Instead, the promotion floundered for years, alternating between being entertaining and completely unwatchable like some goofy SIN wave.

Why weren’t they ever to compete with WWE? Most fans of the promotion will tell you that they dug their own grave. That their failure was of their own making. If you follow the latest wrestling news, you’ll know that Impact’s new TV deal has them on some dinky cable network late on Friday nights. Not a good sign.

Are they responsible for their own stagnation? Perhaps they are, but there are circumstances that were beyond their control as well. Something like WCW was able to compete with WWE because of a long-time, consistent TV deal they had with various Turner networks. WCW also had the financial backing of Ted Turner and Time Warner. If you’re going to compete with WWE, you can’t just put on a good product and start from scratch. You need money.

TNA (and subsequently, Impact Wrestling) have never had this kind of financial backing