The Line Has Been Crossed

The thread about TNA beginning to panic was getting a little long, and it gave me a lot to think about. For years now it seems like people have kept saying the same things about what TNA needs to do to stay alive or start to challenge WWE, and TNA has tried all sorts of tricks: Bringing in Russo. Bringing in Bischoff and Hogan. Trying to go head to head on Monday nights. Bringing in Bruce Pritchard. Pushing established stars. Pushing new stars. Trying to make the show all about wrestling. Trying to make the show about crazy soap opera angles. Pushing old school wrestling. Pushing the X division. So what is the answer? What is it that TNA can do to break out of their static position as a distant second to WWE?

Nothing.

Am I suggesting that TNA has no hope of ever being serious competition to WWE? Yes I am. At no point in their history have they ever really been close to competing with Raw or Smackdown in the ratings, and only occasionally have they been a viable alternative to serious wrestling fans. There are no casual TNA viewers. Now, let’s be fair. There will always be a secondary wrestling company in this country. There will always be guys who aren’t working for WWE who need a place to work, and eventually that company will always find its audience somehow. So if TNA is okay with filling that niche and being Vince’s overstock bin, they can probably ride that out for a while even if they take a budget cut. But it didn’t always have to be that way.

One of the most common things people are saying about TNA is that they need to attract bigger stars. When it comes to this fantasy booking, there’s always one more name that could save everything for them. If only they could get Cena! If they’d gotten Brock they’d be number one! Imagine if Rock joined TNA instead of WWE! The thing is, of course, all of those guys have made it clear that that will never happen. Anyone big enough to save TNA is big enough not to be desperate. Even if by some chance Cena or Punk did end up on the outs with WWE, one needs only to look at what happened with Angle and Hardy. Both were current, main event WWE stars in their primes when they went to TNA; both were dragged down to TNA’s level rather than elevating them. The same could happen to Punk or especially Cena. They will always be seen as WWE’s leftovers once WWE is done with them. Its like in Moneyball: “If we try to beat the Yankees without Yankees money, we will lose.”

It’s one of the things that I hate so much about Bischoff. “Established stars” means “stars established by Vince”. No wrestling promoter since Heyman has had enough faith in their own talent to push their own stars harder than the ones with the glamour of WWE on them. TNA has always been playing from behind in this respect. In the early days (besides Jarrett, who did a lot to sink TNA out of the gate but that’s a whole other debate) you had these guys competing against Jarrett for the title: Raven, who had been a big star half a decade earlier in ECW but had only been as high as the Sunday Night Heat C-team before leaving WWE. D-Lo Brown, who had already disappeared and come back to WWE once and who had been a low midcarder and had previously been second fiddle to friggin’ Tiger Ali Singh. And Rhyno, who had only been a main event guy in ECW’s dying days and had run the WWE treadmill for years. Later, they bring in Christian and literally treat it as the biggest thing to ever happen in TNA. Now, I love Christian, and I can certainly see the benefit of pushing someone who actively chose to leave for TNA rather than settling on them. But he was, if we’re being honest, a midcard act with a definite ceiling in WWE, and he was also sort of seen as the Jannetty in his team with Edge. By pushing him as hard as they did and sending him right to the main event with basically the same Captain Charisma act he was using in WWE, they sent the clear message “our best is as good as WWE’s midcard.” It made matters worse when Sting, washed up and inactive for half a decade, joined up and was immediately about at that level. And then later that year Angle signed. That was the one big, main event level, current day signing who had goodwill with the fans that could’ve been that savior for TNA. But it was too late. After years of pushing guys to the top that were at the middle of WWE, Angle seemed like he was demoted to the middle rather than making TNA seem like they were on top. The same was said for Hogan, Hardy, Anderson, RVD, Foley, Flair, et cetera et cetera……

Meanwhile, of course, TNA had all the homegrown talent they could ask for. Any time during the mid-00s, you had some of the best wrestlers in a generation coming out of the indies and ROH in particular. The times when TNA and ROH openly exchanged talent were some of the best for either company. Now of course, members of the ROH “class” are the toast of wrestling: Punk, Bryan, Aries, Cesaro, Joe, Daniels, AJ, and more. TNA went halfway by attempting to push Joe and Daniels, and certainly its hard to argue they didn’t do right by Styles. But they always tried to pound their style into one that could work with the ex-WWEers’, and when panic set in they’d always fall back on “established stars”. They had a chance to set themselves apart by offering something that WWE didn’t. They could’ve built their company around those guys and gone further by signing Bryan, Colt, Nigel, the Briscoes, and more. They could’ve used the “established stars” to put over the new guys and ensure the future of their company. So, as many people suggest, the answer is to just push those guys to the top now to save the company, right? Nope.

Unfortunately, the damage has been done. If AJ, Aries, Daniels, or Joe could save TNA, they’d have saved TNA. Its been six or seven years since those halcyon days of great talent. To a young kid, those guys are older than dirt. To a longtime viewer, they’re old news. It kills me to say it, because that group of wrestlers is a lot of what kept me watching wrestling as an adult and I’ll always remember the days of being blown away by their amazing matches, but the bloom is off the rose on those guys. Within a few years, they’ll all be a little too old to be hanging on. So what the hell do they do now?

Two choices. Either try to say that the rut they’re in is really a groove and continue to be the distant second until Spike and Dixie’s parents change their minds, or try to get up from the bottom yet again. There is no magic bullet or easy answer to say how TNA could wash the stink of Vince’s sloppy seconds off. What I would do, though, if I were in charge? The nuclear option. Build to one last big show for a few months so everyone can say their goodbyes, and start from scratch. The TNA name has very little equity left in it at this point. Look at two of their more successful characters at this point: Abyss changed his gimmick to Joseph Park, and Bully Ray is not exactly the same as Bubba Ray Dudley. Even Daniels and Kazarian had to radically change from their previous states to get over as Bad Influence. In Dixie’s shoes, i’d lay it on the line. Everything old is out, even the guys I love and would regret seeing go. For the good of the company, I bring in a small cheap crew of guys who are not established. Anyone who is a little bit younger and looking for their shot can, if not fully overhaul their gimmick, at least find something new to try to make stick (here I think of guys like Magnus, Jesse, Gunner, Kenny King, etc.), but even then i’d be more worried about pushing new names first. If these guys are never seen as having been relative on the card to WWE’s midcard, then they can’t be considered not as good. Yeah, you’ll have your people crowing about “you can’t take some nobody and tell people they’re as good as Cena!” But that kind of thinking got TNA in the spot they’re in, and its certainly better than taking someone the fans already don’t think is as good as Cena and trying to put them in that spot. Would my plan work? I dunno. It all depends on what guys have the star power and charisma and determination to connect with a crowd. But its a start..

…but then again, I’m not Dixie. My imagination doesn’t have money on the line, and my fantasy booking doesn’t account for the friendships and politics of people who aren’t going to be so willing to give up their spot. So that’s why I think there’s basically nothing TNA can do. They’ve continued to bear the weight of the mistakes they’ve made, and every attempt to dig themselves out of the creative hole they’re in has resulted in less and less viewers. Even WWE is facing the hard reality that wrestling might not appeal to as many people or be the moneymaker it used to. TNA’s ratings will sink until Spike pulls the plug, and while they could still continue to keep plugging along as that second place company. But they will never again, pardon the pun, make a real Impact.