Hogan in 2000's.
This made me hate him even more.
I've never seen his appeal.

Yeah, I will absolutely die on the hill of stating that 2008/9 TNA, even with its flaws, was a superior product to most of what WWE was crapping out during that period. Especially 2009 and anything that didn't involve Punk....uck.

[Alexander The So-so]

I've always had two takeaways from Hulk's time in TNA:

1. It's all so ironic, and for certain fans, such a "be careful what you wish for" story. For years, fans have been saying "we need another Monday Night War" or "I wish wrestling today was as exciting now as it was in 1997." Unfortunately, on January 4th, 2010, we fans got what we said we wanted...too literally! We had two shows head-to-head on Monday; Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, and Vince McMahon were on one channel; Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff, Sting, Ric Flair, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Sean Waltman on the other channel. Can't get more "recreating 1997" than that! It's so frustrating, really; what we really needed was the most basic competition, upping the creative ante, and the chance for an alternative product, the general things and concepts which made wrestling fun in the '90s, Instead, the people involved wasted their one chance to reinvigorate the industry on trying to reinvent the wheel.

2. In all the wacky history of pro wrestling, I have never quite seen anything like what happened between Hogan/Bischoff and Dixie Carter: two guys coming into a promotion promising to revolutionize it and take it to new heights, only to do the utter opposite and very obviously help bring that promotion to ruin, all with the promoter smiling, supporting, and saying "thank you" all the way.
I can't believe that Dixie still defends Hogan and Bischoff after everyone else can see that they're responsible for making TNA an even bigger mess than it was before they came along; you'd think she'd have some harsher things to say about the men who sold her a bill of goods and ruined her livelihood.

[Banjo Is Broken]

I still sit some nights and wonder what other epic tag team feuds TNA could have had involving the Nasty Boys.

[OVO 40 hunched over like he 80]

Feb 5, 2018 1:00:51 GMT -5 Banjo Is Broken said:

I still sit some nights and wonder what other epic tag team feuds TNA could have had involving the Nasty Boys.

Lol I may be mistaken but I think Brian Knobbs actually gassed out during a promo.

[Tea & Crumpets]

It's sad and frustrating how badly TNA declined. I'd say that from 2004-2009 they were more often than not putting out better stuff than WWE, and when you look at the roster they had...Using legends/WWE guys in supporting roles or to help build up their original talent is fine, but the way everything became about Hogan was company suicide. I wouldn't trust Dixie to run a bath.

[Push R Truth]

... I'm still halfway convinced the WWE paid Hogan/Eric under the table to blow up TNA. I mean, that was "purposefully terrible" wasn't it?

I can't imagine anybody not on drugs that could sit back and think "This is a great idea! I'm all for it!"

[HMARK Center]

Yeah, to make something clear I'm of the mind that Hogan/Bischoff firmly set TNA on its path to ruin, but the ultimate blame will always rest with Dixie for allowing everything to happen and for never having a clue.

[OVO 40 hunched over like he 80]

Feb 4, 2018 17:13:06 GMT -5 Kevin Hamilton said:

Them goin to Monday was the end of their relevance.

Dutch Mantell said it best in his Guest Booker,

"I expected a whole lot of hell more. TNA choked."

TNA became the Hulk Hogan circle jerk hour.

[OVO 40 hunched over like he 80]

It's been so long, I'll watch the first Hogan show and share my thoughts.

TNA uploaded the show in their channel

youtu.be/uBKUkYYOhE4

They show an intro hyping up tna having the best athetles and former wwe stars. Tenay and Taz hype up the card and go to Bubba the Love Sponge interviewing fans from earlier in the day when they were in line at Universal.

Ok this is the first sign of trouble. The fans that are being interviewed have no idea what tna is, they're hulkamaniacs, I bet that they were expecting something completely different like seeing Hogan wrestle.

[Push R Truth]

Feb 5, 2018 9:20:20 GMT -5 HMARK Center said:

Yeah, to make something clear I'm of the mind that Hogan/Bischoff firmly set TNA on its path to ruin, but the ultimate blame will always rest with Dixie for allowing everything to happen and for never having a clue.

Oh hell yeah. I'm convinced that if Hogan said "Tell you what Dixie, we'll open the show with me sitting on the crapper and we'll get MASSIVE ratings BROTHER" she'd say "Go ahead, sug!" and dream of 50 million screaming Hulkamanics in the Superdome when he picked up that big stinky 1500lb Andy the Big Show and suplexed him thru the middle of the octagon.

[JTG Fan]

I echo the sentiment that TNA had gotten genuinely good in 2009, it was far better than RAW on a weekly basis in terms of a flagship show. They also really started emphasizing the Knockouts in a way WWE still wasn't at that time with their women. So I was cautiously optimistic that adding Hogan would mean that the product would stay the same only now you'd have Hogan as an authority figure and guy who could go out and promote the show on TV and get eyeballs on the product. But it only took about a half hour or so into that January 4th show to realize what was happening, that Dixie had given Hogan and co genuine control of the product and the results were absolute dogshit.

Now with that said, it's quite possible that Russo would have found a way to bungle things up on his own, but boy would they have been better off continuing to build off the 1 million viewers they averaged on Thursday and continue to elevate AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Desmond Wolfe, D'Angelo Dinero, Daniels, Eric Young, etc while phasing out the old main event guard.

Really, the biggest missed opportunity was not landing Paul Heyman when he was willing to listen on getting back into being the Executive Producer on a wrestling show. One of Paul's problems was being too honest and instead of saying he'd phase out the old guard he said he'd "chop their heads off", which obviously not only pissed off guys like Nash but scared people like the Carters who felt most comfortable with those big stars. But if they had given Heyman control of the TNA 2010 roster and let him decide where the product would go and who would be on the shows, I firmly believe he could have helped them steadily increase their audience to the point of competing with WWE.

[A Platypus Rave is Correct]

Feb 5, 2018 13:05:27 GMT -5 JTG Fan said:

Really, the biggest missed opportunity was not landing Paul Heyman when he was willing to listen on getting back into being the Executive Producer on a wrestling show. One of Paul's problems was being too honest and instead of saying he'd phase out the old guard he said he'd "chop their heads off", which obviously not only pissed off guys like Nash but scared people like the Carters who felt most comfortable with those big stars. But if they had given Heyman control of the TNA 2010 roster and let him decide where the product would go and who would be on the shows, I firmly believe he could have helped them steadily increase their audience to the point of competing with WWE.

There was never a chance of Heyman joining them.

He knew there was no chance in hell of them agreeing to the terms he put out which is why he said what he did.

[JTG Fan]

Feb 5, 2018 13:20:29 GMT -5 A Platypus Rave is Correct said:

Feb 5, 2018 13:05:27 GMT -5 JTG Fan said:

Really, the biggest missed opportunity was not landing Paul Heyman when he was willing to listen on getting back into being the Executive Producer on a wrestling show. One of Paul's problems was being too honest and instead of saying he'd phase out the old guard he said he'd "chop their heads off", which obviously not only pissed off guys like Nash but scared people like the Carters who felt most comfortable with those big stars. But if they had given Heyman control of the TNA 2010 roster and let him decide where the product would go and who would be on the shows, I firmly believe he could have helped them steadily increase their audience to the point of competing with WWE.

There was never a chance of Heyman joining them.

He knew there was no chance in hell of them agreeing to the terms he put out which is why he said what he did.

You don't go that far into talks if there was "no chance". There was always a chance. Here's Paul in 2014:

Ultimately, the story of this is, if I was going to do it, I wanted the Dana White deal. I wanted complete control, I wanted a piece of the company and I wanted the ability to, when the time was right, to take it public. I wanted to do the programming completely different than the way they had been doing it and Spike TV signed off on it. The concept was a very youth-oriented, youth-based, youth-marketed promotion. A complete contrast to the way WWE does things. A complete and utter alternative to WWE at the time.

While the ruling family in TNA had no problem with my salary request, my ownership demands, my concepts, etc. etc., they didn't want to implement as much of a youth-oriented product as I was looking for and I balked at it. I have no regrets about that. At the end of the day, they were happier being a WWE-lite promotion than they were branding themselves something different as TNA.

So that was the last flirtation I had with doing my own thing.

They should have done it. But change, real change, that would have purged TNA at the time of the majority of their recognizable names, is scary.

[OVO 40 hunched over like he 80]

Ok the red bird cage, nobody could see what was going on in the ring, apart from Russo who thought this was gonna be a good idea?

[Aya Reiko]

The Hogan-Bischoff regime did nothing that Jarrett wasn't already doing, except take the show on the road (and that was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation). The only difference was Hogan cranked the volume on all of TNA's flaws up to 11.

[2coldMack is even more baffled]

Feb 4, 2018 23:37:20 GMT -5 Alexander The So-so said:

I've always had two takeaways from Hulk's time in TNA:

1. It's all so ironic, and for certain fans, such a "be careful what you wish for" story. For years, fans have been saying "we need another Monday Night War" or "I wish wrestling today was as exciting now as it was in 1997." Unfortunately, on January 4th, 2010, we fans got what we said we wanted...too literally! We had two shows head-to-head on Monday; Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, and Vince McMahon were on one channel; Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff, Sting, Ric Flair, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Sean Waltman on the other channel. Can't get more "recreating 1997" than that! It's so frustrating, really; what we really needed was the most basic competition, upping the creative ante, and the chance for an alternative product, the general things and concepts which made wrestling fun in the '90s, Instead, the people involved wasted their one chance to reinvigorate the industry on trying to reinvent the wheel.

2. In all the wacky history of pro wrestling, I have never quite seen anything like what happened between Hogan/Bischoff and Dixie Carter: two guys coming into a promotion promising to revolutionize it and take it to new heights, only to do the utter opposite and very obviously help bring that promotion to ruin, all with the promoter smiling, supporting, and saying "thank you" all the way.
I can't believe that Dixie still defends Hogan and Bischoff after everyone else can see that they're responsible for making TNA an even bigger mess than it was before they came along; you'd think she'd have some harsher things to say about the men who sold her a bill of goods and ruined her livelihood.

At the end of the day, Dixie is the dictionary definition of a "money mark". She doesn't care that Hogan cost her oodles of money. She cares that she got to rub shoulders with Hulk Hogan.

[The Ichi]

I think what pissed me off most was that those few months before Hogan entered, the show was good. Not laughably good, legitimately good. You could tell that would change fast when Val Venis beat Daniels clean.

[Hit Girl]

Remember just before he debuted. They had a promotional image of him on their site, but they botched it and it only showed his arm.