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My Take On 12.15.09: WWE vs. TNA – The War TNA Isn’t Prepared For

December 15, 2009 | Posted by Larry Csonka

INTRO!
Welcome back to a special edition of My Take On. Due to my administrative duties here at 411, I do not write very much any more for the wrestling zone, but sometimes I get the bug to write. The biggest news as of late has been the story of TNA going head to head with WWE on January 4th. Many of you know that I have been a supporter of the TNA product since day one. I have been through the good (great matches), the bad (Russo’s hectic booking) and the ugly (midgets jerking off in trashcans) and more. But the fact is this; I am a wrestling fan. TNA pisses me off, but they also deliver some damn good matches and have a talent roster of guys I enjoy to watch. WWE pisses me off, but they produce things I like to watch. ROH pisses me off, but they deliver shit I want to watch. Wrestling is and always has been a bi-polar business for me. There is always shit I love, and then there is always shit I hate. I warn you now, as much as I like TNA, this column will come off as very negative. I am not doing this to “be mean”, I am just sharing my opinions. I want TNA to succeed, but I feel that this is a war that they simply are not prepared for…

VS.
TNA IS UNARMED FOR THIS WAR
“Isn’t that just like a wop? Brings a knife to a gun fight.” That may not be the EXACT quote from The Untouchables, but it is what I think about when I heard that TNA was going to challenge WWE on Monday a Monday night, live. While it may not be the right move, on many levels, I do respect Dixie Carter for actually going for it here. They have been stagnant for a while, same rating, low buyrates, low house shows, so she went out and got a big gun. She signed Hulk Hogan, and she will use him to go against WWE. I admire that, but I have to say, those of you thinking that this will lead to a magical resurgence of the Monday Night Wars need to calm down. There is a reason that the “Monday Night Wars” worked the first time, the stars were aligned. The thing you have to remember is this. WCW was on the rise. They had Hogan, they had Sting, they had Savage, they had Flair and they were growing while WWE was having rough times. On top of the growth that they were experiencing, they were on a level playing field as far as history goes. Most WCW fans were NWA fans, the history, to some, of the NWA and WCW are one in the same and a lot of that has to do with the association with the Saturday Night program. WW,F at the time, was playing off of the history of Vince Sr., the WWWF and what they had grown into. WCW had a large audience, many never realized it. Billionaire Ted loved his wrestling, he was behind it, and Eric Bischoff had the balls to want to go head to head, and since he could sell ice to Eskimos, he talked Ted into it, and the rest, as they say is history. TNA doesn’t have that. Yes they have names. They have Hulk Hogan, Kurt Angle, Team 3D, Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner, Mick Foley and other names wrestling fans know and recognize. The roster is good, but they don’t have the ammunition to battle the beast that is the WWE. It may be a good one shot deal to attract new viewers for Thursday nights, but then again, they have to keep them, and with the history that the company has, I am not sure that they can, at least not the way they produce TV.

BRING BACK THE 80’s LOGIC AND YOU WILL HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE
The funny thing to me is that today’s fans will bash something that they do not understand. Obviously I do not mean all of you, but the newer, younger fans, you are the ones I am talking too. Jim Cornette is constantly bashed because “he is out of touch” with wrestling today, due to the perception that he wants wrestling to be like the 80’s. The fact of the matter is this, you are wrong. Jim Cornette doesn’t want current day wrestling to be “old school” the way you are thinking. What people like Jim Cornette and myself want is for wrestling to go back to the 80’s LOGIC. Go back and watch some GOOD 80’s wrestling, Crocket era shit, Bill Watts shit, and tell me what you see. You will see characters that people go ape shit for wrestling a JOB GUY. Why? Because they made you care. They built up the guy, they put him in the right position, they crafted his win/loss record, they carefully built feuds, and when the feuds would escalate; they climaxed with something special. Let me explain further.

  • Use People To Their Strengths: One thing that TNA needs to remember is that to everyone can do everything well. AJ Styles may be phenomenal in the ring, but he is average on the mic. I am not saying that he doesn’t try, but an AJ Styles promo will not make me want to buy his match. That’s just an example. TNA needs to realize that not everyone is an actor, and that by forcing them into situations where they have to act in these awful backstage segments, they make them look bad. I wanted to see the three-way rematch with AJ, Joe and Daniels, but their backstage “scenes” were horrible and almost turned me off. AJ does his work in the ring, allow him to do that. Daniels cuts a great thinking man’s promo, allow HIM to do that. Samoa Joe cuts intense “I want to kill you” promos, allow his to do that. Don’t ask them to produce a love triangle scene from The Young and the Restless, because it will fail. That is just one example, but the company need to sit done, look at the great roster thy have, and make a “Can”, “Kinda” and “Can’t” list for each. That way when they are booking angles and such, they will not try to ram a square peg into a round hole. Using people properly will always make the product better.
  • Contrary To Popular Belief, Wins And Losses Mean Something: I see a lot of talk about this, and I guess part of this is the fact that Vince has conditioned fans to his “entertainment” brand over the years. But yes, wins and losses DO mean something. Do not get me wrong, they are not the end all be all when it comes to wrestling and building up a performer, but they surely can help. Some will say that winning means nothing in the modern era, but that is not the case. The Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle feud, overall, did good business for TNA. Why? Because Angle was the hot name coming from WWE, and Joe has not been pinned or submitted some shit like 18 months. People got into that, and the win/loss record played into that. I have constantly said that when building up a contender or a new star that you have to be very careful WHO they lose too and HOW they lose. Let’s take Matt Morgan. He loses in a GREAT match with Angle at Bound For Glory. That loss doesn’t hurt him at all, because he hung with Angle and had the best match of his career on that night. It is a loss, but it was a loss to a star and a loss in a great back and forth match. That is losing without getting hurt. Now lets take Hernandez. He had been a guy that TNA has wanted to build up, and possibly for a BIG title push. On Impact last week he lost, clean, to a spear by Jesse Neal. This match was basically the same match that we will see on PPV in two weeks, another argument there, but WHY would you have the guy you are looking to push drop a fall to a guy that is not over? Sure, we can argue that it is great for Jesse Neal, but the fact is that he is not a star and never will be a star, no matter how many over guys job for him. That is an example of a loss that hurts a guy. Hernandez, as I like to say, is JUST ANOTHER GUY.
  • Stop The Gimmick Madness And Make Shit Mean Something: The difference between older and newer fans is pretty obvious. Older fans want to watch the story unfold and culminate in a grand spectacular, while newer fans enjoy gimmick PPVs and giving away 4-minute ladder matches and the like. TNA has constantly committed crimes against the gimmick match for years now. At the beginning they did well, holding of their first cage match for a YEAR into the company’s birth, but lately, lately they have shown exactly why they do not get it. A prime example of this is the Lockdown PPV. I actually like the Lockdown PPV, and through out the company’s history, the Lockdown PPV has constantly been one of their better PPVs. While a whole PPV of cage matches can be debated, the fact of the matter is that they COULD make it work. But in the last few months, they have put on THREE cage matches, Tag Team Lethal Lockdown, Kong vs. Tara (a first time singles match no less), Beer Money vs. the Invasion (ON FREE TV) and will be putting on Angle and Wolfe in a cage match. And this is the problem. If you are going to have an all cage match PPV, you CANNOT give away cage matches through out the year. It simply devalues that PPV, which has also traditionally sold better than any other TNA PPV. Desmond Wolfe has been with TNA foe a little over two months, and he is already heading into a second PPV match with Kurt Angle. That is all right, but the fact that they are jumping to a triple stipulation cage match shows that Russo’s ADD booking is hurting the company. Wolfe vs. Angle is a program that should have culminated with the Three Degrees of Pain at Lockdown, not at the December throw away PPV. This is something that TNA does all the time. If TNA would think about things, and slow down and use the logic of the 1980’s with the great athletes and cutting edge shit we have now, they would be great. Doing that would make you an alternative to the WWE, and it is simple, likely too simple.


    THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE
    Some people have hopped on the Vince Russo/Ed Ferrara hype train and think that they are the solution to TNA. I hate to say, but I have never been a fan of these guys. Russo constantly frustrates me as a booker. While I WILL give him credit for trying to give everyone an angle, that is about as far as I will go. The Vince Russo style of booking just does not work, and constantly hurts the company. Here are a few examples..

  • Men Holding A Woman’s Title (Bruce, Cody Deaner)
  • Constantly Rushing Feuds (Joe vs. Angle, Angle vs. Wolfe)
  • Booking Feuds To Go Too Long (Robert Roode and Eric Young)
  • Using Wrestling As A Bumper For His Backstage Skits
  • Cramming Four Hours Of TV Into Two Hours On A Weekly Basis
  • Abusing The Gimmick Matches As Mentioned Above
  • Giving Away First Time Matches On Free TV
  • Being A Writer And Not A Booker (A writer writes his shit, and then tries to cram a pair of bodies into it and hopes it works. A booker takes two guys, and then crafts the story around them and continues to craft it all the way to its conclusion.)

    Ed Ferrara is Russo’s lap dog, and is no better in my opinion. As a booker, he may very well be a nice guy. WCW thought that they were the shit, but it turns out that they were shit. Don’t get me wrong, WCW put some handcuffs on them, but really, they did some shit. And then you take Hogan and Bischoff and add them into the equation. While I have been on record (as far as distribution and such) that they can help the product, they aren’t much better. Hell, last week’s Impact was vintage WCW with Nash in charge. I thought I was watching WCW Thunder. These four men played a huge part in the downfall of WCW, and while at one time they made money, they also lost more money than GOD when they were collectively in charge. That scares me.

    CONCLUSION
    I will keep this short. This was negative. I sounded like I had a severe case of sandy vaginitis. I want to be wrong. I want TNA to succeed, I want WWE to feel threatened and pick up their game, I want another Monday night revolution and I want the world to be made of candy and free strippers. But the facts do not support that right now. Here is something from a column I wrote back in 2007 when TNA finally got two-hours on Thursday night, THE ONE THING they said they needed to succeed…

    You have gotten everything that you have said that you needed to succeed. Everything you needed to compete, to be the best wrestling company in the world. October 4th 2007 will come and go, and you get a grace period because one week means nothing. But after 6-8 weeks come and go, and if you are still doing a 1.1 rating and 20,000 PPV Buys, I don’t want to hear anymore excuses. What could you possibly say? You have gotten everything you “needed.” Two hours, mainstream attention, a great roster, prime time, monthly PPV, star power, you got it all. You are now officially out of excuses. I stayed with you and supported you through out all of this, and will probably be here until the end, whenever that may be. But this is it; this is the time. This is your time. If you cannot succeed now, don’t blame the fans that have supported you through the years. Don’t blame me or others for a harsh review. Don’t look any farther than where ever you may be sitting, because you have no one to blame but yourself.

    By the way, I hope everything I wrote is completely wrong and that TNA succeeds, because it would be for the best of the wrestling business.

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