The Biggest Flaws Of TNA

With the announcement that TNA iMPACT is due to go head-to-head with the WWE's Monday Night RAW on March 8th, I decided to have a look at what I thought were the biggest problems it has as it faces the biggest challenge in it's existence. Here are the flaws in TNA that I have identified:

1.       Live on Monday Nights: The announcement that TNA iMPACT would go live on Monday, March 8 was met with great excitement from hardcore TNA fans. But looking at this from a Business perspective, surely the move is being made far too soon. TNA’s ratings are only comparable to those that WWE’s least popular show, ECW, used to make before it was pulled. To go up against the flagship ‘RAW’ at this early stage of its development is brave, but could prove to be downright stupid and the decision to bring Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan back to in-ring competition on the first live show screams of desperation.

2.       Abyss: This character is both annoying and not believable. Abyss seems to be a character copied from a number of gimmicks from the WWE. The gimmick seems to be Mankind and Eugene with a hint of Kane rolled into one. I am surprised that they have persisted with the character for so long when talented wrestlers sit idle with no storylines. It also goes against the principles that were held in WCW of having less cartoonish gimmicks and more believable characters and with many of those involved in WCW now involved in TNA, it’s surprising that Abyss has been getting such a push as a main eventer in the past few weeks. Abyss takes from the credibility of the product that TNA broadcasts.

3.       The Nasty Boys: They were already washed up and boring in the early ninetees. How anyone can possibly think that Knobbs and Saggs can contribute beneficially to TNA is beyond me. These two have been past their sell-by date for twenty years and their in-ring product shows this. If you need an example, observe how they perform an Irish Whip on their opponent. It doesn’t look remotely like they are using force to whip them into the turnbuckle. TNA need to come to their senses and get rid of them.

4.       The Crowd: TNA have the worst wrestling crowd I have ever seen on main stream TV. A wrestling crowd MUST treat what is going on in the show as real. The crowd must be kayfabe. If not, it completely takes away the effect of what is going on. They don’t respond well to the promos and the only thing that can get a reaction from them is when someone says that they’re doing good work for the company. The fans shouldn’t be worrying about what’s good for the company; they should be enjoying the show. The whole of TNA seems too concerned with what is going on with the WWE and this includes the crowd. TNA should be focusing on what it is doing itself. We never hear TNA mentioned on a WWE show.

5.       Faces and Heels: It is often impossible to tell who the face is and who the heel in TNA. The only way we know who they are supposed to be is by the fake crowd cheers or boos that are edited into the entrances. When these are added in, they are often the opposite reaction to what the crowd actually gives. Heels should be pushed better as heels by reminding the audience regularly why they are heels and the faces should do likewise. There is no superstar in TNA anymore that could be called the biggest face, and in fact there probably isn’t a big heel either. AJ Styles was the big fan favourite, but now he is being pushed as the heel through his association with Ric Flair, but Flair has a problem that many other legends encounter, he can’t be a heel because everyone loves him. So we are left with AJ being pushed inadequately as the main heel.

6.       Misuse of Talent. TNA has an array of potential big stars but they waste all their promo time slots and match slots with washed up stars and pointless office scenes with Bischoff. They need to start using the assets they have, or risk losing them to the WWE where they would become jobbers and contribute to the rising popularity of WWE’s biggest stars.

7.       Vince Russo. Everyone is aware that in the mid-nineties, Russo came up with a few stories for Monday Night Raw that went to air and turned out to be a bit popular. Most are also aware that Vince McMahon got lots of ideas from Russo, but only decided that a few were good enough to make the show. Most also know that without the safety net of McMahon. At WCW, Russo, with full creative control, sent that company into embarrassment eventually being bought for a measly 8 million dollars by Vince McMahon and no longer operates as a wrestling promotion. Russo is no longer able to write decent storylines and should not be employed on the basis that he wrote a couple of successful stories about 12 years ago.

8.       The Studio. I know there are legitimate financial reasons why TNA remain in the smaller studio rather than moving to the big arenas, but this is something that will have to change soon if they are to compete with the WWE to any extent. Arena shows such as Raw, and previously Nitro, have a wow factor and look like spectacles every Monday night. Impact doesn’t do the same. It looks very low budget, and during promos when the cameraman is in the speaker’s face and they talk down the camera, it looks quite amateurish. In WWE, in the arena, the speaker tends to interact and concentrate on the live audience, rather than the TV audience, and this enhances the show greatly.

9.       Reliance on Nostalgic Fans. This is and will prove to be a problem for TNA. In recent times especially, a lot of TNA’s viewers seem to be wrestling fans that lived through the Monday Night Wars and the Attitude Era and now choose to watch TNA as a way to relive some of these memories by watching their favourite stars from times gone by. There is a reason why many of the big names of the past are on TNA and that is because they can’t cut it at the top level anymore. One only needs to look at Scott Hall to see that he is a far cry from Razor Ramon or the man that ‘invaded’ Nitro through the crowd. If you take the TNA roster and compare it to the WWE,  more ‘all-time greats’ may be found on the TNA roster, but, let’s face it, If they were still going to be beneficial for the WWE, they would probably still be there. Kurt Angle is a man that you might say rubbishes this notion as he is still one of the top wrestlers in the world. But even Kurt decided himself that the schedule of the WWE was taking its toll on him and so decided to slow down and join TNA. Fans that tune in to see these guys will at some stage realise that they are no longer watching the ‘Nature Boy,’ or the ‘NWO’ or even the ‘Dudley Boyz’ that they grew up watching. These fans, in my opinion, won’t stick around for long.

10.   The Most important thing. If we’re going to take TNA as being the best competition for the WWE, then we must compare it to the last competition that existed, the WCW. There is a key ingredient that the WCW had, but TNA does not. We could debate for hours what it was that made the WCW so successful. Was it Hogan? Bischoff? Flair? The Cruiserweights? All of these made massive contributions to its success in their own rights, but the one factor that WCW could not have done without is Ted Turner. ‘Billionaire Ted’ made it possible to take on the empire, he made WCW’s goals realistic, and this was at a time when the Empire of the WWE was nowhere near the size it is today, in fact before the Attitude Era, it is debatable as to whether it is appropriate to refer to it as an empire. Today, the task of beating the WWE seems to be a task that is insurmountable. Can it be done? Only time will tell, but personally, I think not.