What happened to the Hogan hatred for "killing" TNA? 5 months ago every person in the IWC hated him. I haven't ever loved or hated hogan but It'll be cool to see him at wrestle mania live. He should only cut a promo to open the show, a few backstage segments (hopefully one with warrior) and maybe get involved in the real americans match. That's all he should and PHYSICALLY CAN do. Yes it's cool but nothing historic here.
It's the typical nonsense of how you just have some people on a TNA hating crusade no matter who is there or what TNA does offer in the way of its positives Now let me just say it straight out, here's what I like about TNA in fact I outright LOVE about the organization. I'm a fan who goes back to the days of watching the AWA, JCP/WCW, and WWF on a constant weekend basis, well in the case of the JCP/WCW mostly during the summer, on some fall and winter weekends I'd spend time with my Grandfather Carlos from my mother's side, his town had TBS, I didn't get TBS until 1993 in my town.
Anyway, sorry about the reminiscing there, but what I like about TNA is that their fan tests were top notch events, you got to meet a mix of veteran and rising talent. Now I feel bad because with the veteran talent I am more biased to them as opposed to the younger stars, although I had great conversations with many of them as well. But to me I'll always be biased to talking to guys like Hulk Hogan, Kurt Angle, Sting, The Dudleys, and so on because I grew up knowing who those guys were and was very acquainted with them.
I had a friend who hooked me up with a VIP pass at the last second for TNA Slammiversary in Boston last year. I have to say this much, their efforts to accommodate fans outside of the actual wrestling portion, was top notch. With the VIP pass came hotel accommodations, I was in the military for years, anything other than my barracks room is the Ritz Carlton, as far as I am concerned and even I made the best of that situation. I can understand that some people have gotten on TNA for not changing for the better, but these supposed TNA purists that turned their back on the product when Hogan got there and lament the story lines he was in like the WWE Hall Of Fame ring, conveniently forget the silly tripe TNA DID do in the past before Hogan. Let's just see stuff like this comes to mind:
*AJ Pierzysnki and David Eckstein appearing in TNA.
*Pacman Jones winning the tag team title straps.
*The reverse battle royal
*Vince Russo's antics with his kayfabe breaking shoots (I mean c'mon now...crash TV was so dead even in 2002-2003)
*Rhyno bringing his "ECW" Title with him to TNA.
*The fact that TNA STARTED with a four sided ring in 2002 and then a couple years later went to a six sided ring.
And I really could go on and on, but I'll leave it at that. TNA before Hogan was no better than how he left in 2013. In fact, really take some time to go back and look at early TNA stuff, production values while still not up to many a wrestling fan's standards, are MUCH better than they were. The one thing that TNA tends to get so much grief over is something it can't help, despite the fact it had lots of WCW luminaries and influence, it never had the HISTORY that WCW had. People tend to forget that WCW wasn't an overnight success or an upstart promotion, much like Titan Sports/WWF was a continuation of the Capital Wrestling Corporation under new ownership, so was WCW as it was a continuation of the Jim Crockett and Mid-South promotions. In fact the name of their flagship program was called World Championship Wrestling! Anyway I digress, back to TNA.
Getting to meet a guy like The Hulkster on several occasions, he would often break some of the rules just for the fans, not that TNA are the worst about things but they do try to remain time conscious. However, guys like Hulk Hogan and Kurt Angle threw a lot of that aside.
I'd like to hope that no matter what happens in TNA's future that they can at least continue to do these sort of things, it's something that indy promotions have sometimes not been as willing to do. Although to be fair, it's been some time since I've gotten a chance to go to many indy shows. As far as WWE's approach to meet and greets, I can't change that either because any time I've ever made a WWF/E contracted wrestler, wasn't at events but for public appearances outside of a live event for the promotion.
More or less though, I'm glad that Hogan is back in WWE, just because it better benefits his career, for stuff like retrospectives and if the rumors about this show that he's hosting on the WWE Network is actually true, it's a better place for him. I mean think of it like this, pretty much his entire career as an active wrestler is WWE archived. TNA wouldn't be able to truly celebrate and highlight him without the footage that Vince McMahon and company have.
It's sad he couldn't do more for TNA in some ways, but if you had gotten to meet the man at meet and greets like I had been able to, I'm pretty much grateful for that alone. I hope TNA continues to offer something to its fan base like I think they've been doing and that the haters just learn to chill out, but you can't please everyone.
