Impact Support Club House

[The Dragon Saga]

Because (apparently), it's the absolute only fucking thing TNA knows to book.

Ehhh... I can't remember the last time TNA booked a big heel stable well. Immortal sucked, Ace's and 8's sucked, Fortune was good but they ended it just as it was gaining steam which was weird, Main Event Mafia was alright, World Elite was all over the place, Team Angle/Christian Coalition was the best of the lot, and Planet Jarrett was like MEM, alright. I feel like I'm forgetting one or two. Not counting SEX which was fucking horrid. Thank Christ for AJ Styles and Jerry Lynn in those early days.

 

[Dirk]

Ehhh... I can't remember the last time TNA booked a big heel stable well. Immortal sucked, Ace's and 8's sucked, Fortune was good but they ended it just as it was gaining steam which was weird, Main Event Mafia was alright, World Elite was all over the place, Team Angle/Christian Coalition was the best of the lot, and Planet Jarrett was like MEM, alright. I feel like I'm forgetting one or two. Not counting SEX which was fucking horrid. Thank Christ for AJ Styles and Jerry Lynn in those early days.

Ahh, but I didn't say they know how to book it WELL, only that it's all they know to do.


In a similar vein... here's an idea... TNA loves their stables, right? Put EVERYBODY in a fucking heel stable! Make it like training teams in MMA. New guy debuts? No problem - slug him in with MVP's Poon Tang Clan. There's a returning knockout? Problem solved - she can join the Beautiful Lots Of People. The Menagerie V2 will gain misfits like Shaw and Hardy, Revolution V2.5 will gain Gunner and both Andersons. Empire Canadia becomes a thing, British Re-invasion becomes a thing and Team Meheeco becomes a one-man thing.

Ha! That'll teach 'em.

 

[Fillet Club]

Oh god, another heel faction in TNA, how long before the annual power struggle? I thought we were getting 'major changes' in 2015?

I'm hoping all our cynicism is proven wrong in the coming months...

 

[Hard Hit Prince]

Ahh, but I didn't say they know how to book it WELL, only that it's all they know to do.


In a similar vein... here's an idea... TNA loves their stables, right? Put EVERYBODY in a fucking heel stable! Make it like training teams in MMA. New guy debuts? No problem - slug him in with MVP's Poon Tang Clan. There's a returning knockout? Problem solved - she can join the Beautiful Lots Of People. The Menagerie V2 will gain misfits like Shaw and Hardy, Revolution V2.5 will gain Gunner and both Andersons. Empire Canadia becomes a thing, British Re-invasion becomes a thing and Team Meheeco becomes a one-man thing.

Ha! That'll teach 'em.

I could almost smell the cure for cancer in your post!!! Could definitely erase Ebola out of the map, and I am sure that you just posted the location of MH370... That's brilliant!

 

[klunderbunker]

I'm thinking we just make make the entire roster one big heel stable. Then we can strip all the titles and put them up in a tournament before Sting comes back to get TNA back to how it's supposed to be. Oh and get Dixie back on TV so she can say darlin a lot.

 

[Rayne]

I know we're all sick of TNA heel stables trying to take over the company, but allow me to play Devil's Advocate for a second here.

Professional wrestling is basic good guy vs. bad guy storytelling, and in every good guy vs. bad guy story, you have to throw out an insurmountable villain who turns out to be surmountable in the end. Sometimes this is done with the use of a Big Scary Monster (WWE: Brock Lesnar), but TNA doesn't really have any credible Big Scary Monsters currently. (Abyss does not count- he's much better than people give him credit for, but people are also very familiar with him trying to be the Big Scary Monster.)

So TNA doesn't have a Big Scary Monster. They could throw out the Corporate Villain, except that has truly been done to death in TNA, and people might riot if Dixie Carter headlines TNA for a few more months. At this point, you're running out of options, and the Threatening Gang is the least-worst option. Yes, it's been done to death in TNA too, but there are only so many stories that can be written.

I hate to say 'give it a chance', because TNA is done out of chances when it comes to this shit. But you have to have credible villains for the heroes to eventually beat. Unless you can think of something better- and, honestly, a good quarter of people here could write better than TNA's staff, so I'm not excluding that- give it a chance?

 

[Alex]

While I agree with you Rayne I'd argue that fans are sick to death of it because of the frequency of how may are done. Since 2010 we've had Fortune/Immortal, Aces & 8s, Dixieland and now MVP's crew.

Honestly while some weren't terrible terrible ( Immortal could have worked had they focused less on Hogan and had they not dragged Aces & 8s out as much as they had it would have been decent) the frequency is annoying.

It's like a horror franchise putting out a new movie every two years. Sure there's going to be differences but at the end of the day you know what you're going to get.

I'll still give MVP's crew a shot so long as they don't completely fuck it up

 

[Dirk]

Unless you can think of something better- and, honestly, a good quarter of people here could write better than TNA's staff, so I'm not excluding that- give it a chance?

Four other stock villains:
Villain plays mind games with hero (Raven)
Villain cheats to win during the match (Flair)
Villain is simply that good (Trips)
Villain is an annoying coward who avoids hero (Miz)

Even if you do a stable, it doesn't have to be for control of the company (which, to their credit, neither the Menagerie, the Bromans, nor the Revolution is).

 

[It's Damn Real!]

The swap on Low Ki/Aries makes sense in the sense that Aries/Ki wrestled on debut night. Had Ki won clean, Aries has a rougher go as a face going up against BDC when Ki eventually joins them later that night. It makes no real sense that way, even though I'm not fond of the idea of a title being hot potatoed week-to-week.

As to BDC/another heel stable, there's no problem here. From everything I've read, there's no "power struggle" going on. The struggle is over control of the World Heavyweight Championship, not "TNA", or "Wrestling Operations", etc. This isn't an authority line. It's a much more classic approach. I'm fine with it. MVP does well in this role, and it gives TNA solid footing to book Lethal Lockdown with BDC versus the face group (Angle, Aries, Roode, etc).

The thing I'm a lot more interested in is the return of Feast or Fired. The winners there, in case you missed it, were Magnus, Spud, Aries and The Beautiful People, who likely nabbed it for the BroMans. So hows that gonna settle regarding who gets what? Well, considering the position Magnus is in, and the read-between-the-lines interview he gave a while back, I'd imagine he's fired and is moving on. Aries will gun for the WHC, Spud for the XD championship and the BroMans will shoot for a the tag titles, which I'd imagine may change hands back to the Wolves at Lockdown perhaps, in order to maintain face/heel ratio.

 

[Rayne]

Four other stock villains:
Villain plays mind games with hero (Raven)
Villain cheats to win during the match (Flair)
Villain is simply that good (Trips)
Villain is an annoying coward who avoids hero (Miz)

Even if you do a stable, it doesn't have to be for control of the company (which, to their credit, neither the Menagerie, the Bromans, nor the Revolution is).

Well, on the topic of Raven, we aren't going to see that again. Scott Levy played that character so well that anyone trying to do it again will suffer under the weight of comparisons. (Imagine a world where Scott Levy had ended up writing for the WWE. Just, picture that world. It could have happened. Somewhere out there is an paralell universe where fans compare everything the WWE is doing to the Levy Era.)

Villains always cheat to win; Flair did that schtick so well that it's a rarity when the villain doesn't use tactics like tight-pulling and rope-leaning. That's de rigeur these days.

As far as HHH goes, TNA doesn't really have anyone on their roster that they could sell as Above And Beyond the rest right now. You can't make a HHH overnight, it takes years of development for the fans to buy into that kind of character.

As far as the cowardly villain goes, EC3 will be there sooner rather than later, but he isn't there now and it's still a bit early to give him the hard push. His time is definitely coming, but it's not today.

I said about a month ago that TNA's best strategy for their re-launch would be to destroy the memory of 'old TNA', and the best way to do that, God help us all, was a heel faction that actually won. (Eventually they lose, that's the job of a heel faction, to lose in the end. What's critical is being aware of how far you can draw it out, which....... has not been TNA's strong suit.) Dear Lord, do I hate the idea of yet another heel faction in TNA trying to take over the company, but TNA has to re-invigorate their brand, without pulling a "WCW Sin".

TNA, again, is done out of chances, but given the position they've put themselves in over the past few years, they've got to dig out somehow. I don't have any skin in this game, so, hell, give them the chance to run with a plan.

 

[klunderbunker]

I know we're all sick of TNA heel stables trying to take over the company, but allow me to play Devil's Advocate for a second here.

Professional wrestling is basic good guy vs. bad guy storytelling, and in every good guy vs. bad guy story, you have to throw out an insurmountable villain who turns out to be surmountable in the end. Sometimes this is done with the use of a Big Scary Monster (WWE: Brock Lesnar), but TNA doesn't really have any credible Big Scary Monsters currently. (Abyss does not count- he's much better than people give him credit for, but people are also very familiar with him trying to be the Big Scary Monster.)

So TNA doesn't have a Big Scary Monster. They could throw out the Corporate Villain, except that has truly been done to death in TNA, and people might riot if Dixie Carter headlines TNA for a few more months. At this point, you're running out of options, and the Threatening Gang is the least-worst option. Yes, it's been done to death in TNA too, but there are only so many stories that can be written.

I hate to say 'give it a chance', because TNA is done out of chances when it comes to this shit. But you have to have credible villains for the heroes to eventually beat. Unless you can think of something better- and, honestly, a good quarter of people here could write better than TNA's staff, so I'm not excluding that- give it a chance?

I get that, but there are other ways to go about it. Look back to the 1980s with Hogan. You pick a monster and have him built up against other guys to the point where he can't possibly lose. At the same time you have a champion who can't possibly lose. Then you have a match between two guys who can't lose and people pay to see it.

I know it's a much more complicated time now, but I'd love to see TNA try some fresh ideas. Running a face champion for more than a few months without turning him heel would be a heck of a place to start.

 

[Rayne]

It should go without saying that the writers need replacing, if for no other reason then to get fresh ideas into the fold. I don't even mean to knock whoever's been writing for TNA recently (it feels like a dozen different people at different times), but the ability to write the same material well, consistently, is an extraordinarily rare talent.

Which, it sounds crazy, but TNA should be looking towards their fan base. Not in the general sense, the worst form of writing is writing-by-committee, but someone who hasn't spent the past decade ensconsed in the backstage world of professional wrestling. (Almost every person involved in professional wrestling today started off as a fan, remember. Vince Russo started off by writing fan fiction.)

Of course, with that there's the political problem of people who have been in the business for years not wanting to listen to outside voices, but that's a problem which any business has. That takes strong management to be able to lay down the company line- it's one thing to go out there and read the cue cards someone gave you, it's another to go out there and sell the material someone wrote for your character. Writers are much more replaceable than professional wrestlers- if performers half-ass the material and it doesn't sell, it's the writers who are going to take the blame.

Regardless, The Saga Of TNA continues to be the most interesting story in professional wrestling. The problem with digging yourself a hole is that you can't dig upwards to get out of it. TNA's realized the hole they've put themselves in, they have pretty much the same set of tools they used to put themselves in the hole in the first place, but by God, it looks like they're going to make a serious attempt to slant-mine their way out of there. I'd like to see them make it, although if we're going to finish the digging allegory, people die in coal mines all the time.

 

[Papa Pillman]

A lot of times this kind of shit happens as a result of LockDown being on the Horizon, as to set-up Lethal Lockdown(a match concept I love that produces fun results and I'd hate to see TNA drop) you really need a heel team of four or more wrestlers; so this occurring right now doesn't really shock me.

As long as this doesn't turn into a power struggle storyline I think we should all be willing to give it a chance. It even looks like, with Angle resigning his figurehead spot, we might even be getting a show for the time being with no on-air authority figures or matchmakers, and with everything that TNA and WWE have put us through in the last few years on that front, the alternative would be a very welcome change of pace.

Considering that this is the opposite of A&8's from the perspective of first that it not only doesn't have power struggle implications, and second it is a team made up of high carders that are top-notch in-ring guys instead of bums, green kids, and re-treads all there to support one main eventer on the wrong side of Forty who was good enough to get himself over in the first place and didn't need a backing stable; then I'm more than willing to let it play out for a while.

If it overstays its welcome or devolves into the same type of power struggle cliches that have plagued TNA's booking, that's when we should all start losing are shit about having to put up with it again.

 

[FitFinlay4Life]

Wow - there's me thinking I was in the 'Impact SUPPORT Club House'!

I've no real problem with the idea of the new faction for the following reasons:

• It isn't really a new faction, it's just an extension of the existing MVP, KK, Lashley group.
• Even most people in the IWC like the Revolution group - why not give this group a try?
• Unlike Aces & Eights, this appears to be a strong group with no dead weight (*cough* Bischoff *cough* Brico *cough*).
• It's not an 'Authority' style grouping.
• As already mentioned, it makes for an intriguing 'Lethal Lockdown' with a damn good body of participants.
• Biggest reason of all, Impact has now made it's home on a new network whose core viewers are probably unfamiliar with the company, it's history and (most of) it's wrestlers - this will simplify the good guy / bad guy stuff for newbies.

Can we at least wait until we see this episode of Impact rather than crapping all over it from bloody spoilers - even the super pessimistic main WZ page was pretty positive about episode one!

Your's faithfully,
FF4L, Beer Treasurer.

 

[Papa Pillman]

Word is Mike Bennett and Maria Kanellis are working for ROH right now without contracts, and struggling negotiations have resulted in them negotiating with TNA and Lucha underground.

I'd love to see TNA bring them in, and if the reports are true, then missing out on Mike and Maria would have to be considered a mistake by TNA IMO; while getting them to agree to join up, on the other hand, would be a major coup.

 

[It's Damn Real!]

I don't think I've ever seen a Mike Bennett match, but a quick Google search indicates he has a great look. Maria could never be confused with a great wrestler, but then again, neither could Velvet Sky, and adding some new blood to the Knockouts would make a lot of sense.

On the surface, I'm all for this.

 

[Dirk]

I love TNA, I just don't like their stables, Mr Treasurer.

 

[klunderbunker]

Bennett isn't bad but he's better on the mic than anything else. He has awesome chemistry with Maria as a couple you love to hate.

 

[Dirk]

I know she's married and all, but Maria is really pretty.

 

[klunderbunker]

I met her at Supercard of Honor VIII. Just.....dang.

 

[FitFinlay4Life]

I love TNA, I just don't like their stables, Mr Treasurer.

This one has great potential though - good membership, a nice mix and a good mouthpiece. Mr Storm's Revolution has looked good with less. Keep the faith young prospect!

 

[Dirk]

Keep the faith young prospect!

Must... resist... urge...

 

[Papa Pillman]

Bennett isn't bad but he's better on the mic than anything else. He has awesome chemistry with Maria as a couple you love to hate.

This exactly.

And also exactly about Maria, she's SMOKING in person.

Also IDR, if you're interested at all in seeing what Bennett can do in the ring, I've got your back:

Here's the best singles match of his I can find on YT or DM, its against Lance Storm(serious plus), but its also kind of dated and Bennett has improved since:


And here's something more recent, he recently competed in New Japan's tag league with stablemate Matt Taven as part of ROH and NJPW's exchange agreement, and this was their best match from that tour(and features former TNA learning excursion hand Okada, in case you were interested in how amazing he is now):

 

[Dirk]

I met her at Supercard of Honor VIII. Just.....dang.

And also exactly about Maria, she's SMOKING in person.

You lucky two, you...

 

[Thriller Ant]

Me and two of my friends were talking at an ROH show a couple years ago and when she walked by the three of us just all immediately stopped talking, watched her walk by, paused for a moment, and continued talking.