New member here, I've been a long time reader of the forum and main site though.
First of all let me say what a pleasure it is to have "Disco" in our midst. During the good old Nitro days of 96-00 I was a massive Disco mark to the point where I called myself 'Disco Inferno' on a comedy channels message board. Yes I was that cool.
I don't think everybody quite gets it as to why he is here, his job is to entertain us, cut some promo's and stir up some discussion. He does a good job.
Anyway enough arse kissing, I thought I would use this opportunity to post a few of my personal thoughts on TNA.
I like TNA because I except it for what it is. To me TNA is a decent once weekly wrestling show with monthly PPV's and a few video games/dvd's.
That may sound like I am stating the obvious but I think people forget that some times. It is pointless looking to TNA to be real competition for the WWE at the moment, the WWE is a multi-national Billion Dollar corporation that has 3 rosters (well 2 and a half
) and over 60 years history behind it.
TNA has 6 years experience and has had to fight its way up from literally nothing with the huge WWE monster constantly looming over it.
In that 6 years TNA has evolved and grown, every year TNA has gotten a bit bigger and a bit better than it was before, thats the key to a succesful business. I'm very interested to see what direction the company takes in the next 5 or 6 years.
If it were up to me I'd like to see the following occur.
1. Keep PPV's on the road.:
I think its important to keep a special feel for PPV's and by getting out of the Impact Zone it gives it that. I also think they should have a specific PPV set and perhaps even small things like have black ropes etc, just to give the PPV's a different feel to the TV tapings.
2. Live Impacts:
Every now and then Impact airs live and it thoroughly improves things as there are no Internet spoliers and it adds a sense of anticipation and suspense.
For me TNA should be looking to air one live Impact every month by the end of 2009, ideally the show direct after a PPV so fans can see the fallout as it happpens rather than a few days later.
The next step is of course airing every other show live, much like WWE did with Raw back in the mid 90's. A reasonable aim for this would be about 3 years from now, mid to late 2011.
Then of course comes the step of being live every week, which would of course come at the end of this 5-6 year plan. The last step woud be to air live every week from a different location. I don't think they should say goodbye to the Impact Zone as it is TNA's home, perhaps one live Impact every month could be held at 'home'.
3. Creating their own stars:
I'm quietly hopeful that this 'respect' angle is a way of doing that. There is a place for signing up big names established elsewhere and TNA has found great benefits from the likes of Sting, Angle, Booker etc.
However in order to gain real credibilty you need to create stars of your own from scratch. I hope the eventual pay off to this angle will be the likes of AJ, Joe, Matt Morgan, Lethal etc being victorious over the veterans and leading TNA from the top.
The thing is though, the real stars are those that make the cross over into other meduims beyond wrestling.
TNA needs to find a guy like WWE found Hogan and Austin, and WCW found Flair and Sting. These guys were celebrities in their own right, they were real stars, people knew them, loved them and wanted to watch them, so they turned on the wrestling show.
This is of course easier said than done, and needs a lot of things to be in place. TNA needs to get their guys out their more, get Joe and AJ on MTV and Nickelodeon, have them bash the TNA drum left right and centre, promote promote promote.
4. GET OVER THE WWE:
It seems every show there is some mention of WWE somewhere. At Bound for Glory, TNA's signature PPV Mick Foley was backstage talking about his Hell in a Cell match. Why? They should have had him putting over the Terror Dome (whats it called now) match. Why did he name drop JR? Its piggy backing and it just pains TNA as wannabe's.
Anyway like I say I really like TNA and have massive respect for what they do and have done. I wish them all the best because the more qulaity wrestling there is on TV the better.
Sorry for the long post.
