What's Your Favorite TNA Era?

[Evenflow DDT]

There is always a lot of talk on this forum about the many eras of the WWF/E.

-WWWF
-Rock n' Wrestling
-New Generation
-Attitude
-Ruthless Aggression
-and finally the current PG Era.

Everyone has the favorite and most hated parts of each, but thats for another post.

In TNA there have been 3 key eras:

-Nashville
-Impact Zone
-Hogan & Bischoff

I'd like to have an open discussion about all 3. What were your most favorite and least favorite of each? Who were your fav wrestlers to watch? Who at that time did you think would take it to the next level? and which one was best?

For me i will ALWAYS love the Nashville era most, and being the Mark that I am, I LOVED his TNA run from '03-'05. From his debut, to aligning himself with Russo (I think i am the only person to ever say i was a Russo mark) and S.E.X, his promos were a throwback to his ECW/WCW days and showed how Vince dropped the ball on him. His matchs with Jarret and AJ are classics. Go back and watch the no 1. contender ladder match with AJ and you will see what im talking about. One of the best matchs i remember was Raven/Jarrett/AJ when AJ won his 1st title. Not just that. You have the original Ultimate X match, the World X-Cup, and one of the guys i think was slept on most back then: Sonny Siaki. This guy was awesome to watch and thought a lot more could have been done with him.

It took awhile for me to warm up to the Impact Zone Era but what really did it for me was when they made the 3 biggest signings in TNA history Sting, Christian, & Kurt Angle all in the span of 1 year. Sting is the ONLY big name WCW guy never to sign with Vince (and i hope he never does), Christian was the 1st big name to pick TNA over WWE and Kurt Angle is Kurt F'N Angle!!! Angle actually made me care about Joe!! and their trilogy was magic. Also i was a fan of the Main Event Mafia because i was a mark for all 5 guys throughout the years. 2006 seemed like it was going to be the year TNA actually was goning to be able to compete with WWE but TNA dropped the ball (something ive become used to when dealing with TNA).

And finally in the Hogan/Bischoff era i find it hard to find something i like. I've defended TNA from the begining but in 2010 i just couldnt do it anymore. It was a year of fails. Even the highlights were fucked up by bad booking. AJ got the title at the end of '09 and then got Ric Flair as his manager. When that happened I was hoping Flair would manage AJ in the same manner he did with HHH and have AJ revert to his '03 heel persona but we got AJ with frosted tips doing a HORRIBLE Ric Flair impression , We saw Sting come back again to wrestle 8 months on his 1 year deal with the "I've missed to many days in the gym T-shirt" (please Sting buy one for Ric Flair) , EV 2.0 , and Jeff Hardy turning heel only to let his demons take hold of him . Hell the only positive i can find in TNA is Mr. Anderson... Anderson.... and Fortune. If TNA is smart (which is giving them too much credit) in the next 18 months we will see Anderson, Aj and Robert Roode all hold the TNA title. But the biggest positive would be for Hogan to leave after his deal is up in January (Keep Eric, say what u will about the guy but he gets great heat, and has a mind for the production side of the business)

Thoughts?

 

[Jack bruce]

Me I couldn't get into tna when it was on some other channel??????? I think it was in 04 and 05 , so I'm not gonna say anything bad about that era, but when I saw it on spike and especially when I seen christain show up from then on I was addicted. The christain coaliton abyss as the monster with father james mitchell, sting, joe, and kurt angle all were so great. And in the impact zone era I actually cared about joe up until he stopped feuding with angle there feud was awsome I suggest if u haven't seen it look it up. If I had to call 06-09 anything I would call it the total nonstop angle era. We had the debute of the knockout division which included odb, gail kim, beautiful people and awsome kong. We also had classics like the angle joe feud, angle sting, angle aj styles , christain abyss, abyss sting, many more.

Hogan bishoff era only thing I have to say is fortune and mr. Anderson other than that nothing else is to note. I think tna dropped the ball in 08 because they looked like thedy could possibly take on the wwe back then but now heck no.

 

[ITALIAN NYC]

To me it was best when they did there shows in nashville. The X division was riding high during that time and brought everyone in. I still remember the 1 penny ppv show i ordered from them. I miss those days. Blow todays TNA out of the water.

 

[underdog217]

I have been a fan since around the end of the weekly PPV's and I remember being so jacked for their first ever full PPV (victory road?). I definitely remember how much I loved the company when they first debuted on Fox Sports Net and then onto Spike. I liked that the x-division got focus, I liked a lot of the ME stuff including Monty Brown chasing the title. I liked the simple writiing, clear good guys/bad guys, and I really dug that when they first started, each match had a time limit which added another element to the match. I would say the "impact zone" years would be my favorite but I think since the MEM era, TNA has been on the decline a bit. I still love the show, I am glad the WWE has competition but as soon as they can put more continuity into their stories, and take the focus off Hogan and Bischoff, it will likely stay on the decline.

 

[darbare]

I used to watch it back when they had a 6 sided ring. I completely stopped watching after Hogan and Bischoff came in. I think the last show I saw was the hyped up January 4 episode last year. I became a big fan of Sting back then, Samoa Joe, followed Kurt Angle from WWE, watched Kong and Gail Kim, and the rise of the Beautiful People, back when Christian was world champion. Then I liked the Main Event Mafia and Mick Foley in TNA. After that I was done, and I didnt watch it before then because Jeff Jarrett was King of the Mountain and he was midcard at best

 

[GrandSword]

I'll pick the era in which Scott D'More was booking. The feuds were just amazing, simple and there were clear cut faces and heels. The TNA originals shone like the sun and showed there truly was an aleternative to WWE.

AJ and Daniels battling for X Division supremacy and then later having an unforgettable fed with L.A.X. , Samoa Joe destroying his opponents but at the same time making them great matches. The heel Team Canada entertained in their battles with AMW over the tag titles. Raven and Jarrett's feud over the title was hard hitting.

Also TNA used to put together these dream matches, AJ vs. Jeff Hardy or Hiroshi Tanahashi, the super x cup and of course the Ultimate X matches, which turned guys like Chris Sabin inot World beaters...

Then Russo was resigned at the end of 2006, and everything changed. Talent was depushed X divsion became an after thought and stupid stories like Abyss shotting his dad and Tomko being his jail cell buddy or some shit just started to ruin TNA slowly. Kurt and Joe's feud kept the fed rnning, but Sting dropped the title by dq three weeks after his year long feud with Jarrett. AJ went from world beater and 2 time World Champion to the childish fool that carried a WWE mid carder's bags. The best technical wrestler they had in Daniels went from the best X Champion of all time to an after thought and Joe the man who went undefaeted for 18 months became Angle's bitch, then a whiny bitch and then a cry baby...

D'more's era was the best in TNA history by far and I wish we went back to those days because they way he booked the talent it pshed everyone and made TNA a force.

 

[Fallen Angel 21.3]

The IMPACT days like about 05 because that was the day the X-division was in my eye at the peak. You actually had them mid card title main event a ppv which had the best match in TNA history which was Joe vs. AJ vs. Daniels. they had six sides of steel, and they would fly all over the place. You had Team 3-D, America's Most Wanted, Team Canada, Matt Bently, Abyss was truly a Monster during this time, Rhino won the NWA world title after being in one of the most hardcore matches i had ever seen. Jeff Hardy did the highest Swanton bomb, Diamonds in the Rough. This was the time in TNA that everybody was fueding with somebody. Sting was doing orginal promos giving him back into the Crow WCW gimmick leaving boots, jacket, bat in the ring i can still remember the promo he did before Final Resulation with Jeff and Monty Brown. Like i said it before TNA was at there best during this time and i hope they can get in back like that.

 

[ERorMACro]

I loved TNA from about mid 05 to about early 08..whenever Sting first showed up is where my love started to wain but I could still watch..but by spring of 08 it was so convulted that I watched but wasn't into it at all...by the end of 08 I just didn't care anymore..

I would love to see this company do well I really would but they just..they look lost...very lost these days. I can't really watch too much TNA...

 

[TNAmark]

The codified era options here are a little vague. The "iMPACT! Zone" Era alone probably covers more than half of the company's existence, and the moniker is kind of confusing since they're still in the iMPACT! Zone.

To be a little more specific, the best era of TNA was roughly from around "Bound For Glory" 07 to "Lockdown" 09. During that period they really seemed to hit the nail on the head with the right mix of great wrestling matches and entertaining characters and storylines. That period also had the most PPVs held outside of the iMPACT! Zone, and was arguably the highpoint of the Knockouts Division.

They started to go down hill after BFG 08 when they put the belt on Sting and the Main Event Mafia began dominating, but the product was still pretty good for a few months.

The worst period would be from the EV2.0 invasion last summer to present. After the invasion the product just became completely incoherent, to the point where it's not even clear what they are aiming for or what audience they think that they are going after. Most of the PPV booking is so lousy that it seems like they've given up on even trying to get anyone to order some of them, almost as if they are obligatorily thrown together.

 

[biziorek2]

the main event mafia era was by far the best tna era! there was always sooo much going on! and you would see every person from the roster on every show in some capacity!

 

[GameOver]

When i first started watching it. so whatever era was around 5yrs ago. Since then it went downhill

when first caught it on youtube and soon after it was on PayTV, it looked great, the matches were fast paced, OMG moments, the production was ok, the storylines were more or less based around fueds and titles and not much soap opera.

It was fresh and exciting. Now it's Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz just a poor man's WCW

 

[The Prodigal Anti-Lemming]

The Impact Zone era of TNA was among my favorite periods for any wrestling company ever. Back then, TNA offered quality wrestling in a WCW-like tradition without all of WCW's bs (for the most part at least). AJ Styles, Samoa Joe and Christopher Daniels appeared poised to break out as established main eventers, and the roster as a whole was, I think, flat out better than what WWE was offering at the time. In spite of the company's favoritism of older stars, TNA seemed ready to break out in a big way by 2009.

As far as the Nashville era, this is one period that I could not take TNA (or NWA-TNA) seriously as a wrestling promotion. If it wasn't the high priced washed up talent that would take their pound of flesh from TNA's hide and then be gone after a few weeks, it was Vince Russo conducting himself exactly how he had during the dying days of WCW. The weekly PPVs had absolutely no sense of continuity, and the guys who would later break out of the mid-card were unsung.

TNA's modern era is by far the most insufferable. Like many of you, I know the pain of witnessing a once might wrestling operation like WCW fall apart at the seams due to these two strutting idiots. Then I watched TNA build itself up from nothing, only to see these two jackasses strut in and destroy what others have worked hard to maintain.

 

[Azane]

I had the opportunity to see TNA blindly around 7 or 8 years ago on the payperview channels (friend of a friend of a roomate black box).
and that seemed like some solid wrestling, I remember D'lo brown being involved, and I remember seeing Abyss and Cyrus the Virus as one of the main antagonist.
The stuff was much better before they were popular enough to start putting ratings over quality (Although I understand why a company needs that).
I'm guessing those were the Nashville days, I started watching again around the time the Impact video game was coming out, and I found it turning more and more into a WWE clone, which turned me off since I can already watch WWE.

 

[Orton Pose \__0_/]

For me personally, it was the Nashville era, on a now defunct channel in the UK (The Wrestling Channel), NWA-TNA was shown, and that era possibly had one of my favourite matches of the last decade, in December 2002 - Amazing Red, S.A.T's v Triple X, had everything. Also, the S.E.X angle was fun, the awesome theme song - S.E.X - Sex Sells. Even the old stables such as the Disciples of the New Church were worth watching.

The era after that point was the second best, but also the saddest in my opinion, whilst I did mark for Team Canada (intensly), the Triple X v AMW Cage Match 2 was saddening, but showed advancemant for Daniels to the main event, breaking the X Division title record (number of days held) of Petey Williams, and having some purely awesome matches such as v AJ Styles at Against All Odds in an Ironman match

after 2006, to me TNA is dead

 

[blockanWo]

Yeah, Nashville and up through the time when Raven and Christian came in, probably all the way up to around 2007. I loved the new church, Messiah, James Mitchell...Abyss who wasnt a pussy.

 

[CaptainZaltan]

I've got to go with the Russo-free Impact Zone days. Nashville was mostly just the same old mix of convoluted storylines and ridiculously large factions and factions within factions that is Russo's typical style. I truly fell in love with TNA under Scott D'amore. D'amore knew how to book wrestling matches and feuds to showcase wrestlers; not outrageous soap opera plots built more to flaunt his writing ability than to put over the talent. Under D'amore, the stories and matches all seemed meaningful, exciting, and interesting. In that era, I could make any of my friends a TNA fan just by sitting them down and having them watch a few X-Division matches. And while the main event division was still lacking (mostly due to a lack of star-power), there were plenty of athletes within TNA that seemed poised to step up. Do you remember actually caring about a Samoa Joe match? Or seriously not having any idea who would win in an X-Division match? The X Cups? The Joe/Daniels/AJ feuds? Those were the days.

And then a "writer" called Vince Russo (the M. Night Shyamalan of pro-wrestling) who thinks that his god awful plotting is more of a draw than the talent, had to come back and completely screw up the whole thing. TNA has become inconsistent since that time, with the negatives often outweighing the positives. People can talk about Hogan and Bischoff ruining TNA, but the truth is that the company was already on it's way down the toilet the moment someone decided to give Vince Russo another crack at creative, after he had proved time and time again that he just isn't very good. The Hogan/Bischoff era is just more of the same crap typical of Vince Russo, but with more of an emphasis on lousy talent (Jordan, Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy), over-the-hill talent (Flair, Sting), and Hulk Hogan (who I can't stand).

 

[InfamouzGtBoy21]

My favorite era of TNA would have to be the "Nashville Era"
I remember every wednesday nights, on the PPV channel TNA would show (I had time warner cable lol) and I would be highly interested! This was the time of Vince Russo, Chris Sabin in S.E.X <--- BAD ASS STABLE! You have Felix Skipper, Low Ki and Christopher Daniels in Triple XXX! TEAM CANADA led by Scott Demore, Eric Young, Robbert Rude, Johnny Devine & they would hit people with hockey sticks lol! The Flying Elvises, Sonny Siaki was amazing, and the parter was Akiyo (Jimmy Wang Yang). You had Raven's Flock, Raven, Julio Dinero, Alexis Lare (Mickie James). You had Father James Mitchell running around tormenting Raven. Sonjay Dutt in the X Division.

JERRY LYNN VS AJ STYLES VS JEFF JARRET
- one of the best feuds in TNA history! The ladder matches were amazing!

Father James Mitchell managed Slash and Brian Lee, collectively known as the Disciples of The New Church. The New Church feuded with America's Most Wanted.

America's Most Wanted probably one of the h best tag teams of TNA. They feuded witthe Naturals, Simon Diamond & Johnny Swinger, David Young & Glen Gilberti, Kid Kash & Dallas, Red Shirt Security!

Kid Kash was bad ass!

 

[daby]

2005, 2006, 2007 were the best years of TNA for me. Sure, I started watching in 2005, so the first years had a bigger impact on me.