psykohurricane
Championship Contender
So i just finished reading both part of Glenn Gilberti'S column title A Storm's is Brewin' and i decided to just analyse several thing that was writing by both Glenn gilberti's and Lance Storm to see who had the right argument So Let's start from the beginning
Item 1: Here what LAnce Storm wrote about Shark boy: "If I told someone I was a pro-wrestler and showed them this weeks regular Impact show as an example, I would be embarrassed and want to put a paper bag over my head and slit my wrists. The Shark Boy stuff over shadowed all the hard work of those who wrestled on the show and TNA has once again regained the crown as the biggest disgrace in wrestling history"
"The Shark Boy segments this week on Impact were stupid, insulting, and perhaps more importantly extremely bad for business."
"Segments like this have far wider ramifications and no one seems able to get their head out of their @$$ long enough it realize it."
Lets look at the fact that TNA spent approximately 7 minutes of airtime on the Shark Boy skits. The skits were insultingly stupid and undermined the credibility of every person who took part in them."
"If that isnt bad enough, and this is where the short sightedness of the creative team shows through, by doing this stupid injury angle gimmick with Shark Boy they are sabotaging their own company by wasting potential money drawing angles on this comedy character."
"How is it that an undercard nobody who cant even get medical clearance is being given what he demands while other top stars are ignored by TNA management? This company makes no sense at all, at least not in this hemisphere."
Wow! There's enough comedy to address there but the following week he gave us more. This is from "Shark Boy" on Jan. 28.
"I believe the person (or persons) who are lost here is or are the people who book/write TNA Impact."
"In ECW way back when. On house shows some of the guys would do WWF gimmick moves for the cheap pop it would garner. I recall one house show when in a tag match Tommy Dreamer and The Sandman worked in a double Scotty 2 Hotty Worm spot to a huge pop from the crowd. Paul Heyman was livid and told the guys never to do stuff like that again, because it made us look second rate and inferior to the WWF."
and here glenn's responds: Uh, Lance, Shark Boy has the highest selling t-shirt in TNA. I could condescend and psychoanalyze the comments Lance made about him, but I think if you brought the argument to a court of law, and Lance Storm presented the case that the TNA booking committee is stupid for what they did with Shark Boy, and I presented the evidence that they took a jobber and made him the highest selling merchandise, a jury would probably find that beyond a reasonable doubt that Lance storm was wrong, and should issue an apology. At least to maintain his credibility.
To this part, i got to agree with Lance simply on the fact that even if Shark Boy has the highest selling t-shirt in TNA, They wasted a lot of money, talent and time on this new character for Shark Boy and the guy is still Jobbing every single week on Impact and PPV so what was the point really of the skits and the change of character for Shark Boy if he still get beat up every week.
item No 2: Here a comment from Lance Storm about TNA booking made on 2 different commentaries: 1- How a company with such an amazingly talented locker room can produce such an unwatchable show is beyond me. Actually it isnt beyond me I watched Vince Russo do it in WCW."
--Wow! That's pretty strong for a guy that wasn't even close to as over as he was when Russo was booking him. Is Lance an actual worker, or an internet mark?
"I have come to the conclusion that TNA is to Wrestling, what Scary Movie is to Horror Films. It has become a comedic spoof of a wrestling show."
--Maybe pro wrestling treated as a real sport is what makes it a comedic spoof to people that don't watch it. Pro wrestling is grown men wearing bathing suits pretending to fight each other. Maybe not taking itself so seriously is what it needs. It's very difficult to compete with UFC and boxing these days.
"Counting Cornette and valets there were 39 people on this Freakin show. How are we supposed to remember any of it?"
--I think Lance should use the word "I" instead of "we" when trying to comment on his own deficiencies with his memory.
"I am officially at wits end and will not watch another TNA show until they replace Vince Russo. Hopefully this will happen before TNA goes out of business."
--TNA is over a year older doing it's best business yet.
2- WWE and TNA are in two completely different boats. WWE has a stable loyal audience that tunes in every week, buys enough merchandise, and orders enough PPVs for WWE to make money. As long as they dont do enough stupid things to drive their audience away in droves they will stay in business."
--Well, when Russo left they were doing 6's, and now they're doing low threes. I don't know if you can consider it "droves", but the bottom line is that over the course of time WWE has lost half of it's audience and their numbers are still DROPPING. TNA over the course of one year has increased it's viewership. Whose booking model would the typical layperson say has been more effective?
And here a idea on how to book impact giving by Lance Storm:"I would break the show into 4 10 to 12 minute segments. If commercial breaks require it, some segments would span commercial breaks, 3 of those segments will almost always feature matches. One of those segments each week would be devoted to the X-Division, and I would focus less on Story Lines with the X-Division and give it more of a pure wrestling feel. You can book some angles along the way but predominantly it would be about competitive high-end action. I would also keep these finishes as clean as possible. I think most of the appeal to the X-Division is the action so by simplifying the angles here will allow for more story based stuff elsewhere. There are a lot of spot junkies out there, this will give them there fill, and by giving the X Guys 8-10 minutes of actual bell to bell ring time they will be able to get their personalities over more during matches."
--So all the matches would basically have the same amount of time. How realistic is that? And how do you give more time to guys that don't have alot of personality time to get their personalities over? The funniest thing about all this is that Lance Storm is maybe the one guy in WCW that benefitted the most from Vince Russo. Could you imagine if Lance had to rely on his in-ring work to get his personality over? And he still bashes the booking model that gave him character and puts over the one thing that turns away fans that don't like wrestling. More wrestling.
And this is what Glenn had to say about the subject: For the record, there are some things in TNA that I'm not a big fan of. I'm not a big fan of the Super Eric character, to me it's a little hokey, but it gets a pop. I'm not a big fan of repetitive x-division matches where the guys work too fast. I'm not a big fan of Karen Angle yelling at Kurt all the time, but I am a big fan of her seducing characters on the show. I'm not a big fan of long matches. But I do understand that my personal likes and dislikes don't 100% translate to what needs to be done to draw new fans to wrestling. It's a shame when guys like Lance Storm gain a vocal following in this business. They work counterproductive to what needs to be done, because I don't care what anyone says, the bottom line is that wrestling fans will watch the show as long as there's wrestling on, and they don't need to be appeased. If there's people that have been watching wrestling for the past ten years, they'll be watching ten years from now, regardless of how bad the show is. We need to try and get that fan base that liked the hokie stuff from the Attitude era. 18-34 year old guys that like low brow humor and hot chicks, not nerds that want to give star ratings to fake fights, when they've never actually been in a fight themselves.
So yet again, i got to agree with Lance on this. Let face it, the time of the attitude era is long gone, the male 18-34 demographic has move on from wrestling to MMA simply because MMA is more violent. The reason why rating went down in the last couple of years is simple, wrestling has become a joke and isn't look violent enough for male 18 -34 so they go and seek the violence need else where. Male viewers wants to see athlete fight each other, they don't want to see characters like shark boy and super eric in the ring. Here a perfect exemple of what am saying, Normally, TNA PPV get around 250 000 buy per PPV yet last month PPV didn't almost double the buy simply on the build up that they gave to the main event. It wasn't the rest of the card that made people buy Lockdown it was the simple booking of the main event. You has two guys fighting over a championship and for Samoa Joe winning the championship was so important that i put is career on the line against angle' title belt. That what people wants now. That's why the knockout's matches are the highest rated segment on impact every week. It's not because they are beautiful woman's, it's because they can actually wrestle.
In the end, we got to face the facts, Glenn Gilberti will never say anything bad about TNA because he works for them and it would be bad for buisness if he did so, but at the same time, Glenn and everybody in TNA got to realise that they have to be the complete opposite of the WWE if they want to success and right now there not even close to that. The secret of being a successful buiness is to check the competition, take notes and listen to what the fans are telling you. If you want to get more people watching, give them what you have been giving them before Lockdown with the Angle/Joe match. Give them a little bit more reality and less comic relief. Give them more competitive match and less comical backstage segment. The secret to getting back those male 18-34 demographic the TNA wants so bad is as simple as that. More reality and competition, less comic relief. It's a simple recipe to follow and it work.
Item 1: Here what LAnce Storm wrote about Shark boy: "If I told someone I was a pro-wrestler and showed them this weeks regular Impact show as an example, I would be embarrassed and want to put a paper bag over my head and slit my wrists. The Shark Boy stuff over shadowed all the hard work of those who wrestled on the show and TNA has once again regained the crown as the biggest disgrace in wrestling history"
"The Shark Boy segments this week on Impact were stupid, insulting, and perhaps more importantly extremely bad for business."
"Segments like this have far wider ramifications and no one seems able to get their head out of their @$$ long enough it realize it."
Lets look at the fact that TNA spent approximately 7 minutes of airtime on the Shark Boy skits. The skits were insultingly stupid and undermined the credibility of every person who took part in them."
"If that isnt bad enough, and this is where the short sightedness of the creative team shows through, by doing this stupid injury angle gimmick with Shark Boy they are sabotaging their own company by wasting potential money drawing angles on this comedy character."
"How is it that an undercard nobody who cant even get medical clearance is being given what he demands while other top stars are ignored by TNA management? This company makes no sense at all, at least not in this hemisphere."
Wow! There's enough comedy to address there but the following week he gave us more. This is from "Shark Boy" on Jan. 28.
"I believe the person (or persons) who are lost here is or are the people who book/write TNA Impact."
"In ECW way back when. On house shows some of the guys would do WWF gimmick moves for the cheap pop it would garner. I recall one house show when in a tag match Tommy Dreamer and The Sandman worked in a double Scotty 2 Hotty Worm spot to a huge pop from the crowd. Paul Heyman was livid and told the guys never to do stuff like that again, because it made us look second rate and inferior to the WWF."
and here glenn's responds: Uh, Lance, Shark Boy has the highest selling t-shirt in TNA. I could condescend and psychoanalyze the comments Lance made about him, but I think if you brought the argument to a court of law, and Lance Storm presented the case that the TNA booking committee is stupid for what they did with Shark Boy, and I presented the evidence that they took a jobber and made him the highest selling merchandise, a jury would probably find that beyond a reasonable doubt that Lance storm was wrong, and should issue an apology. At least to maintain his credibility.
To this part, i got to agree with Lance simply on the fact that even if Shark Boy has the highest selling t-shirt in TNA, They wasted a lot of money, talent and time on this new character for Shark Boy and the guy is still Jobbing every single week on Impact and PPV so what was the point really of the skits and the change of character for Shark Boy if he still get beat up every week.
item No 2: Here a comment from Lance Storm about TNA booking made on 2 different commentaries: 1- How a company with such an amazingly talented locker room can produce such an unwatchable show is beyond me. Actually it isnt beyond me I watched Vince Russo do it in WCW."
--Wow! That's pretty strong for a guy that wasn't even close to as over as he was when Russo was booking him. Is Lance an actual worker, or an internet mark?
"I have come to the conclusion that TNA is to Wrestling, what Scary Movie is to Horror Films. It has become a comedic spoof of a wrestling show."
--Maybe pro wrestling treated as a real sport is what makes it a comedic spoof to people that don't watch it. Pro wrestling is grown men wearing bathing suits pretending to fight each other. Maybe not taking itself so seriously is what it needs. It's very difficult to compete with UFC and boxing these days.
"Counting Cornette and valets there were 39 people on this Freakin show. How are we supposed to remember any of it?"
--I think Lance should use the word "I" instead of "we" when trying to comment on his own deficiencies with his memory.
"I am officially at wits end and will not watch another TNA show until they replace Vince Russo. Hopefully this will happen before TNA goes out of business."
--TNA is over a year older doing it's best business yet.
2- WWE and TNA are in two completely different boats. WWE has a stable loyal audience that tunes in every week, buys enough merchandise, and orders enough PPVs for WWE to make money. As long as they dont do enough stupid things to drive their audience away in droves they will stay in business."
--Well, when Russo left they were doing 6's, and now they're doing low threes. I don't know if you can consider it "droves", but the bottom line is that over the course of time WWE has lost half of it's audience and their numbers are still DROPPING. TNA over the course of one year has increased it's viewership. Whose booking model would the typical layperson say has been more effective?
And here a idea on how to book impact giving by Lance Storm:"I would break the show into 4 10 to 12 minute segments. If commercial breaks require it, some segments would span commercial breaks, 3 of those segments will almost always feature matches. One of those segments each week would be devoted to the X-Division, and I would focus less on Story Lines with the X-Division and give it more of a pure wrestling feel. You can book some angles along the way but predominantly it would be about competitive high-end action. I would also keep these finishes as clean as possible. I think most of the appeal to the X-Division is the action so by simplifying the angles here will allow for more story based stuff elsewhere. There are a lot of spot junkies out there, this will give them there fill, and by giving the X Guys 8-10 minutes of actual bell to bell ring time they will be able to get their personalities over more during matches."
--So all the matches would basically have the same amount of time. How realistic is that? And how do you give more time to guys that don't have alot of personality time to get their personalities over? The funniest thing about all this is that Lance Storm is maybe the one guy in WCW that benefitted the most from Vince Russo. Could you imagine if Lance had to rely on his in-ring work to get his personality over? And he still bashes the booking model that gave him character and puts over the one thing that turns away fans that don't like wrestling. More wrestling.
And this is what Glenn had to say about the subject: For the record, there are some things in TNA that I'm not a big fan of. I'm not a big fan of the Super Eric character, to me it's a little hokey, but it gets a pop. I'm not a big fan of repetitive x-division matches where the guys work too fast. I'm not a big fan of Karen Angle yelling at Kurt all the time, but I am a big fan of her seducing characters on the show. I'm not a big fan of long matches. But I do understand that my personal likes and dislikes don't 100% translate to what needs to be done to draw new fans to wrestling. It's a shame when guys like Lance Storm gain a vocal following in this business. They work counterproductive to what needs to be done, because I don't care what anyone says, the bottom line is that wrestling fans will watch the show as long as there's wrestling on, and they don't need to be appeased. If there's people that have been watching wrestling for the past ten years, they'll be watching ten years from now, regardless of how bad the show is. We need to try and get that fan base that liked the hokie stuff from the Attitude era. 18-34 year old guys that like low brow humor and hot chicks, not nerds that want to give star ratings to fake fights, when they've never actually been in a fight themselves.
So yet again, i got to agree with Lance on this. Let face it, the time of the attitude era is long gone, the male 18-34 demographic has move on from wrestling to MMA simply because MMA is more violent. The reason why rating went down in the last couple of years is simple, wrestling has become a joke and isn't look violent enough for male 18 -34 so they go and seek the violence need else where. Male viewers wants to see athlete fight each other, they don't want to see characters like shark boy and super eric in the ring. Here a perfect exemple of what am saying, Normally, TNA PPV get around 250 000 buy per PPV yet last month PPV didn't almost double the buy simply on the build up that they gave to the main event. It wasn't the rest of the card that made people buy Lockdown it was the simple booking of the main event. You has two guys fighting over a championship and for Samoa Joe winning the championship was so important that i put is career on the line against angle' title belt. That what people wants now. That's why the knockout's matches are the highest rated segment on impact every week. It's not because they are beautiful woman's, it's because they can actually wrestle.
In the end, we got to face the facts, Glenn Gilberti will never say anything bad about TNA because he works for them and it would be bad for buisness if he did so, but at the same time, Glenn and everybody in TNA got to realise that they have to be the complete opposite of the WWE if they want to success and right now there not even close to that. The secret of being a successful buiness is to check the competition, take notes and listen to what the fans are telling you. If you want to get more people watching, give them what you have been giving them before Lockdown with the Angle/Joe match. Give them a little bit more reality and less comic relief. Give them more competitive match and less comical backstage segment. The secret to getting back those male 18-34 demographic the TNA wants so bad is as simple as that. More reality and competition, less comic relief. It's a simple recipe to follow and it work.