By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor
TNA executive Eric Bischoff says expectations for immediate wholesale changes to Impact - now Impact Wrestling - are "misaligned." Bischoff claims TNA has a plan to slowly unveil changes, tweak with the format, and experiment with different ideas before finding a look & feel they're comfortable with this fall season.
"I think last week, a lot of the changes you saw were very cosmetic - graphics and lighting and staging and that sort thing, which was part of the plan. I think anyone who had expectations that all of a sudden Impact Wrestling was going to be a completely different show than anything they had seen before probably had misaligned expectations," Bischoff said during his "Hot Seat" segment on the Monday Night Mayhem radio show earlier this week.
Bischoff then outlined the claimed plan TNA has to tweak with the format in the weeks and months to come leading into the fall TV season.
"We're going to try to improve the show in many different ways. I think what you're going to see throughout the summer, leading into the fall - this is a great time of year to experiment with format and experiment with different elements of the show structurally-speaking in terms of how we lay out a show," Bischoff said.
"I think you're going to see throughout the summer us experimenting with some ideas and concepts to see what works with the audience and what doesn't work. So that when we head into the fall, we'll have a format that we all believe in and feels different than Impact previously and feels different than the competition.
"You'll see those changes - they'll be slow, some will be very noticeable, some won't be and will be subtle. Hopefully by fall we'll have something we feel real comfortable with."
Asked if he would like to have increased duties in TNA, especially in light of Terry Taylor being fired as VP of talent relations last week, Bischoff said, "No. Especially those duties."
"I stay as far as away from any talent relations type of role as I can possibly get," he continued. "I respect anyone who takes on that responsibility and I respect Terry for the effort he put into it. It is a thankless job and, quite frankly, I don't like the idea of having people's futures in my hands. I don't want to negotiate talent deals - it's just not my interest."
Regarding the X Division storyline, Bischoff said, "Stay tuned. I think what fans are going to see in the weeks and months is going to give them plenty of excitement. I think what you're going to see out of the X Division as a whole is focus and story."
Caldwell's Analysis: Bischoff used some interesting verbiage trying to shift the heat to critics of last week's Impact despite TNA dedicating an entire campaign to suggesting wholesale changes and setting expectations for said changes. Of course, at the end of the day, until Vince Russo is removed and/or a new creative team is installed, there shouldn't be expectations for wholesale changes, which could be one way of interpreting Bischoff's carefully-worded statement.
Essentially, TNA tied an entire campaign to no changes. TNA's fallacy-based argument is "In TNA, wrestling always mattered; we're just emphasizing it, and now adding a fresher look to the show." But, considering TNA spent several months building to a big reveal of Mick Foley as The Network representative, TNA created expectations for wholesale changes at the conclusion of the Network vs. Bischoff/Hogan angle. Otherwise, why reveal The Network executive or why create the storyline in the first place if there were not wholesale changes to the look & feel of the product accompanied by a behind-the-scenes creative shake-up?
Related to the supposed plan building to the fall season that Bischoff outlined, it comes across like a classic example of TNA out-thinking themselves and trying to over-complicate what should be a very simple formula for presenting pro wrestling on TV. It tickles the ears of Spike TV executives to keep them happy, though, which is 99.9 percent of the game for TNA.
