WCW.
I feel as if TNA is desperately trying to push their promotion by signing an excessive amounts of ex-WWE guys, over hyping a lot of their own stuff or even trying to call out the WWE as if they have the potential to compete. It's just like when someone does weight training; if you over train, you don't build muscle, you either stay neutral or possibly lose muscle mass which is the same with TNA. No matter what they do their ratings always stays about the same. Speaking of shoving things down our throats and desperation. A lot of things I see TNA try to pull were ideas from WCW, WWE or ECW's past which I wouldn't consider all that creative at all. WCW tried to pull some stuff that worked in the 90's but these days the fans would like to have an alternative with some actual creativity.
WCW on the other hand was creative. Even though indeed they had a good amount of ex-WWE superstars, the promotion overall was much different than the WWE was. They had a lot of good Cruiserweights, the nWo, they actually made stars (Sting, Goldberg, DDP, Booker T, etc) so there's no way to ever claim WCW didn't have creativity here. All what Eric did was creative as well. The way WCW & WWE went head to head was never done before. Above all, WCW grew to be a huge success.
AWA or the old ECW