The Oliver Experience: TNA Ten Years Plus and Making no Progress Part 1

[Chase]

I was thinking to myself after catching up on my impacts that I have missed in the recent weeks, and as I was sitting there and watching Impact I think to myself. Damn it took them ten years to actually do something good to AJ Styles character, and TNA is not going to get any major payout for it. I always use to defend TNA in many ways. Talking about how the company is still young, and still trying to get there feet really wet, but then when I look at they have done and really to be honest here it is not like TNA has established any identity to itself for the audience. I mean when TNA first came in 2005 they called themselves an Alternative in professional wrestling, and too me that was a great move.

An alternative is something different for you to watch in case you don't always want to watch what the main company is doing, and in this alternative style you saw how TNA was totally different then the WWE. WWE was always a more storyline oriented wrestling, and was focused on the entertainment. TNA however was all about the in ring and getting your blood pumping during the one hour you got with it. I mean the show wasn't anything that made you want to order the ppvs because the storytelling was obviously lacking, but it was good action to watch on TV.

Then I started to see a change in TNA's style. They almost became just like the WWE, and once TNA went two hours it was the "death" of alternative wrestling and now it tried to be direct competition with the big company itself. TNA really to be honest has failed to make any progress what so ever. They seem to feed more off of the WWE guys that want to take a break from the big company itself, or not interested in the WWE in general. Now don't get me wrong I felt TNA handled Kurt Angle, and Christian Cage very well. Both men deserved to be world champions and win the belt in TNA so people would go check out the brand, but the problem is whenever a Kurt Angle, Christian, Sting, Jeff Jarrett, or Jeff Hardy lose a belt they don't lose it to a TNA guy. They lose it to the same veterans who have held the belt before. TNA had a perfect opportunity five times to build there own stars, and they messed up on all 5 opportunities really bad. This is Opportunity number 1

Opportunity #1: AJ Styles wins the NWA World Title Hard Justice 2005

You know this was terrible by TNA. You have MMA superstar Tito Ortiz come here and not only that you have AJ Styles beat at that point the longest NWA Champion in TNA history. You have a perfect golden opportunity. There is TV deal talks to get them off the fox sports paid channels, and move them to primetime. They now have a chance to show case a TNA great, and who else to showcase then there household name. The man of TNA himself the Phenonmenal AJ Styles. He will be a new face to many wrestling fans tuning in, not a lot of people will recognize him, and you can solidfy AJ is the man in TNA in the first episode by showing his wrestling skills, but nope. TNA does it where they have AJ Styles lose the king of the mountain match. Now who was in this match? Raven, X-Pac, Monty Brown, Abyss, and defending champ AJ Styles. Now the champion has never retained in the king of the mountain but why not, why not add more to the impressive resumee of AJ Styles to brag about. nope that would make too much sense lets give the title to a washed up old hardcore wrestler in Raven, which ultimately leads to an absoulte nothing feud with Jeff Jarrett, and Larry Zybsko. Terrible job by TNA. Instead of solidifying AJ as the man of the company we see are debut episode of impact with Jeff Jarrett talking crap about Raven and Kevin Nash? So lets see where everyone went after this.

AJ went to world champ to X-Divison again, and yes Daniels-Joe-AJ blah blah blah but all that lead too was Joe, AJ, and Daniels hogging the X-Divison and not allowing guys to get featured more in that division.

Raven went on to lose his title at a house show that lead to the awful feud with Zybsko.

Planet Jarrett was formed which only was good because it turned AMW into better heels. oh did I also mention how Jarrett loss the title to Rhino yeah not important because Rhyno lost it at the next impact. So as you can see here we pretty much had no evolvement for TNA

 

[Keith]

You are spot on about the problem being that the likes of Angle, Christain etc did not drop the title to a younger guy or someone more known for their TNA work than elswhere. Not sure you said much else which has not been posted a million times before. Still look forward to reading the rest of the entries.

 

[CGS]

Honestly Hogan and Bischoff going to TNA was essentially what killed the company off for good. Before that though they really did rely on the main event guys way to much around the 09/10 years and the whole product as a whole went down (essentially when Russo became the head booker so no real surprise). Frankly the Main Event Mafia storyline is one I feel really should have been used to elevate a lot of guys. Here you had a bunch of veterans, world title winners, guys who had wrestled in various industries for what must have been close to a 100 years experience combined all across the world and nothing really came from it.

Frankly the company just need an overhaul. Like you said they basically became a WWE 2.0 which probably did have a lot to do with Hogan and Bischoff. Stuff like abandoning the ring, making shows two hours and he'll even when they tried to start a Monday night war. It was all the wrong way and basically tried to recreate WCW if anything. Also hate the fact that the X division doesn't get as much love as it used to. That alone made TNA so unique and its kinda been stripped apart. Once TNA can actually find their own identity again I think they can start making progress again.