The TNA Identity Crisis

What doesn't make sense about all of this is the fact that TNA has a very solid roster, possibly the best overall roster in a wrestling company today.  But they don't want to push anyone they already have. 

The Wild Cat Chris Harris was an amazing worker and knew how to draw in the crowd, but TNA never gave him his due and he left the company.  Robert Roode was named by Pro Wrestling Illustrated as a man who will one day main event Wrestlemania but he's stuck in go nowhere story lines when he should be fighting for the World Title.  Petey Williams is an amazing athlete but he's stuck with the Scott Steiner gimmick that isn't helping him become his own person.

Granted, some of their homegrown talent has won the tag team titles and the X-division titles on many occasions, but people aren't buying the pay per views to watch the X-division anymore.  So these titles are coming across as placement holders to keep the locker room from rioting because they never get their chance at the big time.

Kurt Angle coming in ended anyone's chance of ever getting a proper push.  When he walked into the company, the first thing he did was beat Samoa Joe's winning streak.  This showed to everyone that the WWE makes better wrestlers than TNA. 

Now, people will argue that Angle is a Olympic gold medalist and it makes sense that he beat Joe.  But think about this, Angle hasn't been in the Olympics for 10 years at that point.  The only new training he has in was pro wrestling.  His body is far more damaged than it was in the summer of 1996. 

Angle beating Joe came off as a very big mistake.  Then, to top it off, Angle pins Joe three times in a 30 minute Iron Man Match.  So the guy who is undefeated for 18 months somehow loses three times in 30 minutes.  Ever since this booking, anyone who comes over from the WWE has always come out on top and pushed straight to the main event.

The bottom line is this.  Whenever anyone looks at TNA all they can think about is the WWE because that's were most of their main event comes from.  TNA has some incredible wrestlers on the roster, but their refusal to push any of these men to the main event will eventually become their down fall.  It happened with WCW and history will repeat itself again. 

Hopefully, TNA can solve this problem soon and actually provide some legitimate competition to the WWE.

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