TNA Wrestling: Why Recent Record Rating for Impact Could Be a Turning Point

TNA's Impact Wrestling, on Oct. 20, scored a record rating for viewers with 2.2 million.  While the show did not maintain the rating last week—dropping to 1.5 million viewers—there were some positives to take from it that could lead to a change for the promotion.

The show last week started strong with a 1.3 and dropped throughout the night—in large part due to an incredible World Series game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers.

It also will hopefully work in the company's favor that last week's show was based around two big promos involving Eric Bischoff, his son Garrett and Ric Flair.  This is likely setting up a Bischoff/Flair vs. Garrett Bischoff/Hulk Hogan match at a PPV—which is fine as a undercard match—and the lower rating hopefully shows that the focus needs to be on the world title.

Hogan and Flair don't need a lot of segments to sell their match—announce that the two will be on opposite sides of a tag match and their fans will tune in.  They need to focus on the world title and developing the talent and angles there.

Their success in the ratings is a sign that fans enjoyed many of the things from that show including James Storm winning the World Heavyweight Title, the return of Gail Kim and the continued story of Jeff Hardy's road to redemption.

Those three angles will continue to get advancement in upcoming episodes of Impact and hopefully the ratings will reflect positively on that.

This is a key period for TNA—especially with the young talent.  Sting is now in an authority figure position, Kurt Angle is recovering from injury and training for the Olympic Trials and Hogan and Flair are not likely to wrestle again until Lockdown.

Until then—and the spoilers of the recent tapings in Macon back this up—the focus will be on guys like Storm, Bobby Roode, AJ Styles and others.

For TNA fans looking to support those young talents, now is the time to tune in and let the ratings back that up.  Baseball is over, the NBA is on strike, Jersey Shore is on hiatus and Thursday night college football is typically lacking in top-level matchups.

There are no excuses, this is a time for the younger talent to step up—which means it's a time for fans of that talent to step up as well and show via the ratings that this is the talent that will get them to tune in.