Good point JJ and thats one thing that drives me nuts about TNA's booking. They think the Heels have to go over all the time and the Faces don't/shouldn't win Matches on a PPV or an Impact even at times. They could have had Tara win even Shelly to extend that Feud. Hell let Sting hit Roode with the Belt to let the Crowd react somehow.
To understand this phenomenon, you must consider who is running things. Talk about writer names that only smarks know all you want, but the real name you need to know is Bischoff. Remember that this is the man of no ideas (where only one idea that he stole actually succeeded).
That idea of course was the nWo and it was great for a while but it eventually failed. Why? Fans DO want to see the forces of evil conquered. It needs to happen to give the fans something to cheer for. WCW at that time gave a big F U to everyone with their Starrcade 1997 booking in regards to that. Hogan held the title for OVER A YEAR as the bad guy, losing it only once for 6 days to Luger. Everyone kept justifying it because they knew Sting would take the title by kicking Hogan's ass at Starrcade. That justified everything. Of course, it never happened. Terrible booking made it seem like Sting couldn't beat Hogan cleanly so his win was tainted and even when he won for good 2 months later, it didn't matter. You told the world that the bad guy couldn't be beaten which is incredibly horrific wrestling storytelling.
For some reason, this ideal has carried over to EVERY title in TNA. Just slap the title on a heel and run for months. It's ok at first, especially if the heel is good, but it can get old quickly. Gail's reign sucked from the beginning so that's excluded but if anything, her getting the title regressed the division back a year. Not one thing she's done has been interesting but it's the women's title so let's not dwell on it.
Robbie's E's reign=no one cares. Aries was very interesting at the beginning but when every guy comes in, makes it interesting for a month and then just loses cleanly to a heel, it gets boring. That's where I'm at now. If Aries cuts the "I've beaten everyone" promo on Thursday, I might just lose it. That's how you take a talented, decent champion and make his reign boring. At the very least, you gotta have these guys feud with people for more than a month. It's not fun for anyone if you have all the faces lose cleanly in their first match and just move on to the next one.
Now, the World Title is a little different. It's been the same 3 guys involved in it since Angle lost it essentially which is ok I guess in theory. The problem there is that the only storyline within the title picture that means a thing is between the two heels! Bully Ray and Roode had an alliance and now have trust issues which is a story that makes sense. Hardy and Roode's issues are nothing as they have barely been mentioned and Storm and Roode have become an afterthought of a feud despite many fans wanting to believe that those two should be feuding. Even if they get the Lockdown match, it's not because of "months of tension" as whatever their split caused, it's forgotten already. You can see that in promos that Roode cuts as he glosses over Storm. That feud should have had the most heat and it's completely forgotten. Why? All the focus is on Sting! It's ok to have that as a part of things, but what Roode really needed is not to feud with the GM, but to have a personal feud with Storm (and Hardy too, why not?) Instead, we've gotten a rushed Hardy feud which sucked, and the Storm stuff has become incredibly impersonal. So while Roode's run is the best of all the heel champs, it's not great by any stretch due to shoddy booking. Some might think "hey, it's like JBL's", but it's not. JBL looked to be in legitimate danger a few times but weaseled out. No one has been built up to truly threaten Roode's title.
At some point, you have to give the fans what they want and no, I'm not talking about TNA faithfuls that will tell you why all these reigns are great. I'm talking about wrestling fans who pay for shows and cheer for the heroes and such.
If you go to the thread on Hogan commenting on Roode not getting the title at BFG, you'll see Shattered Dreams falling into this trap. He argues that BFG's result is "worthwhile because of future stories", which is grossly inaccurate. Lets take 2005. Very few remember Cena or Batista's next feud after Wrestlemania. What they remember is the moment from Wrestlemania of those guys winning the title on the grand stage. The moment in wrestling means more than "future stories". Heck, all "future stories" ideally are built so eventually you get that moment! Thus, that argument is stupid and TNA needs to realize this. You need to give fans their moment because THAT is what they'll pay to see and that is what the business is about (making money). Thus, I hope Dave Lagana can convince people that they have to go this way. The company will be much better off if they allow fans to see big moments like their favorites actually winning stuff after proper build (and by proper I mean proper where everyone can see it, not proper where a few TNA fans will argue it's proper but 95 percent of the other views don't view it as suich).
