Interinactivity: 08.16.2013 – A Return To TNA (Insider) [Part Dos Of Dos]

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Welcome back to “Interinactivity”. Last week, in Part 1, we took a look at what a typical TNA fan thinks TNA’s issues are. Thanks to everyone who read and commented on it, it got a lot more attention than I thought it would given that it has to do with TNA.

This week, we’ll take a look at the responses to this commenter from some of the other mentally damaged types that frequent TNAInsider.

 

Muscle Buster: Wrestling fans (if you can call them that) in general are so far up vince’s ass they can’t see anything that doesn’t have a WWE logo on it. TNA needs to appeal to the people that buy their merch and tickets… not to the ones that bitch online and stream ppvs.

BD: The first part of what you said is stupid, AND you just bitched online, so you’re now complaining about yourself. I actually do agree with the idea that TNA needs to appeal to the fans they already have, though – the problem is that aside from a very small number of people (evidenced by barely a thousand people showing up to their arenas these days), TNA needs to grow beyond that but obviously has no clue how to do so.

I believe they COULD grow beyond BY doing what you say though, by giving their fans what they want. I don’t think THEY believe that, though – their fans are the ones who were satisfied with the stars they had – AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels – take a look at crowd reactions when these guys were tearing it up in the main-event of PPV’s back in the day. Their audience WAS satisfied – they never asked for guys like Ken Anderson or Matt Morgan. If you’d asked most TNA fans what they wanted around the time those two schmucks showed up, I doubt any of them would have said they wanted guys like that. But TNA, in what can only be described as incredibly misguided attempts to grow their audience with guys that their present audience didn’t ask to see, have done things like this all throughout their history.

That’s not only why numbers don’t go up, it’s why they actually go down. If they were bringing in more people than they lost with the attempt, then at least it would make some sense from a business perspective if not a loyalty perspective. But none of these attempts have even worked. Almost forever, TNA has consistently pissed off it’s fanbase. Even more impressive is that they’ve somehow managed to not learn from these attempts.

 

Will: To the IWC, everything TNA does is wrong even when TNA does something the IWC wanted TNA to do.

BD: You know what? THAT’S THE STUPIDEST FUCKING THING I’VE EVER HEARD.

That’s a statement that even I am not willing to unpack. It’s way too daunting. It actually has more than 20 things wrong with it, and yet it’s only 19 words long. How is that even possible?

 

TheCharasmaticMackem: If it accomplishes one thing (TNA bringing in Jeff Jarrett to do Talent Relations) it shows Dixie is NOT soft on the plodders around her and is one in the eye for the naysayers who think TNA will fail and die because of it. She is prepared to shuffle her deck of cards.

BD: This is an incredibly adept analogy, because the thing about shuffling a deck of cards is that you’ll always eventually end up with the same cards. Dixie needs to start playing with a new deck.

 

TheCharasmasticMackem: Their is a revolving door at TNA HQ because whilst D’ Lo and Bruce Pitchard have walked out, if this is true, in comes (Jeff Jarrett) who in my view has a greater nose for wanting to push TNA on as a product and can get results.

BD: Much like the “deck of cards” analogy, this works well because you can enter, exit or re-enter a revolving door any time you like. D’Lo Brown has been in and out of TNA twice before. Bischoff, Russo, Dusty and others have all gone in and out of this door at least a couple times as well. As for Pritchard, here’s another thing you should know – the dude had TWO heart attacks in one month while working for TNA. 23 out of 25 years he worked for WWE, and nothing. Two years into his TNA career and he gets TWO heart attacks. Given that, whether it was TNA or him who wanted to say goodbye, is it any wonder he’s not working there anymore?

And yes, in comes Jeff Jarrett, because that hasn’t been tried before. It’s not like he’s had years to try and grow TNA in the past. It’s not like a guy who said that CM Punk is too small is a bad choice for a talent scout. It’s not like he’s embarrassed the company in a major public way with another wrestler’s wife or anything. Yeah, if there’s a guy you want in charge of interacting with both male and female talent… Double J is your man.

 

TheCharasmaticMackem: And it is my opinion he (Jeff Jarrett) is not afraid to take on V**ce McM***n.

BD: I’m sorry… are you ACTUALLY CENSORING VINCE MCMAHON’S NAME. What the actual fuck is wrong with you?!?!

What do you mean by “take on Vince?” This isn’t east fucking Baltimore. Jeff Jarrett and Vince McMahon aren’t fighting for drug turf on street corners here. Nobody’s going to get hurt. What is there for Jarrett to be scared of, exactly? He’s tried this before, and it’s not his company anymore anyway. What’s he got to lose? He can go in there and make an effort, and make some money doing it. If they’re willing to keep giving him jobs despite his track record, then good for him.

But it’s not like he’s making some gutsy, risky move here. Vince McMahon isn’t the mob. They’re not going to find Jarrett face-down in the river, unless maybe he tries to bone another wrestler’s wife.

Get your head out of the clouds.

 

TheCharasmaticMackem: I have seen once or twice a shoot interview he did on Monday Night RAW where he came to the ring unannounced and launched a broadside against Eric Bischoff and to V*nce for the Double J character and in both cases booking them against no-hopers.

BD: It was a worked shoot, you fucking idiot.

Also, those people weren’t REALLY lost on an island, the zombie apocalypse is NOT upon us, and it turns out you can’t ACTUALLY vote for David Palmer.

 

TheCharasmaticMackem: Jeff also launched attacks on talent such as Bret Hart, Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels. Just like Jim Cornette and Paul Heyman I believe Jeff has the necessary attack in him to make TNA massive.

BD: The necessary WHAT? And again, what about the 6 or 7 years that Jarrett ALREADY HAD control of TNA for? Why didn’t TNA become “massive” then?

What the fuck are you even talking about now? First of all, those “attacks” on Bret, Austin and Michaels were fake. I can’t fucking believe I just had to fucking type that. It fucking FLOORS me that I actually had to clarify that to someone. Shit man, even if those WERE actually real shoots, then by that logic Scott Steiner must be the best possible candidate to take control of TNA.

… although now that I’ve said that, I will admit that I would probably watch that.

 

Will: At this point, all you can do is sit back and laugh at the absurdity of those fools. It’s more entertaining than a Pritchard booked Impact and whoever is booking wwe shows these days. Oh and in case you didn’t know: The IWC doesn’t think TNA will make it past 2014 and that’s a nice estimate according to them lol. Come 2015, it’ll be TNA is dying in 2017 and so on. It’s the never ending cycle of being wrong.

BD: This statement itself IS more entertaining than a Pritchard-booked Impact, in that ANYTHING is more entertaining than ANY Impact for the last 8 years or longer, regardless of who booked it. At this point, all I can do is sit back and laugh at the absurdity of a fool who creates an imaginary group of people out of thin air (although this appears to be common practice at TNAInsider), and THEN creates an opinion for this fictitious group COMPLETELY out of nothing but blue sky (that IWC doesn’t think TNA will make it past 2013).

Speaking of 2013… it’s 2013. Hey TNAInsider, if your buck-addled brains still NEED to believe that there actually IS an IWC, JUST so that you can disassociate yourselves from it, then I don’t know what anyone can do for you in terms of catching you up to the rest of us in the present day. What you’re declaring by saying you’re “actually not in the IWC” is like me ADAMENTLY declaring that despite what MOST people would have you believe, it turns out that I’m actually NOT in the Nation Of Domination.

And I can’t believe anyone EVER held the honest belief that all “IWC” people ever had the same opinion about TNA, or about anything. Do you need some proof? Okay – you’re on the internet, and you’re talking about wrestling. This means that you’re part of the subgroup of fans that you just created, attributed a general opinion to, disassociated yourself from and then insulted. But you don’t agree with the statement of the group you yourself have been PLACED YOURSELF IN.

So obviously not all members of the IWC think the same way.

It’s a paradox. That’s right, believe it or not, what you have said here is ACTUALLY paradoxical. Do you know how dumb you have to be to make a single statement paradoxical? You basically need to start a sentence, do a 180 partway through, and still somehow finish the sentence. It’s almost impossible for a human being with a short-term memory longer than a fucking geranium to do this without realizing it, yet here we are.

Since you seem to like segregating people into non-existent, broadly-defined groups, I have another name for people with the short-term memory of a geranium – TNA’s target market.

 

Homey: You know, whatever current state TNA is in whether it’s positive or negative there still going to be that “WWE Boycott” movement going on and with that in mind this year may still be TNA’s year to get ahead of the WWE and to be taken notice simply by gaining more viewers/audiences/fans as well as ratings & money since WWE hasn’t been doing so hot at least to some majority of the masses anyways. At this rate I don’t see TNA crashing & burning anytime soon especially while they have two more milestones to celebrate within the following year and it’ll involve it’s current & only brand show.

BD: Yeah, good luck with that.

 

GA-Tech Grad: Agreed with everything posted. There are a couple of things that I’ve learned about the IWC over the past few years. Whenever a promotion tries to please the IWC by pushing indie darlings, the ratings always plummet. Also, whenever TNA starts to gain momentum, there is always a backlash by the IWC, which is what we’re seeing now.

BD: Yeah, and when they bring in Hogan and WWE castoffs like Matt Morgan, Bobby Lashley and Ken Anderson, ratings go nowhere but up, right?

Are you fucking kidding me? How does an apparent university graduate say something this stupid?

First off, TNA isn’t gaining momentum. That’s really all there is to say about that. Also, ratings can’t plummet anywhere when they’re already at rock bottom. TNA has never had any one event lead to any kind of ratings success, whether that involve an “indie darling” or anyone else.

When this kind of statement comes out of someone, you automatically know you can’t reason with them. It’s like boxing a skyscraper – you’ll just never get through. So what I like to do is just toss some hard truths at them to get your point across.

Like this – hey TNA apologists, did you know Totally Divas managed to draw a better rating than Impact on THEIR SECOND EPISODE?

That’s right. Totally Divas.

On their SECOND EPISODE.

If I ran a weekly, internationally-broadcasted wrestling program for a over a decade, and then a reality show about female wrestlers did a better rating than my show on their second week, I seriously would blow my fucking head off.

 

For many TNA fans, facts like this and that WWE has a much larger audience, for some reason, seems to impact THEIR enjoyment of the actual TNA show itself. Worse, it leaves many of them with what I can only describe as a DEBILITATING persecution complex.

Anything that TNA does well, they simply can’t just enjoy. They feel the need to compare it to something recent that WWE did that didn’t come off well to them. In many cases, they feel the need to actually insult the WWE fanbase, and make statements that the WWE fans will never leave because they’re “puppets” or “fanboys” or “all IWC loves WWE” or something equally silly.

These premises, while ridiculous enough even just on the surface, don’t even bother to account for the fact that WWE fans bitch about WWE ALL the time.

And THAT’S a window into why a lot of WWE fans don’t like TNA.

Because they lose.

WWE fans would enjoy if TNA became competition for WWE, because it would either create an alternate product for them to watch if they were disenfranchised with WWE, or even just to provide them with some more variety. Or, it would force WWE to step up their game. Many people on TNAInsider seem to like to use Nielsen ratings as their unit of measurement, which I think is fairly archaic, but let’s go with their premise just for a second.

WWE has been losing RAW ratings steadily for YEARS, minus a small upswing here and there. You know how long this has been happening? Since TNA started. So WWE loses viewers, but yet somehow, TNA doesn’t pick up any of that audience. There’s no other wrestling program on cable that could have gotten them, so once people stopped watching WWE they had no other wrestling product to go to.

Why couldn’t TNA capture / retain that audience? THOSE people weren’t “WWE fanboys” or “puppets” that still stuck with WWE, because those are the ones that tune out. Can anyone in TNA or any of their fans answer why TNA wasn’t able to draw in and / or retain those fans?

You’re honestly going to sit there and say it’s because TNA listened to the fans? What kind of a stupid fucking comment is that?

 

Many of the angrier TNA fans like to gloss over the fact that many WWE fans who make fun of TNA actually HAVE watched TNA at some point, and have not been impressed. But even a fan who has never watched a frame of TNA in their lives, can look at the complete lack of progress TNA has made over it’s existence and ask the question “if TNA is so fucking great, how come they’re in the same place they were 7 years ago even though they made all these supposedly exciting moves?” And without watching a frame of the show, they’d be right.

And that’s what drives TNA fans nuts. And they take that out on WWE and THEIR fans, but in reality, if they want things to change, they need to take it out on TNA. People who support TNA as violently as some do – even if I don’t understand them, I can unequivocally say that these fans DESERVE to have better ammo to fight with. Fighting with WWE fans or even people who make fun of TNA isn’t going to get you that ammo. ONLY TNA can give you that ammo. THEY’RE the ones that haven’t given you any ammo to fight with in many years, if ever.

Back when I was recapping TNA, I was pretty hard on it most of the time, but I honestly felt (and still feel) that it was pretty justified. This was during the “Immortal” era, and I did try to find every chance I could to say nice things about it. Of course, to many wrestling fans (not just TNA), if you say ANYTHING negative about the show you must have hated the WHOLE show, so that more often than not seemed to fall on deaf ears.

But, say I was recapping a shitty tag-team match, and I called it a shitty tag-team match. I would get comments and emails like “yeah, it wasn’t good, but at least TNA has tag-teams!” And I’m thinking… “so the fuck what?” WWE wasn’t doing it (back then) but TNA was doing it poorly, and that’s supposed to be better?

There wasn’t one thing I could criticize about TNA without someone trying to relate it to what WWE was doing in a similar area (correctly or otherwise) as if that’s supposed to make some sort of difference. WWE did a shitty Divas match, but TNA did a Knockout match that’s SLIGHTLY less shitty, so I’m supposed to love it? I have to pick one to like and one to hate? It’s like they think it’s fucking Sophie’s Choice with wrestling companies.

 

Don’t misunderstand – me, I’ve never understood why fans felt the need to side with one show or another. I try to watch what I enjoy from both shows and can’t be bothered either way. But the truth is, I’ve not enjoyed at least 90% of WWE programming in at LEAST the last 6 or 7 years until VERY recently (like 4 or 5 months ago recently, and even now the weekly TV is still pretty dull, and I stopped watching the shows regularly a long time ago.

And I watched some TNA during that time, at several different periods. And I found the majority of their shows WORSE than WWE. Just because one company is doing something you don’t like doesn’t make the other company awesome, and just because one company is doing something you love doesn’t make the other company suck. Both companies can do well, or not do well, at the same time. The more hardcore TNA fans seem to have a tough time with that concept too.

I’ve never really understood why fans felt the need to pick a side or bitch about one company when speaking about the other. Like I said, if you enjoy TNA, then just say so, or say why. Don’t talk about how WWE sucks compared to them, or about how “WWE fanboys will never leave WWE even though TNA is way better” because it makes YOU the wrestling fans that people correctly make fun of.

 

But the more hardcore and loyal TNA fans have always felt the need to compare TNA to WWE. And they can’t really stop – do you know why?

TNA won’t let them.

This type of TNA fan likes to swallow whatever TNA throat-fucks them with, and they swallow just like a good whore should. And TNA are the ones that are CONSTANTLY comparing themselves to WWE. Catering invasion. Ripoff Sting video. Wrestling Matters. Monday Night War II.

What they don’t get, and what TNA doesn’t get, is that EVERY single attempt has been an abysmal failure. This makes TNA fans comparing TNA to WWE all the more laughable.

 

And this sampling of the TNA fanbase and of TNAInsider from the last 2 weeks, I feel, is justification for why people laugh not just at TNA, but at their fans.

For any TNA fans reading this, if you take one thing away I hope it’s this next part – especially if you’re offended.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying TNA. At all. If you enjoy it, then that’s great. And if you want to shout about how much you enjoy it, then that’s even better. TNA would definitely appreciate it. You’re the kind of fans they need.

What they don’t need are fans that claim that TNA is better than WWE. In the first place, I don’t feel there’s any accurate metric in existence for what makes one wrestling company – or any TV show for that matter – better than the other. You either enjoy it or you don’t, and that varies from person to person.

What TNA doesn’t need are fans like Christian Parazuli, who showed up to Pulse and has been commenting about how anyone who doesn’t like TNA or MUST be a WWE mark. Making a statement like that makes you look dumb, and when people agree with a stupid statement, it makes them look stupid. This happens with hardcore TNA fans a lot, and THIS in turn makes TNA look stupid. If you have a reasonable or rationed argument for why you enjoy TNA… you should make it. You shouldn’t spew ridiculous garbage about WWE or people who don’t enjoy TNA.

By the way, the idea that anyone who makes fun of TNA must be a WWE mark is ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. I’ve enjoyed PLENTY of things TNA has done, probably more than most people on Pulse.

I’ve enjoyed plenty of things that TNA has done over the years. Here are just a few of them.

– AJ Styles / Samoa Joe / Christopher Daniels X-Division series
– LAX (the good one) / Styles & Daniels tag-team feud that lasted almost 4 months
– Motor City Machine Guns / Beer Money feud
– Kurt Angle / Samoa Joe trilogy (over-rated as it was, it was still great)
– Kurt Angle / Desmond Wolfe matches
– The Immortal storyline had a great premise (unfortunately they botched it almost immediately)

And this is without just even getting into individual matches that I thought were great. Check out my old TNA recaps and while I made a lot of fun of the show (deservedly) you’ll see that I praised QUITE a few matches. TNA has and has had great wrestlers. They just have no idea how to utilize those great wrestlers. They think we’d rather watch Ken Anderson, Crimson, Matt Morgan, Hulk Hogan and UFC Fighters in the main event. No matter how many times these concepts fail, TNA continue to beat their heads against the wall doing the exact same thing. And TNA fans honestly can’t understand why fans make fun of that?

 

If you insist on tossing ratings around (let alone ones attached to a single episode of Impact) then there’s some things you should know. The first is that there is absolutely no quantitative evidence to support the statement that TNA is better than WWE. Which is why, if you state that you simply enjoy TNA, and why you enjoy it, people will understand.

But if you start yelling that TNA is better than WWE, nobody knows what the FUCK you’re talking about.

And that’s all there is to it.

 

This has been “Interinactivity”. Thanks for reading, have a great weekend, and I’ll see you when I see you.

Fuck TNA and I’ll be in my trailer.

Cheers,
BD

BD writes about professional wrestling on Inside Pulse until he has to stop because he's about to have a stroke. Any “errors” that are made on his part are, of course, intentional and represent an artistic choice. He acts as a kind of fly paper for the emotionally disturbed.