Jim Ross Blogs on Slammiversary

[Chrome]

“Impact Wrestling had a solid PPV Sunday night in Arlington, Texas and their roster, which many under rate, stepped up. As I have said many times on my Ross Report podcast, Impact Wrestling has a marketable and potentially winning roster but my issues have been with the ‘play calling’ for the lack or a better term aka the creative booking.

Samoa Joe, Jeff Hardy, and Bully Ray all losing on the same show could be a head scratcher but if it helps get new talents over and legitimately builds for the future then I’m all for it. In other words if there is a long term, definitive plan in place then bravo to TNA.

The Von Erich’s not winning cleanly was perplexing. Please don’t try and sell me the worn out tale that the Von Erich’s are ‘part time and the other talents are not’ argument. The Von Erich’s had as much, if not more to do, with selling the tickets in Arlington than any one on the card so why not get two pops from the pro Von Erich crowd than one? Kevin Von Erich using the Von Erich Iron Claw was a classic touch and I’m happy it was saved for KVE. That’s good booking.

Even though I am of the belief that the authority figure/owner role in pro wrestling is wearing extremely thin in general, it seems obvious that TNA is building to Dixie Carter getting the “Mae Young” table treatment from Bully Ray aka Bubba Dudley. At least, like it or not, there is a creative destination being targeted which is good.

If Impact could produce more weekly, TV shows like their Sunday PPV, and they easily could, then their brand has a chance to regenerate some momentum. In other words, stop with the long, drawn out talking elements and provide the fans what Impact’s talents do best and that is to wrestle. I have much more to say about this particular topic and a potential solution for this matter on this week’s Ross Report podcast which drops Tuesday at 6 pm pacific time.

Every smart promoter that I ever worked with generally booked to his roster’s strengths and did his best to conceal his roster’s weaknesses. Impact Wrestling’s roster strength is bell to bell wrestling.

Speaking generally about the business, why many wrestling promotions don’t want to promote wrestling and would seemingly rather do campy vignettes, sophomoric backstage scenes, and totally unbelievable storylines riddled often times riddled with bad comedy is apparently way above my pay grade. That philosophy that does not cater to their primary demo and their most die hard fan base.

Nonetheless….good job Impact Wrestling and let’s hope that the crowd reaction you received in a fresh market motives you to wrestle more, provide more physicality, more organic drama, and logical storylines in hopes of creating more interest in your brand which is perfectly positioned to be the alternative on national TV in the pro wrestling world.”

How do you guys feel about JR's perception of the PPV? I still wish TNA pulled the trigger on him a few years back when they almost signed him. Didn't he want creative control or something and they refused?

 

[Tyrant25]

Agreeable. TNA's problem has always been their storylines. Not consistent and drawn out way too long. I stopped watching months ago because of this. As Ross stated, they need to play to their strengths in wrestling and let the storylines come out organically.

And please, for the love of God, stop with the "___ is coming" vignettes. They do that for literally every debuting star.

 

[It's Damn Real!]

Yup. It's the same argument I've been making in the Four-Sides/Six-Sides thread. The way to differentiate your product from the competition is to produce a better wrestling product. I haven't watched WWE enough to claim TNA's roster is wall-to-wall more talented, but I do know that TNA's roster is wall-to-wall talented, and if the focus were put much, much, much more on that fact and on giving TNA's fans just solid, bell-to-bell matches every week, I think it'd go a long way in regaining the audience they've lost, as well as growing the product.

You can hand out all the concessions you like—bringing back the six-sided ring being the most recent—but if you are lipstick on a pig, you aren't fooling anyone. Give wrestling fans what they want — great wrestling. You'll be set.

 

[Zeven_Zion]

I agree. Watching Slammiversary I noticed how hot the crowd was for just the wrestling. Even if it was spotty wrestling, it was still wrestling and it still drew more of a reaction out of them than any stupid ass segment we've seen recently, or any promo for that matter. I mean, we've seen EVERYTHING done in segments and promos. Literally. When an elderly woman gives birth to a hand that's when you've seen it all. But in wrestling? Somewhat, but not so much. I might be wrong but there seems to be so much more potential for new things in wrestling. Untapped potential that is. Mostly indy guys hold it and the big companies ignore it because, well fuck entertaining things, that's why.

I like promos and segments as much as the next guy, I really think there's a time and a place for them, but there's more effort to be put in wrestling. I'm thinking that's where TNA is heading and it seems like a good future. They have the talent, they just need the brains behind them. Someone of Ross' mentality would do some good.

I just wonder why wrestling companies stopped listening to us. Even though we all like variety, none of us dislike wrestling. Not too much of it of course, but sprinkle some of that shit in there. TNA does well with it but they can do SO much better, unlike the WWE. With the WWE I can understand why they don't do more of it, too much pressure from a thousand different people. With TNA? Not at all. They're free to do whatever they want. In a way they're more free than the WWE. So just go balls out, brush up those divisions, let these guys bust ass out there like they love to do and add some nice storylines in there. I said nice, not innovative. Just something to get our apetite going before a good match. Once the match is awesome everything falls into place.

 

[Reflection]

How do you guys feel about JR's perception of the PPV? I still wish TNA pulled the trigger on him a few years back when they almost signed him. Didn't he want creative control or something and they refused?

I think that was Paul Heyman... he wanted control of everything and Dixie (understandably) refused. JR was strongly a WWE guy back then and made it pretty clear that Impact wasn't his company of choice.

I agree with Jim Ross on what TNA's strength is... and they seem to be capitalizing on it. But no, we shouldn't forget that there have been times in the past too where TNA delivers a good show and we hope this is the beginning of them going back on the right track, but then nothing happens. I hope they make WWE sweat at least to an extent, but I don't have much expectation from TNA until they start delivering on a regular basis.

 

[king1836]

Jim Ross has a lot of credibility, so him praising Slammiversary is important. I just hope TNA Creative read what he had to say.

 

[Rayne]

Spot on, Jim, as always.

The argument about talent is a bit of a double-edged sword. There is SO much talent in professional wrestling right now that talent really isn't enough to make a good product. Every guy in the WWE now had a phase where they got noticed putting on awesome thirty-minute time limit matches for some trainer's show in a high school gym. Every curtain jerker in ROH can put on an incredible match, and no less is true of TNA. The problem isn't providing a good professional wrestling performance; the problem is building characters and stories for those characters to act in.

And for some reason, the mid-carders in TNA that they're trying to promote keep fighting other mid-carders in TNA for their World Title, and no one cares. Jeff Hardy and Kurt Angle are easily TNA's two biggest names, both in the twilight of their careers; why haven't they been used to help make people like Eric Young look credible? (Kurt may be nursing either injury or a bottle right now. Jeff is dressed up like something out of a budget '80s Mexican horror movie, because he's Jeff.)

But then again, this article could have been written at any time over the past three years. TNA's problem has never been talent; it's always been booking. Line up the best actors in the world on the finest stage, if the story is shit, the audience will still boo.

 

[Zeven_Zion]

Spot on, Jim, as always.

The argument about talent is a bit of a double-edged sword. There is SO much talent in professional wrestling right now that talent really isn't enough to make a good product. Every guy in the WWE now had a phase where they got noticed putting on awesome thirty-minute time limit matches for some trainer's show in a high school gym. Every curtain jerker in ROH can put on an incredible match, and no less is true of TNA. The problem isn't providing a good professional wrestling performance; the problem is building characters and stories for those characters to act in.

And for some reason, the mid-carders in TNA that they're trying to promote keep fighting other mid-carders in TNA for their World Title, and no one cares. Jeff Hardy and Kurt Angle are easily TNA's two biggest names, both in the twilight of their careers; why haven't they been used to help make people like Eric Young look credible? (Kurt may be nursing either injury or a bottle right now. Jeff is dressed up like something out of a budget '80s Mexican horror movie, because he's Jeff.)

But then again, this article could have been written at any time over the past three years. TNA's problem has never been talent; it's always been booking. Line up the best actors in the world on the finest stage, if the story is shit, the audience will still boo.

I completely agree with you. It seems like the talent focus areas of wrestlers have switched nowadays. I may be wrong, but it appears as if some 10-20 years ago wrestlers (and everyone behind them) were really good at making interesting characters and storylines, while the quality of the wrestling itself was honestly not that good. It seemed like it was epic due to the epic characters involved in it. If you watch one of those 80's WWF matches and judge them critically, a lot of them are sloppy, slow paced, terribly unexciting and not athletic at all. However, the stories are good and the characters are even better, so it makes up for it.

Nowadays there's been an influx of incredibly athletic wrestlers, as well as really strong big guys, all with the a mindset of thinking outside the box and being able to innovate as far as the actual wrestling goes. I may be overestimating them, but a lot of guys in the indies can put on matches better than the classics at the drop of a dime, at least when it comes to the wrestling. However, due to such a large focus on the physicality, characters mean less nowadays and storylines do as well, because the personalities are already weak.

What wrestling needs now is guys who really get how to make a cool, interesting character, and others who know how to book them and put them in storylines where clashes between two guys would be exciting simply because their personalities are so cool that when they're put together we get a mindgasm. The rest will sort itself out since they got the wrestling aspect down. Perfectly in some cases, like AJ Styles for example.

That's why some of the best guys today are people who had it all and had the balance. Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, Sting. All guys that knew how to present themselves and could tear the mat up in the ring. More of that, please. Do all the flips you want, if your character is lame we won't care. On the flipside, you could have an amazing character but if you can't wrestle well ... too bad for ya.

Times have changed and it seems like wrestling fans are far more demanding from the performers than before simply because we have so much to compare to.