Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling was created back in 2002 so the company has been around for eight years now. I remember the TNA product from back before they had a television deal with anybody when they were on weekly pay per view on Wednesdays for $10 a show. I remember their X-Division was off the chain as far as bringing up new talent and introducing them to the world with the likes of A.J. Styles, Amazing Red, and others.
Yeah they brought in former WWE talent like D'Lo Brown, Raven, and Crash Holly aka Mad Mikey (R.I.P.). But that was bound to happen anyways. But over the last few years TNA (Dixie Carter) hell bent on competing against the WWE, has changed up the product to the point where the TNA wrestling from the beginng started to fade away in thin air.
TNA has forgotton where it came from so much that their starting to look like every other wrestling promotion past & present, including the WWE! I admit, TNA needed more talent on their roster to even think of competing against the WWE. Bigger names and faces which they got in the form of former WWE wrestlers. But they were spin-off's from the charactors they were in the WWE. And they even went as far as talking up the WWE name on live TNA TV. Let's take a look at the factions/stints TNA used to counter the WWE...
The Main Event Mafia aka former WWE (and WCW) wrestlers:
Kurt Angle, Kevin Nash, Sting, Booker T, Scott Steiner.
The Band aka the WCW's nWo faction: Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, X-Pac.
ECW 2.0 aka the original ECW: Tommy Dreamer, Rhyno, Raven, Rob Van Dam, ECT.
The original TNA wrestling has fizzled out of the picture here as you can see. So my question is, when will TNA have it's own identity again in professional wrestling???
Boss, I feel where you are coming from on the questions you are having. However, I am not sure how long you have been watching wrestling but if you follow any of the old school stuff, then you'll know what I am talking about when I mention the points I am about to make.
Rewind back to 1983-1984 when there were multiple companies some more successful than others like Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling - WCW's precursor, the AWA and the WWF (before they got the "F" out) was starting its national and eventually global expansion. Their talent pool was a very adept one there is no doubt about it, Bob Backlund, whom I find bland but that's only my opinion, to me I was never into his whole goody two shoes act, but hell the guy was a great draw for his time and an astounding athlete. He led the WWF through the rest of the 70s and into the 1980s after Bruno Sammartino's days wound down in the ring as a main attraction. Along with Backlund you had supersatrs that were also over with the crowd, i.e. Don Muraco, Pedro Morales, and The Samoans are just a few examples of what the pre-Hulkamania WWF was.
However, by the time Hogan came back to the WWF with his Hulkamania persona (which by and large really started in AWA and not the WWF) there were other wrestlers that soon followed and believe me they weren't all homegrown WWF stars. Granted the WWF was around for some 20 plus years back this point back when it hard started as the WWWF and with Sammartino it was a very successful territory but it was not what Mid-Atlantic/Jim Crockett Promotions and the AWA was at that time. Therefore, Vince McMahon in addition to Hogan lured a lot of stars from the aforementioned organizations into the WWF some were wrestlers that previously visited the WWF when it was still a territory for some matches and others were already established stars elsewhere. On that list you have Greg Valentine (who some may not know wrestled Backlund for the World Title in the early 80s but he was more or less a staple elsewhere as the NWA US Champion and to many fans did not have the same association with the WWF despite his success there prior to his mid 80s return), Roddy Piper whom himself had a bitter feud with Greg Valentine over the previously mentioned NWA US Title, just watch Starrcade 83 for their classic dog collar match, Jesse Ventura and Adrian Adonis who were AWA World Tag Team Champions. In addition to those acquisitions they also got "Mean" Gene Okerlund and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan as announcer and manager/occasional wrestler respectively. Let's also not forget that despite Stampede Wrestling being a company that had no plans to my knowledge in becoming a global entity they still did interpomotional business with organizations like WWC in Puerto Rico and Japan. They were another target of the WWF's talent raid. The names Bret Hart, Davey Boy Smith, Jim Neidhart and Dynamite Kid are fine examples of that. I know a lot of promoters of the territories did not like Vince McMahon coming in and taking these stars away, so what WCW did to Vince in the mid-90s I would say was a bit of karma. I'm not outwardly bashing WWF/E but I gotta call it like I see it. No organization is innocent of talent raiding in the pro wrestlng business.
In the pre-internet days those who read wrestlng publications knew of these performers being associated with other wrestlng entitites and not the WWF. Ironically enough, these aforementioned acquisitions never get brought up on these boards to my knowledge but people who constantly lambaste the former WCW and TNA for acquiring talent from other organizations conveniently forgot the number of acquistions the WWF made during the Wrestling Boom. Even Vince himself admitted on several DVDs when interviewed that at the time of the WWF's expansion he went on a hunt to get as much talent as he could. You may not have been aware of WWE's long history depending on how long you've been watching but reading old wrestling magazines and watching retrospects on DVD are a fine educator of how all these wrestling companies came to be.
Granted in many cases TNA is acquiring some of these names that are now much older can't work the same schedule like they once had but in defense their roles have greatly changed in TNA. I.e. Hulk Hogan's not running wild carrying the strap and The Band's title reign was very short lived and preceding that victory which in the storylines was very shallow due to the controversial circumstances they booked for the match Hall, Nash and Waltman ending up losing several matches against younger talent like Beer Money. Those who thought the nWo was going to run rougshod in another company were quickly proven wrong. Albeit Scott Hall and Sean Waltman's departures definitely helped kill that possibility anyway, but still there was opportunity to at least attempt such a redux and it never happened. Then there are the younger talents like The Pope, Mr. Anderson, Matt Morgan, Brian Kendrick and others that are having a chance to compete on prime time TV every week. Granted these individuals made notice in the wrestlng world in WWE first, but again go back years ago when the then-WWF pulled similar tactics and no one can deny that they did.
So I definitely feel TNA can get their own identity and trying to work with completely unknown talent is not the way to go. While I am not completely confident about TNA's future in becoming just as big as WWE, I am not completely dismissing them. I think they can find themselves in a good position to keep a product running because they've done it for almost a decade. Again, people forget that after the wrestlng boom of the mid 90s to early 2000s bottomed out, and WCW got sold to the WWF after Turner Broadcasting cancelled all WCW programming wrestling took a major hit. Vince got his wish had wrestling all to himself. A few organizations tried to fill that niche and so far TNA has been the only way to come anywhere close, despite how much derision they get.
People keep forgeting that when WCW came and gave WWF a run for its money, a precedent was set with two promotions openly clawing at each other in the spirit of competition. Even back in the days of the AWA, Mid-Atlantic and WWWF there was still some rivalry but in the pre-cable and interent days it was NOWHERE near what WWF and WCW was. TNA and any other starting company have a tall order to fill WCW's shoes and compete with the corporate machine WWE is. Which in time has only gotten stronger, I mean pro wrestlng even in this sports entertainment and PG era like so many people call it, is still the gold standard. I hate the product myself but they are top notch and they know what they're doing. Other factors that I think don't help TNA's case in trying to be a bigger competitor are things like WWE's Brand Extension (RAW and Smackdown) it's the Pro Wrestling world's equivalent to the American League and National League like Major League Baseball has.
By creating two different talent showcases like WWE has, it esentially makes a challenge for any other company trying to compete, I say that because even if some people at first didn't get everyone warm and fuzzy it's a move that has worked. Just like there are baseball fans that like the AL and others that like the NL style of baseball, or the AFC/NFC styles of football. There are those who prefer RAW as opposed to Smackdown or at one time ECW as a show of their choice. And like legitimite sports, there are those that will watch them all. Either way WWE created all these additional outlets to RAW that it really is a tough nut to crack to compete with them these days.
So to dismiss TNA as being WWE lite or not having its own identity is preposterous, yes they have a lot of key talent from other companeis but like I outlined, WWF was the SAME EXACT thing at one time. Sure a lot of TNA characters have continued their characters from WWE but no one was complaining when Hogan came back to WWF from the AWA with his Hulkamania schtick. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash minus the snazzy nicknames were still Razor and Diesel more or less. Change can be good but it's not good if it's unnecessarily abrupt. In some cases it does work, for example, The Pope shedding his name as Elijah Burke and starting TNA with a clean slate. The guy is one of their top stars and I think will continue to be. Going to the four sided ring like some people complained out, well some people may forget but TNA started off that way, and it's traditional. It's nice to keep some things old school, I think the six sided ring was a fun thing they borrowed from Mexico, but I myself am not too high on it as a regular fixture. Although I would like to see it back for certain marquee matches, it would be nice for some contexts.
There is still something drawing fans to TNA even if they are vastly smaller in quantity compared to WWE. For people like me who grew up in the Hogan Era/NWA Jim Crockett era and then the Monday Night War are the ones who clamor for the competition from another company, at least that's the vibe I get from people in my age group that are wrestling fans. For fans of a younger generation who have grown up on WWE post brand extension and never saw WCW are being conditioned to think of WWE as RAW, Smackdown and NXT now as well as other programming that's WWE branded. Much like many people in my generation have no concept of what the territories were.
So TNA's sense of identity and amount of success is in my view challenged by how wrestling has just made all these changes throughout the years. That's not to say TNA is a bad organization they just might be a decade too late to compete. However, that doesn't mean they can't exist. It is all a matter of time but WWE's smart business (which does not always make it a good product but still just the same, it has remained a successful product for quite some time) might make things a hard sell for the long run with TNA, but to give them their credit I challenge anyone reading this to tell me which other North American based televised promotion has even come close to showing they can do anything wrestling wise that's not WWE affiilated? Now this last part Savion83 is not directed at you since you spoke with respect towards the issue, but for those TNA bashers that might be reading this take all that in and ask yourselves if you could do any better with running a wrestling promotion.
