Alright! Alright! I know I don't write a lot of positive things about TNA, but they don't make it easier with the news that comes out and how petty they have seemingly become in recent memory. At this point the re-launched episode was around two weeks ago or so and things really haven't picked up since then, but the company touted a huge surge in YouTube and other social media viewership.
The surge of viewership on social media is a great thing, because it does mean something good as some fans are paying attention to the company, but on the social media side rather than actually sitting down watching the show on television. Now looking for something positive in what really was a questionable episode of the show isn't a bad thing, but that shouldn't really take attention away from getting the fans watching on television again. My problem is I feel like they are focusing on everything, but what they should be focusing on things like stabilizing the company and establishing a long term plan for the company rather than making a big deal of small things or focusing on past mistakes made by this regime or the old regime. The main focus should be putting their best foot forward and once again becoming the alternative to WWE rather then what they are now. Even with all the negative articles I write about TNA one things hasn't changed and that is that I still want the best for the company. There is nothing that I'd like more then for this company to return to stability and just become the alternative once again. The reason for this is not just because the more companies on TV their are the better it's also because "You can't out Vince, Vince" so don't even try and just be different.
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Though the road has been very bumpy thus far in Jarrett's second run in charge of TNA one thing he has been trying to do right is gain exposure for the company he founded and hit the reset button in a way. According to a report from Pro-Wrestling Sheet Jeff has met with an executive from Spike TV about possibly getting TNA back on their former home. Apparently, Spike's Vice President Scott Fishman was a recent set of Impact tapings and met with Jeff on this subject. If this could get done then it would be a big step in the right direction for TNA after years of missteps and mistakes.
Fishman was an executive producer for Bellator on Spike, and held the same position on the Kimbo Slice: One of a Kind documentary. There is no word now about the talks went between these two or what this would mean for Impact on POP, but Impact is returning to Spike in the UK this April so that could be a sign of things to come for the company. It's things like this that company should be focusing on rather than petty things like they are, because it's like this that will help stabilize the company and improve the imagine of it that some believe is damaged beyond repair. Now I am saying one way or the other TNA is going back to Spike anytime soon as this will likely be a story we need to keep our eyes on and for right now they seem to be doing fine on POP. At this point not much is known about this, but what we do know is that it seems plausible they could be coming back in the future. When the report that Anthem Sports saved TNA from the brink of bankruptcy and most wrestling were starting to think that the future of TNA may not be brighter, but it would be stable. Stability is something that TNA has been lacking for most of it's existence and with a company was more money conscious things would change. Well I was right, things did change but they didn't change for the better as nearly 20% of their roster left within the span of a week. It is fair to say that the stability that I thought would come from Anthem's purchase isn't going to come anytime soon. I went over my feelings on the lawsuit and I still feel the same way at this point about it, but I also do support the Hardy's 100% because they single handily made TNA a hot company. Even though Dixie may have made a number of dumb mistakes one mistake she didn't make was not listening to her talent and just letting them handle their business. Now some of these maybe a little much but remember these tweets came from Reby on the same day as when TNA served the Hardy's for the suit. There really isn't much to say especially speaking on every tweet she sent out as she had a lot to say. The only thing I can say is that Senor Benjamin wasn't an employee of TNA as he never accepted a pay check from the company.
It is fair to say that all of this could have been avoided and it would have helped both parties parting mutually instead of the way that they did end up parting ways. In my opinion, management in TNA need to focus on fixing the company rather than trying to fix the mistake of losing the Hardy's. You don't have to look very hard to see how successful the broken gimmick has been by seeing how many Twitter users have "Broken" in their names; does this mean that Anthem may sue the fans for using the gimmick. Honestly, I was just going to ignore the problems that have been going on recently and just let it resolve itself. But things have just gone far enough where I actually have to speak on this subject at least one time. Within a short time of the Hardy's departure from the company they were served cease and desist letters by said company. But that along with a certain person's rant on the twitter machine will be addressed on another day.
According to PWInisder.com the letter had also been sent to Ring of Honor and PPV distributors to block the Hardy's from using the gimmick at the 15 Anniversary show for ROH this past weekend. Fact of the matter is this apparently the fact that Matt filed for the trademark for "Broken Matt Hardy" is what caused Anthem to act. Based on the report Anthem believes that since Matt wasn't alone in creating the "Broken" gimmick others deserve a part of the revenue. Apparently they want to pressure Hardy into signing a deal that gives Anthem a percentage of profits made from the gimmick. I don't disagree with the idea that everyone who had a part in developing the gimmick, but those at Anthem don't deserve a dime from the gimmick because they didn't have anything to do with the gimmick. So let me get this straight everyone who helped develop the hottest gimmick in wrestling is no longer with the company; that makes sense. Also if they want to play the game that others should benefit then Matt Conway, Billy Corgan and Dave Lagana should be the only ones that do, but according to another report everyone who had a part in coming up with the Broken gimmick supports the Hardy's. In my opinion this is just the company trying to cover up a mistake they made and blocking someone they lost from succeeding elsewhere. Recently things have begun to change drastically in Impact Wrestling with not just new management, but a complete new creative direction. Something that has always gone hand in hand with a new creative team is roster turnover. Unfortunately some of that turnover came at the behest of a variety of TNA's top talent and even some of the other talents which is where we will go right now. Last week seven different talent were let out of there contracts with TNA including the Hardy's and Drew Galloway.
Not to long following the departures of the Hardy's and Galloway reports began to come out that both Mike and Maria Bennett as well as Jade's contracts expired. After a year with the company both Mike and Maria have chosen to look for greener pastures somewhere else. However, with the recent additions for a certain company I don't see them heading back to where they use to be. As for Jade, she has been with TNA since 2015 as a member of the Knockout's division. Though at this point she has not officially left the company, but most members of the company don't expect her to return. What this actually means for this company I'm not sure, but what I do know is that they need to rebuild their roster especially on the top, because they now have a large amount of wholes on the top of the card. Though it seems TNA has been making more enemies than friends recently I still hope that they are able to sort things out and finally get back on the right track. Though it maybe almost unheard of now for TNA there was a time when they had 12 PPV's a year and some had been very successful. Then the buys began to drop and slowly but surely the one by one TNA got rid of all of the PPV's and replaced them with One Night Only events. Every now and again they bring back the old concepts for special episodes of Impact, but have not made the move back to PPV as of yet. Though the concept has been used in the last two years as special episodes of Impact the Lockdown PPV hasn't been held since 2014. Below is the card from the last Lockdown PPV event: TNA Lockdown 2014
Sanada & The Great Muta & Yasu Def. (Pin) Chris Sabin & Christopher Daniels & Kazarian Steel Cage Samuel Shaw Def. Mr. Anderson Steel Cage Tigre Uno Def. (Pin) Manik Steel Cage Gunner Def. James Storm Steel Cage Last Man Standing Madison Rayne (C) Def. (Pin) Gail Kim Steel Cage TNA Knockouts Championship Magnus (C) Def. (Sub) Samoa Joe Steel Cage TNA World Heavyweight Title Davey Richards & Eddie Edwards & MVP & Willow Def. (Pin) Austin Aries & Bobby Roode & Jessie Godderz & Robbie E. "Lethal Lockdown" A few weeks ago I had mentioned that Anthem Sports had welcomed Jeff Jarrett and Dutch Mantel back to the company to help with the changing of the guard per-say and make sure a smooth transition takes place from Carter to Anthem. Well recently it has been reported that long time creative writer Matt Conway has officially left TNA and has been replaced. The company's creative team has been given a complete overhaul and looks similar to how it was back in the early days of the company.
As of this writing the head of TNA creative is once again the founder of TNA Jeff Jarrett and under him we have Scott D'Amore, Dutch Mantel, Abyss, Jeremy Borash, and Spud. Back in the early days of TNA everyone but Spud had been a part of the creative team at one time or another and Borash or Abyss actually booked for a bit back in the day as well. Now most would probably ponder the idea of why they didn't let Matt Hardy on the creative team, well I can answer that by saying it seemed as though Matt preferred to have control over his character rather than creative control over the show considering he is still active. Looking back at the history of TNA multiple people have made stupid decision, but with Jeff in the lead we saw TNA grow to where they could a national TV deal with Spike TV so I'd like to think that Jeff has a good idea of what he is doing. The only thing I can't answer is what this for the future as in does this mean that Jeff will be the long term leader of company's creative direction or if he will leave after a while. Also I don't know exactly what this means for the future of Global Force Wrestling considering Jeff still owns that company. Recently, we have seen a lot of news about the new TNA including a variety of talent leaving the company including the Hardy Boys. But not to long ago I realized that I could watch episodes of Impact Wrestling On Demand and even though I tend to pick on TNA I do actually hope for the best the company. Much like last week I did an overall outlook type post on a recent episode of Impact Wrestling. I last watched the episode of Impact Wrestling from two weeks ago and the first point I would like to make is that of TNA starting a feud between Eddie Edwards and Davey Richards. Though the TNA Tag team division is now extremely weak I think it is the perfect time to split Eddie & Davey to actually let them feud for the first time. I will say that as long as it doesn't include Eddie's wife along with Davey's because I feel like including her would be overreaching. If TNA does something right it is the feud after two partners broke up like with America's Most Wanted and Beer Money so I am kind of excited to see what happens with this feud. Since his career really started in ROH I have really been a fan of Moose, because he actually has great ability but just needs a little more depth to his character. Moose has all the potential and the way TNA has booked him like with him being viewed as a step below the main event, but still in the title race. I would best compare Moose to someone who would be in contention for the Intercontinental title in the WWE. I think that if Moose remains with TNA for a long period of time then he will be a very good investment for the company and exactly the type of talent they need to invest in. At first the "Expedition of the Gold" was going to be the best thing from this episode of Impact, but considering how much things have changed over the last week with the Hardy's leaving the company. Watching their match in Mexico on this episode was very different and unique which is something we don't normally see in pro-wrestling nowadays which made this very intriguing and something that kept me watching. Unfortunately due to the turn of events things have changed and it is likely we will not be seeing the Expedition of Gold for to long. But I thought it was the best of the show and the only reason it's down here is because the Hardy's are gone now.
Overall, I did like the show from two weeks ago better then a month ago and will try to keep watching TNA on a weekly basis if time permits. I did just realize how little sense that makes considering I missed three weeks ago and didn't see the most recent episode and I would like to say there is a reason for that but there really isn't. The one thing that I know is missing is the fact that I spoke about how poor I thought that the format was on "Open Fight Night" and to compare I thought that the format for this show was a lot better then the previous one I watched because I felt the right match was main event and no match was excessively hyped but under delivered. For the last year to say things have been rough in TNA would be an understatement as everything that could go wrong almost did including the company almost officially going out of business, but once again they came back from the brink. The only good thing that was going on in TNA was to start Matt Hardy and his feud with Jeff Hardy and then we move to Final Deletion and then we came to Broken Brilliance. At first the gimmick was a little rough to start but then Matt got the gimmick over and made it the hottest thing in the wrestling world.
By the end of the year the Hardy compound was the setting for a full episode of Impact Wrestling known as Total Non-Stop Deletion where we also saw the Hardy's compete against the Rock N Roll Express. Total Non-Stop Deletion is a perfect example as to how things changed from the start of his gimmick and when I heard the reaction from the Manhattan Center when Matt came on the screen was incredible, because nobody saw it coming. I was there live at Final Battle when he came on screen and I had goosebumps for the entire segment and now with the confirmation that the Hardy's will face the Bucks over WrestleMania weekend makes it all the more interesting. Recently, the news broke that TNA will not be renewing the contacts of Drew Galloway, Jeff, and Matt Hardy. To my knowledge their contracts have yet to expire, as all three of these guys hold gold in TNA at this time with the Hardy's holding the Tag Team titles and with Drew Galloway holding the TNA Grand Championship. If they would like to keep bring the meaning of the Grand championship forward then they need to have Drew drop the title to someone rather then have the title get vacated. In hindsight when something like this happens TNA has usually only lost one name they have never lost three guys at one time. It will be very difficult for TNA to replace all three of these guys especially with how important that Hardy's have been to TNA over the last year, but this is the simple reason why one saying exists and that saying "Nobody is bigger then the company." With stability behind the curtain finally a thing I do have faith that they can replace the Hardy's and Drew it will just take time. |
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January 2022
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