Wednesday Morning Backlash with Why TNA’s Immortal Angle Will Fail

Columns, Top Story

Kyle Fitta checks in with Why the Immortal angle will fail.

As most of you know by now, there was a screwjob at the Bound For Glory PPV with Hogan and Bischoff as the masterminds behind the entire scheme. Without taking in account that the immortal stable that TNA put together doesn’t make a bit of logical, real-life sense (which is something we are so use to after watching approximately ten years of professional wrestling with Vince Russo in the driving seat), I am going to tell you the other main reason(s) why this angle will fail (just like every other major TNA angle in the past four years).

The angle might indeed cement Jeff Hardy as a legit heel—even though like any wood teacher would tell you: if you go against the grain, you will eventually screw your board up, meaning Jeff Hardy is a prototypical baby-face, not a heel. But even if he gets over as a heel, it’s only about a fraction of what is important in an angle like this. An angle like this should have one main objective in its purpose: to time a pay-off properly where the baby-faces prevail over the heels after consist struggles, or to have both the heels go back-and-forth and in the end the faces going over. The problem with that, though, is EV 2.0 are old-timers that shouldn’t even be on TV right now, Kurt Angle doesn’t need to be elevated, and Samoa Joe isn’t even the main focal point of the storyline, as he is in a sub-plot with Jeff Jarrett right now. The only baby-face who could be elevated from this entire angle that needs to be elevated is Matt Morgan—even though they have attempted to push Matt Morgan at one point to the moon, but he just couldn’t get over enough to be escalated to the top of the food chain. So, even though if they do the angle correctly (which they probably won’t), it is pointless because you are not elevating any faces that need to be.

The other reason why I think this angle will fail is simply the fact that Russo has wrote other major feuds in TNA that were more promising on paper than this one, yet he screwed them up still with his terrible booking; example being Frontline vs. Mainevent Mafia.

Lastly, you have Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff—two of the main reasons why WCW’s ship sank underwater—as the co pilots driving this angle. And we all know how long the nWo angle dragged; consistently didn’t make sense; never elevated any baby-faces because Hogan and his pals never wanted to do a job, and how long after Bischoff stuck with it after the angle was well over its apex.

In conclusion, all this angle is a rip-off of the nWo angle with 10-years-out-of-their-prime ex-ECW wrestlers—who were never great wrestlers to begin with, but had a genius like Paul Heyman as a booker that could expose their strengths and make them look like butterflies when they were really caterpillars—with other wrestlers that will never get over as a star, don’t need to get anymore over, or, quite frankly, never will get over because the company has never had much faith in him as a top star. Also, when have you seen a remake of a show that was much better than the original? Exactly. We have seen this angle before, so this is basically a passé angle with a lot of the same guys that were in the first one.

This is all why I will do not have faith in this angle whatsoever, and also why you should not either. To see a better-executed, well-designed version of this, just pop in the WCW 1996-to-1997 tapes of Nitro and their PPVS. Don’t attempt to get invested into this angle because it will either go nowhere or solve nothing.

Glazer is a former senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus.