I'm probably going to be in the minority here, but, honestly, I think those guys could have helped certain parts of the show. Case in point: Shore. Tell me that this idiotic shit wouldn't go away if enough people started chanting "This is boring" when these guys were in the ring. Stupid chants aside, those guys do, on more occasions than not, actually say what people are thinking, if in a less productive way.
I know. I know. "Uncle Scotty." Well, should Tommy have brought that shit up? "Fire Russo?" You know something? I'm perfectly fine with that one. The business has been exposed for over 20 years. And, for what the ECW did right, the main thing they did wrong was put the smart people in the audience and the marks in the locker room.
It's not exactly a well guarded secret that wrestling is scripted and staged. And, if the show that's presented sucks, you bitch at the writer. Well, you might bitch at the director. But, in TNA, that's Dixie, so we can't go there. What's she going to do, fire herself? Well, we can dream.
Oh, and since people like to complain about these guys so much,how about I put a little spin on a very common remark about TNA. "They've outgrown the Impact Zone." I agree. And, if TNA goes into a larger venue, even if that venue is still in Orlando, if the audience is larger and hot, the "Crucial/Cancer Crew" would be drowned the fuck out. There's the solution, TNA. You don't have to ban these guys. But, produce ashow that keeps wrestling fans hot, and these people will no longer be an issue. But, the problem is, hell, the problem has always been, that TNA fails to keep the crowd hot. These guys get heard because TNA fans are largely silent during the show.
You know what? I just realized something. If TNA actually gave a consistant hot show, these guys wouldn't need to be drowned out, because they'd have nothing to bitch about. And, the best way to keep things that hot is to give us wrestling fans a legitimate suspension of disbelief. But, when TNA, literally, has people getting away with multiple counts of attempted murder, I'm rendered unable to suspend my own disbelief. And, I would wager that's an issue for most of TNA's audience.
As a point of comparison, I was at the Renn Faire a couple weeks back. I had an iPod and a DS in my pockets, ready for the moment that I started to lose interest. That moment never happened. Why? Because everything that was happening was intended to actually make sense in context. And, when I was watching the joust, I wasn't a "cast-member," waiting on my next cue from the "applause" light. My disbelief had been suspended, and I was legitimately cheering for my chosen knights, hoping for their triumph over the dishonorable knights on the other side of the list. And, when my knights won the day, I was legitimately satisfied, since I had allowed myself to be brought inot the world created by the show.
And, at the end of the day, that's all you need to do. Present something that, even though people know it's "fake" or "staged," they can still actually care about. It happens more often than you think. And, if Vince Russo's writing can't get TNA there, they need to replace him with someone who can. And, for fuck sake, TNA, stop booking your wrestlers to bitch about what happens in the booking office! It takes away from the suspension of disbelief. And, as I said before, when the people are allowed to just escape from everything for a couple hours and take in a good wrestling product, those few stupid chants are drowned out by torrents of appropriately placed cheers and jeers.
