What Could Have Been

[ztwhite]

Granted, some of these guys were WWE originals, but watching Raw this past Monday, I couldn't help but think about what could have been in TNA...

Kurt Angle
Bobby Roode
Jeff Hardy
Samoa Joe
Drew McIntyre
Bobby Lashley

All these guys were part of TNA's roster -- together -- at one point. They were all on Raw this past Monday.

That doesn't even include the former TNA guys who are part of SmackDown or who appeared on both shows this past week...

A.J. Styles
Eric Young
Xavier Woods
Zelina Vega
Mickie James

It's a rhetorical question, but how the hell did that company not make it work? And I'm sure I missed a few people, including those currently on the NXT roster. Just head scratching, really.

 

[UncleSav4ge]

For me personally I lost interest in TNA after AJ Styles left the company, and once you start seeing the trend of everyone who's actually the backbone of TNA leaving the company you know that they are just no as good as they used to.

They couldn't keep the fans interested and they couldn't keep their employees happy, to me that is failure.

If you can't keep the best wrestlers that you have then you're just not good enough to run this business.

At least now these great wrestlers get to showcase their talent in a much better company so the whole world can be entertained.

 

[sMark]

TNA just couldn't get away from the past gen stars. When they could finally break up, Carter signed Hogan and Bischoff, so these two feeded their WCW family, changed the six sided ring and decided to live in 1996 instead of 2009. After that TNA never was the same.
They prefered past stars over the guys who build this company and who the fans around the world finally got behind.
WWE didn't have anything great going at the time, so all TNA needed was to follow the track and put on a great show.

 

[therockiswwf]

WWE didn't have anything great going at the time, so all TNA needed was to follow the track and put on a great show.

Way easier said than done.

TNA kept hovering around a 1 rating for years. They were stuck. Russo wasn't going to lead them to the promise land and neither was Hogan.

TNA pulled a WCW. They kept the old guys at the top. As the old guys left, they replaced them with lesser and lesser guys. When they started to push new guys, it was only because everyone else left. They needed new creative forces. Everyone who they used did shit booking. TNA lacked an interesting product and failed to grow as a result.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

The biggest problem with TNA was Dixie carter, Pretty much everybody that worked in TNA at that time will tell the same story that she was really nice but didn't know anything about wrestling and should have stayed away from running the company.

When they first started, they had some great minds running the show like Jeff Jarrett, Dutch mantell and Jim Cornette for a little while, even Roaddog jesse james was part of creative at the time and everything was going well, they were getting pretty decent ratings and they PPV were selling pretty well. Then the whole jarrett/angle personnal feud happen and Dixie not knowing anything about wrestling, sided with her big star Angle and pretty much fired everybody in Jarrett's team before pretty much buying him out. She tried different combination of creative staff from Russo to bischoff and hogan but nothing worked because what worked during the attitude era, doesn't work now, so that pretty much destroyed any momentum the company had, plus the going live on monday nights fiasco almost bankrupt the company and for several years after that pay their wrestlers and she pretty much lied to the executive at spike tv which cost them they're tv deal and they've struggle to survive ever since which is why most of these name left.

 

[d_henderson1810]

Granted, some of these guys were WWE originals, but watching Raw this past Monday, I couldn't help but think about what could have been in TNA...

Kurt Angle
Bobby Roode
Jeff Hardy
Samoa Joe
Drew McIntyre
Bobby Lashley

All these guys were part of TNA's roster -- together -- at one point. They were all on Raw this past Monday.

That doesn't even include the former TNA guys who are part of SmackDown or who appeared on both shows this past week...

A.J. Styles
Eric Young
Xavier Woods
Zelina Vega
Mickie James

It's a rhetorical question, but how the hell did that company not make it work? And I'm sure I missed a few people, including those currently on the NXT roster. Just head scratching, really.

I only watched TNA from time to time, but everything I saw and read, the one thing TNA had going for it was its talent roster.

I don't think TNA were ever knocked for its talent (and in fact, was often complimented for how many good workers they had), but it was more management, constant bad decisions being made at the top, getting in Hulk Hogan, who changed things too much (like getting rid of the six-sided ring) and the production values (WWE have backstage office scenes with mahogany tables, posters on the wall and decked out like an executive office, TNA decks a backstage office with a door and a card table).

If they had that talent, and better writers, someone who knew how to run a company (unlike Dixie Carter) and more money spent on production, then it would have worked better.

 

[Sexcellence of Sexecution]

Honestly one of the problems with TNA was it's name. Branding is everything, and when your name is a pun on tits and ass it can be hard to be seen as legitimate in the eyes of sponsors. They've attemtped to rebrand themselves on multiple occassions, but are still kind of stuck. THe main reason Hogan came in was to try and attract more sponsors.

Here's the bigger problem. They put the a lot of the same people from WCW in the same or similar positions within TNA and expected to succeed. An even bigger problem than that was their attempt to compete with WWE. Bringing in Hogan/Bischoff, moving to Monday nights, and not keeping costs under control absolutely killed them. TNA was too ambituous and had none of the foundation built in to support it's ambitions. Pey-per-view was disastrous for them and they hardly ever sold any tickets to live events/TV tapings.

TNA had exactly one thing going for it. It's TV slot on Spike. They had a two hour primetime slot on a decent network for a long, long time. Good teleivision time is everything in wrestling today, and they had it. The ratings were not at all impacted by an influx or exodus of former WWE stars. Their business model should have been obvious: focus on the television product, and keep costs down. There was never any reason to pay guys like Kurt Angle, RVD, Sting, Hogan, and Bischoff. They didn't add any value to the television show. They were massive expenses that had zero objective effect on the numbers. Keep your costs down, focus on being a successful independent promotion with a solid television audience. They were doing 1.0-1.3 ratings. That's fine, that's great even. Trying to push yourself to expand beyond that and allowing costs to balloon in pursuit of being another WCW made no fucking sense.

TNA should've worried about keeping Spike TV happy, continued to deliver those numbers, not brought in every hack from the 90s, and cut down to maybe 3 major PPVs per year. They probably didn't even need PPV at all and could've built to major television specials since TV was their bread and butter. Weekly, episodic TV booking should have been their focus, with a down-sized roster of hungry young talent that put on fun and exciting matches.

 

[FromGlasgow]

5 or 6 years ago I think TNA had a far better roster than the WWE, Admittedly not so much now but thats because most of their talent now works in the WWE in some capacity.
People like to knock TNA but you can't deny the amount of new talent it got over through the years.

 

[d_henderson1810]

5 or 6 years ago I think TNA had a far better roster than the WWE, Admittedly not so much now but thats because most of their talent now works in the WWE in some capacity.
People like to knock TNA but you can't deny the amount of new talent it got over through the years.

Also, WWE's talent has got better because of NXT and the Performance Centre, meaning that there are fresh new faces coming in all the time and reinvigorating the roster, rather than years ago, where every main program has John Cena and Randy Orton involved.

Plus TNA has lost a lot of its "name" talent (like A.J. Styles, Samoa Joe, Bobby Roode etc) because TNA cut costs by cutting their contracts or letting go of them.

So I say that TNA's talent roster was better 5 years ago. But today, WWE has the better roster, I imagine.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

Hogan and Bischoff along with Dizzy Dixie took a lot of blame for it... Hogan couldn't see past the "big names" of the past and Dixie wouldn't push the right talents, so guys like Sabin ('member him?) ended up champion.

Reality was that TNA could NEVER decide what it wanted to be... was it WWE-lite? was it different with the 6 sided ring? was it Impact Wrestling/Global Force or what? In that kind of environment then big name talent was ALWAYS needed to shore up the ratings so it meant guys like Sting, Jeff Hardy, Booker and the like were at the top of the card when they shouldn't have been.

Almost to a person, everyone who has left TNA for WWE has succeeded massively through the reinvention, starting with Christian. But TNA were more interested in who THEY could get from WWE and shortcut by using what Vince had created. It's easy to imagine a Jarrett, Dixie or Bischoff telling guys like AJ, Joe, Woods and Roode... "Be like these guys coming in and you'll succeed here.." whereas they've succeeded as pretty much themselves since actually getting to the WWE.

While Woods wasn't the "big name" in TNA the others were, he's arguably the greatest success story so far with a TNA talent, it took time... today he'd walk back into TNA and be made champion immediately...but why would he ever want to? They never saw it in him, WWE did... TNA just never got talent.

 

[enviousdominous]

TNA for me was always a company where for every time I'd be rocked by an awesome performance, I'd subsequently be annoyed fifty times by complete lunacy that was reminiscent of the latter years of WCW.

My first real exposure to TNA was watching the Fight for the Right Tournament. It was really difficult to watch TNA because, to my knowledge, it could only be seen on PPV. This show annoyed the shit out of me, mostly because of the "reverse battle royal", which as of today is still one of the most fucking stupid matches I've ever seen.

Then I remember tuning into TNA on a whim one day back in 2010, and they had a triple threat match of Jesse Sorensen vs Tony Nese vs Jack Evans. This match was PHENOMENAL in every sense of the word. I assumed that they got their shit together and decided to go with superior ring work over stupid gimmick matches.

I tried to get back into TNA, but it wasn't happening. The shaky camera work, the botches, the annoyingly weird characters, and the gimmick matches screamed of desperation for us to see TNA as being a cheap imitation of the WWE. It was just a big mess.

Impact Wrestling has recently caught my attention in a big way with having Pentagon Jr win their world championship. They really shouldn't squander a rising star like him, the WWE could easily have him on NXT within a month.

 

[sMark]

TNA should've worried about keeping Spike TV happy, continued to deliver those numbers, not brought in every hack from the 90s, and cut down to maybe 3 major PPVs per year. They probably didn't even need PPV at all and could've built to major television specials since TV was their bread and butter. Weekly, episodic TV booking should have been their focus, with a down-sized roster of hungry young talent that put on fun and exciting matches.

Now that you mentioned it, i think the idea can work. NXT like format can do wonders for them. Something like Saturday Night Main Event once a month will work for them. Keep Slammyversary, Bound for Glory and 1 more as PPVs, make Saturday Night Specials on TVs and worry about TV the most.
Make a small but deep of real talent roster, so the wrestling fans will watch. Bring in 1-2 veterans (not more) who can still go and not 100% egomaniacal, but big enough, so fans will have their nostalgia fun (Mysterio maybe) They can bring in Legends for their ppvs, but in no way these Legends should be in title matches or against their biggest stars (look at Juchin Liger in NXT as great example)