NINE REASONS IMPACT WRESTLING HAS BECOME A SHOW EVERY TRUE WRESTLING FAN NEEDS TO WATCH

By Stuart Carapola on 2012-07-02 11:48:53

I think a lot of people have this notion about TNA that it's a mismanaged hellhole that has repeatedly dropped the ball despite having every resource imaginable available to them. A lot of comparisons are made to WCW, which makes sense since many of the people who helped cause the demise of that company are in positions of power in TNA today. To be honest, those people weren't too far off the mark if that's how they looked at the first two years or so of the Hogan Era of TNA, because there are a lot of examples of them throwing away opportunity after opportunity for no other reason than apparent, sheer incompetence. I know this is how people feel, because I get a lot of email from folks who take TNA to task for every bad move they make, and then finish by telling me that this is why they don't watch TNA.

While I appreciate the spirit of what they're saying, the part where they mention that they don't watch TNA anymore makes me think two things. First, saying that when you're talking about how bad the company is kind of shoots your argument in the foot for the same reason it would if you said you don't like a food you haven't tried. But the other thing is that TNA has actually been really good for a solid eight or nine months now. No, everything doesn't always click as well as they probably hoped it would when they wrote it, but I really look forward to doing the Impact Wrestling report every week, and that's not something I could have said a year ago. When I watch them now, I see a company that's working really hard to make itself something true wrestling fans want to watch, and I think they're largely succeeding at that.

In fact, I think there's so much good stuff happening in TNA right now that you're really doing yourself a disservice if you refuse to watch TNA because you believe they can't do anything right. If you're still not convinced, let me tell you some of the reasons I like watching and think you would too:

Impact Wrestling is now live every week: At least until the end of the summer, anyway. Though this may seem trivial to some, the fact is that a lot of people thought of Impact as second rate because it was taped instead of being aired live. Also, a lot of people would read spoilers and either feel like they didn't need to watch because they knew what was going to happen, or would pass judgment on the storylines without actually seeing how they play out live. Because of this, they're also now able to spring things on the fans that they simply wouldn't be able to do if the show were taped and everybody knew about the new wrestler or storyline twist that would air on Thursday night. This freedom is also key to the success of other areas, such as the fact that...

They're working hard to develop new ideas: Just in the last three months, we've been introduced to Open Fight Night, the Gut Check tryout system has been made a monthly segment on Open Fight Night, and now we've got a new rule where the X Division Champion can turn in their title for a shot at the World Title shot every year at Destination X. I'm a fan of all three of these, the Open Fight Night dynamic allows for a more impromptu feel to the show, the Gut Check takes the Tough Enough/NXT model and strips away all the bloat to constantly introduce us to new talent in a pure "yes or no" type of scenario, and the Destination X rule makes the X Division Title a much more important thing to have than when it was just the flippy dippy title. It can now serve as something equivalent to a Money In The Bank win, and make it something that young wrestlers chase all year long. This brings me to the next point...

Coherent, long term storylines: I think the best example of how well TNA has been booking long term storylines and sticking with them is the James Storm-Bobby Roode feud that looks to play out over the course of a full year. Here you have this team that's been together forever, but then Bobby Roode becomes so jealous that Storm won the TNA World Title after Roode couldn't, that Roode was willing to throw away their friendship and burn damn near every bridge he had just to be the champion. They spent six months building to Storm and Roode in a cage, but Storm costs himself the match because he's more worried about hurting Roode than beating him. He goes home to reconsider his life for a month or two, and now he comes back and appears headed to a final showdown with Roode at Bound For Glory. In the meantime, Roode has become the longest-reigning TNA World Champion in history and has fulfilled the destiny everyone expected of him from the beginning. The only thing he fears at this point is getting back into the ring with Storm, and he's doing everything he can to avoid that.

That's just one example of an angle that played out over the course of several months, others include Roode-Sting and Bully Ray-Abyss. On the flipside, we don't see any more nonsensical turns coming out of the blue, no more "Pope is trying to steal Devon's sons", and no more "we're going to push Doug Williams to the moon and then suddenly we don't see him on TV for five months", either. Not every storyline has hit on all cylinders, but they've stuck to their plans and it makes TNA a much easier show to follow.

The titles mean something: With WWE treating every title but the one around CM Punk's waist like an afterthought, TNA goes in the opposite direction by treating all of its titles with respect. Titles are supposed to be the reasons everyone is there, and everybody in the company from Bobby Roode on down to Robbie E is clear that the desire to become or stay a champion is what drives them. Bobby Roode was willing to leave James Storm for dead to win the title and will do anything to keep it, while everyone else will do anything to be the guy to take the title from him. The X Division Title just became a steppingstone to a World Title shot in addition to being the centerpiece of the division TNA identified itself by. Devon has been a World Tag Team Champion over 20 times, but he still takes defending the lowest ranking title in the company as seriously as anything. When Brooke Tessmacher won the Knockouts Title, she reacted like it meant more to her than anything in the world. Winning the TNA World Tag Team Title revitalized Samoa Joe and Brutus Magnus, and they quickly went from not even wanting to know each other to developing great chemistry and teamwork once they realized they had a real shot at winning the title. Even Eric Young was thrilled winning the Knockouts Tag Team Title with ODB.

You look up and down that roster, and you do not see one person who is there for any reason other than to be a champion. No Santino Marella showing up to act like a dumbass and do the Cobra, no Brodus Clay showing up to dance and have a good time, no Damien Sandow trying to save anyone's intellect, and no David Otunga being a pain in the ass lawyer. TNA has wrestlers trying to win enough matches to get title shots, so they can try and win those too and become a champion. In fact, people are willing to go to some great length to get that title shot, such as...

The Bound For Glory Series: This is one of the greatest things TNA has ever done, and I'm glad they brought it back to hopefully make it an annual tradition. Bound For Glory is TNA's biggest show of the year, so it makes sense that they wouldn't give just anyone a title shot there. In order to make sure the most deserving person gets to challenge for the TNA World Title at Bound For Glory, they set up a THREE MONTH LONG tournament that includes twelve top contenders. Every win and loss affects the participants' scores, and then the four men with the highest scores go to the September PPV to determine the Bound for Glory Series winner, and then the winner of that goes to Bound For Glory to MAYBE win the TNA World Title. In a company where titles are the goal, and the title shot at Bound For Glory the TNA equivalent of the main event of Wrestlemania, it makes sense that someone would want to win the Bound For Glory Series (a big deal in and of itself) just to get into the most important TNA match of the year.

Austin Aries: Anybody who has seen Aries working in ROH and elsewhere on the independents has known for a long time how good he is, but probably also doubted that he'd ever make it on a higher level because he's too small for WWE and hasn't had the best relationship with TNA in the past. Aries has proven all those doubters wrong in his most recent run in TNA, far exceeding the expectations many had of him. In one year, Aries has become the longest reigning X Division Champion in company history, defeating literally every other top star in the division. His success in the X Division led to him getting increasingly loud reactions from the crowd, prompting TNA to give him opportunities to move up the card and work programs with Bully Ray and Samoa Joe, two large brawlers who would test whether Aries could adapt to working with men of their style as opposed to smaller high flyers. He came through once again, and now will be main eventing Destination X by challenging Bobby Roode for the TNA World Title. He rarely has a bad match, and is such a complete package at this point in his career that there was no holding him back in a company without a glass ceiling. He's a great example of somebody who the company had no choice but to make into a star because the fans had spoken. If current trends are any indication, others will get a similar opportunity, because...

There's a renewed focus on pushing younger wrestlers: Just in the last year, we've seen Crimson, Zema Ion, Jesse Sorensen, Austin Aries, and Brooke Tessmacher come into the company and take advantage of opportunities to make names for themselves. The Gut Check has become a monthly event, and has led to Alex Silva and Taeler Hendrix getting full time deals with the company, with Joey Ryan presumably not far behind them. Now we have a tournament to crown a new X Division Champion at Destination X, which will give new wrestlers from the independents the very same platform to make a name for themselves that Aries took advantage of last year, and will also give former X Division stars the chance to prove that they still belong in the mix. No other company in North America is giving young, up-and-coming wrestlers the kinds of opportunities that TNA is, and that stands out even more when you consider that...

The middle-aged main eventers who wouldn't go away went away: With TNA earning a reputation for many years as somewhere that WWE castoffs and old WCW wrestlers come to die, note that Booker T, Kevin Nash, Ric Flair, and Scott Steiner have all left the company. Eric Bischoff has been banned from TV in storylines and doesn't seem likely to return anytime soon, Jeff Jarrett rarely appears on TV anymore, and while Rob Van Dam, Jeff Hardy, and Ken Anderson all float in and out of upper card storylines, none of them has been focused on as heavily as the homegrown TNA main eventers like Bobby Roode, James Storm, and AJ Styles. Team 3D are still around, but Bubba has worked his ass off to earn a main event singles run, while Devon has been put in a position as TV Champion to work with younger wrestlers on a weekly basis. Even Sting has been used more wisely since Bound For Glory, being presented as the first Commissioner/GM-type figure for as long as I can remember who wasn't sputteringly crooked, and then when he left that role to get back in the ring, it was to put the World Champion over. Oh, and there's one other guy I need to mention...

Hulk Hogan has finally grasped what his place is in today's wrestling business: We all had our doubts when he came in, especially when he had Eric Bischoff in tow. Sure enough, it didn't take long for Hogan to prove that those doubts were well founded, as TNA became a 100% retread of late-era WCW, complete with Hogan and Eric Bischoff as the stars of the show, taking upwards of a half hour of promo time on some episodes of Impact, with their nWo clone Immortal backing them up and all the homegrown stars who spent a decade building the company being either pushed to the back or released outright.

That all came to an end at Bound For Glory, and the company slowly started to rebuild itself with Hogan gone and Sting in an entirely new role. I'll be the first to admit that after months of Sting being the best GM the wrestling business had seen in years, I really thought that all the excellence TNA had accomplished in 2012 would be flushed down the toilet when Hogan was put back into power by Dixie Carter. Thankfully, not only have we not been subjected to the nonstop Hoganfests we got for two years after he first joined the company, but there are weeks you barely know he's there. Just this past week, Hogan spent a grand total of MAYBE three minutes on screen, all of which were in backstage promo segments that focused on other people. This is what Hogan should have been doing all along, and his willingness to finally step to the side and let the stars of today break through has helped the company immeasurably.

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It's funny how after the many resets, new eras, and new directions TNA has proclaimed over the years, the one that worked the best was the one they never said was happening. They didn't come out of Bound For Glory yelling that everything was changing, they didn't drill down our throats that the company was being saved, they just made the changes they needed to make and let their work speak for itself. Everyone in TNA has worked their asses off and done a great job turning around what many people thought was a lost cause,and I have no problem saying I enjoy watching Impact a lot more than I enjoy watching Raw or Smackdown these days. Don't believe me? Watch Impact one of these days and see what I mean.

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