Clark’s Corner: TNA’s Second Russo Era

Either this promotion is going to find a way to become competition for Vince or they’re already dead and they just don’t know it yet.

For a man with no pro wrestling background in his own life or in his family’s lineage, there is something to be said about how much of an impact Vince Russo has had on the wrestling business. However, that impact is also synonymous with the death of one promotion, the potential death of another, and a style of booking that many have claimed has ruined wrestling as a product. The first “Russo Era” was from 1997-2000; this was the time period where Vince Russo went from being just another member of The E’s writing staff to giving Vince McMahon a good amount of his ideas to actually booking the shows himself to leaving The E for WCW out of nowhere to his inability to turn WCW around and eventually getting fired because of it. TNA’s first Russo Era was from 2002-2004; this was the time where Russo was able to get out of his Time Warner contract and become a writer at TNA’s beginning with possibly the greatest backstage double cross in wrestling history (so good I even tip my hat to Vinnie Roo for that one) to TNA getting past that first year that few outside the promotion thought they would to Russo being relieved of his writing duties and reduced to only an on-air personality at the behest of Hulk Hogan who didn’t end up even coming to TNA (at that time). And finally, the second—and much more disastrous—Russo Era in TNA began the day after Bound for Glory 2006 when Russo officially took over writing duties for TNA. This would also see Scott D’Amore, Mike Tenay, and any other non-Jarrett allies who might provide a filter for a lot of Russo bullshit given the boot from their writing duties.

And in case you were wondering about Russo’s double cross, it came when Vince McMahon actually hired Russo back as a writer for The E in 2002. Russo was already on board with Jeff and Jerry Jarrett to come aboard for TNA, but Russo couldn’t get out of his Time Warner contract from the WCW days unless Vince did that for him. Russo’s first—and only—idea when hired back was a rehash of the disastrous WCW invasion angle of 2001 except this one would involve all the high-priced talent Vince didn’t want to bring in in the first place. Long story short, Russo was working in TNA a short time later.

Now back to the business at hand: Russo’s second run as writer for TNA. Russo’s first run as a writer for TNA could be considered a successful one in the sense that TNA was able to adopt its fast-paced, more athletic identity during this time period. But if you look back at a lot of the storylines and matches that TNA put out during those first two years, I would make the argument that it was mainly the work of guys like A.J. Styles, Jerry Lynn, Low-Ki, and Christopher Daniels that created that identity and not Jeff Jarrett’s interactions with celebrities or guys like Ken Shamrock and Sabu going after the NWA title. By the time Russo was put back in the role of writer in 2006, the promotion had grown exponentially since Russo last had any control over the product. A.J. was still the most identifiable wrestler TNA had, Samoa Joe was primed to become a huge star within TNA, Jim Cornette was within the promotion and had an influence similar to the one he currently has in Ring of Honor (no real power as writer or booker, but people will listen to his ideas if he gives them), and a host of young and hungry wrestlers had made TNA a better product both in entertainment and in-ring quality than The E by a large margin.

This piece is about the problems TNA has had over the past three years that have put them into the position they are currently in. As for Hogan, you won’t read about him here because he is part of TNA’s future problems. And if people don’t understand that it isn’t 1985 or 1995 or 2002 and that Hogan is considered to be either a joke or a relic by the media at large, then it isn’t worth my time or effort to explain it.

“[On Slammiversary] The good news is they were enthusiastic and TNA looked major league if you watched the show…The bad news is it was more an illusion.”
-The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 6/29/09

Maybe it was an illusion all along.

It seems to be that TNA has mainly been used since Russo’s latest arrival as a location for former E employees to piss and moan about Vince (was the VKM name for B.G. & Kip necessary?) or as a place for people to claim how much better this place is than The E, also something strictly done by former E employees. As far as I can tell, when a younger guy or someone who had been in TNA for the majority of its existence makes a rib at The E, they back it up by having a great match or make a point that is legit and don’t just spew childish taunting at Vince and his promotion solely because they’re in a spot where Vince can’t send them down the card. Kurt Angle may have been the biggest example of this as the build to the Jarrett/Angle match for Bound for Glory in ’08 was half Jarrett and Angle feuding with each other, and half of them rehashing the circumstances of Angle’s entrance to TNA. I can still remember reading an article during this time by Jeremy Botter that detailed those final days for Angle in The E from people inside the promotion. The details were pretty scary to be honest as Angle’s painkiller use had gotten ugly and Jarrett noting how much of a mistake getting Angle in ’06 was when hyping their match in ’08 were spot on, but not in the way Jarrett wanted (more on that later).

For any TNA fans who still hold the asinine belief—one that I once possessed—that TNA is competition for The E, I have a couple of reality checks for you:

It is true that The E’s pay-per-view numbers have gone down by a large margin over the past few years as Wrestlemania is the only guaranteed big number for the year, and the other three of the big four—Royal Rumble, Summerslam, Survivor Series—have put up some good numbers while becoming no longer a guarantee. However, the most bought TNA pay-per-views are still Joe/Angle I from Turning Point 2006 and Joe/Angle V from Lockdown 2008, both doing around 50-60,000 buys. Even on their worst nights, The E’s PPV’s can still break 100,000 buys within the U.S. (TNA as far as I know doesn’t get significant or any real PPV buys Internationally). If the time ever came when The E was down to TNA numbers for their PPV’s, they would begin to seriously rethink how many they put out each year; they might even consider going away from the one-a-month system that has been in place since the mid-90’s.

Next, there’s a reason that Bound for Glory was the last non-Impact Zone pay-per-view of this year for TNA and their first since Slammiversary in June. If you’re not bringing in attendances to justify running PPV’s outside of your base arena, then it would be smart business not to run PPV’s from other locations. The problem here is that this shouldn’t be a problem for TNA as they were literally in this same position back in ’06 when they were beginning to run house shows and were thinking about doing a PPV or two outside of Orlando. Fast forward three years later and they’re still in Orlando for ¾ of the year. The other cost cutting measures that TNA has taken over the past six months also illustrates how this promotion has really gone nowhere (other than International tours) since Russo’s latest arrival. The fact that they are taping two and sometimes three weeks at a time is something that only promotions in trouble do; WCW did it in ’93 while they were in the process of losing around $25 million for the year and The E did it during the mid-90’s when PPV buys and house show numbers were sinking into the toilet, and now TNA’s doing it under similar circumstances.

A really big reality TNA supporters have to confront is the fact that it took them around eighteen months with Russo at the helm to break the 1.1 barrier in the T.V. ratings. The fact that 1.1 was the peak rating for a week of TNA T.V. around the time Russo took over the product speaks volumes to the struggles the promotion had in putting on a good product with what Russo was offering, and how what Russo was offering did not entice anyone knew to begin watching TNA. Despite all of the other things Russo had going against him when he came in most recently—no wrestling background, a powerful inability to properly book lesser known talent, a dislike or apathy for smaller wrestlers, a short attention span when it comes to storylines, a massive tendency to book storylines and match results that, more times than not, make no sense—Russo did himself no favors by basically rebooting the promotion into a WWE ripoff by the time his first year in charge of the product was complete. I wrote several times in my column “The Reality of Wrestling” that the main problem with this strategy is that the promotion Russo was ripping off (The E) had such a reach and such a name, that imitating it is tantamount to committing professional suicide because the bigger and more recognizable name is the one people will always go to because of the familiarity. The reason TNA had been growing more and more from 2003 to 2006 was because they were offering a product that was so different from what The E was offering, and to fans of The E who wanted a more athletically based product (something guys like Austin, The Rock, Foley, HHH in his prime, Benoit, Jericho, Angle, Mysterio, Guerrero, Van Dam, etc. could offer while being sports entertainment personalities at the same time) TNA offered such a product. This was the main reason I turned to TNA in the first place, and basically all of the people I knew that watched wrestling turned to TNA. The fact that the numbers gradually were moving up during TNA’s first year on T.V. (Oct. 2005-Oct. 2006) and the fact that they remained stagnant once the change in philosophy took shape proves this to my satisfaction.

TNA has used foreign wrestlers since its inception to add something to their cards that The E wouldn’t. It is another example of why Russo had no business in TNA after his first run: inability to book foreign talent or anything foreign. Considering the fact that Jarrett himself petitioned to get Sabin & Shelley on this past January’s Tokyo Dome show that TNA sent talent to, and that the World X Cup was created after Russo’s first run as a writer for TNA makes it obvious who was really pulling the strings as far as those things are concerned. The IWGP tag title situation is the prime example of inability to book all things foreign as far as Russo in TNA is concerned. Forget the fact that Russo once famously stated in an interview that American fans wouldn’t support foreign wrestlers because they were foreign, the fact is that they had another promotion’s tag titles (Sabin & Shelley had the IWGP jr. tag titles until the summer), and they did nothing with them. Oh wait, that’s right, Russo did do something with the IWGP tag titles: he pulled a double cross by having them change hands without even telling New Japan it was going to happen! These weren’t Russo’s titles to play with the way the TNA tag titles are (because they are TNA’s tag titles), and the IWGP tag belts could have been a way to subtly bring back that variety via foreign wrestlers coming in and challenging for the belts or something along those lines. Instead we get a title change via a screwjob finish in a stipulation match on T.V. where I honestly don’t believe anyone in the arena even knew the belts were on the line based on the reaction to the match. The only reason New Japan eventually relented and recognized the title change is because possession is 9/10 of the law and they really couldn’t do anything about it. That whole situation brings back memories of Juventud Guerrera winning the IWGP jr. title in WCW by smashing a tequila bottle over Jushin “Thunder” Liger’s head in a five-minute match.

And how about the fact that Bobby Lashley, Hernandez, and Matt Morgan are the three wrestlers that Russo and Dixie Carter have decided should be the faces of the promotion? Again, imitating the competition is no way to become competitive with them. Remember, the moment WCW stopped being like The E is the moment they began to murder them in the ratings. Looking at Lashley, Hernandez, and Morgan, what things do they have in common? They’re big, they’re imposing, and they don’t wrestle that well. Hernandez is easily the best of the three, and has turned into quite the tag wrestler, but he has a long way to go before he is a main-event level performer the way Joe and A.J. and Angle are. With Morgan, his physical attributes and the fact that the crowd is getting into him will only be able to hide the fact that he’s still a pretty awful wrestler for so long; the fact that he apparently put everything he had into the match with Angle in Irvine isn’t going to be enough if night after night he’s sucking up the joint. Plus, what’s going to happen when it’s Morgan who needs to carry things in the ring, but he’s spent his entire time in the main-event being carried by more capable wrestlers? That’s a problem that is going to come up if Morgan is pushed to the top because that push has so far been with far more talented wrestlers carrying things. Lashley only proves to me without a shadow of a doubt that Dixie Carter doesn’t know shit about wrestling. The Hogan signing and her comments at the ensuing press conference only solidified that in my mind, but signing Lashley with the intention of making him one of your top stars is ludicrous considering his rising MMA career. MMA is a much safer career than pro wrestler (no big bumps, less risk of injury, less travel, no touring) and a potentially much more money making career. So to devote a good amount of time and energy that could be used on someone who is guaranteed to stick around or someone who would be more motivated to excel with such a push is beyond stupid. Especially because Lashley is someone who will either leave or wrestle even less if a big money offer from Strikeforce or UFC came along. It just shows just how out of touch and clueless Dixie is.

The biggest reality for TNA and its supporters right now is that things would actually be a lot scarier without Russo. Karen Angle shacking up with Jeff Jarrett caused Kurt Angle to draw the line in the sand that has likely sealed Jarrett’s fate as far as his future within TNA is concerned. But then, as it appeared Angle was going to take over the book, he makes a spectacle out of himself with the whole Rhaka Khan situation. Despite the fact that he was cleared of all charges, it’s very, very unlikely that he’ll get the book, and that’s predicated on whether he even sticks around once his contract ends. Booker T has already left after his contract needs weren’t met, Sting may or may not be coming back (likely he will, but who really cares at this point?), and Hogan has arrived in TNA six years after it would have made any difference on the promotion as a whole. Cornette was given his release when he refused to be 100% behind Russo and was not “Hollywood” enough to be given the book despite all of his qualifications for booking a wrestling promotion as well as a good portion of the locker room pulling for Cornette to get the book (again, Dixie, out of touch). So with Angle and Cornette out, the only other person within the promotion with any real booking experience in his career is Kevin Nash. Considering Nash’s WCW time with the book, it’s obvious that he would be the absolute wrong choice, but remember Dixie doesn’t know shit, so he very likely could get the book, especially with Hogan’s backing, which Nash very likely could get if the subject came up. So to review TNA’s backstage situation right now: Russo has his job for now, Jarrett may be gone before 2009 is done or may just sink into obscurity for the rest of his career, Angle is either going to leave or just won’t become booker, Hogan has massive influence, Cornette is gone, D’Amore is basically gone, Tenay is just an announcer, Nash is still just hanging around waiting for his next push or promotion into a position of importance. To reiterate: Jarrett, Dixie, and TNA missed their shot to get rid of Russo and taking him out of the equation now would make things even worse in TNA.

“In the last few years you have Kurt Angle, Team 3D, Booker T, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall all coming in either from The E or exile or possible retirement with oodles to do from the creative department and the bi-product of this overuse of people with names is Chris Harris leaving in disgust and the month or so of speculation as to Samoa Joe’s life in TNA.”
-The Reality of Wrestling, 6/11/08

“TNA needs to pull a miracle with this young versus old thing and that means a few things: the young guys HAVE to be the faces and the old guys HAVE to be the heels, the old guys have to job in the majority of the important matches, and effort has to be at 100% throughout or it’s just not going to work.”
-The Reality of Wrestling, 10/22/08

People who watch TNA now and have been watching it through the last few years may want to applaud Russo or TNA in general for finally giving younger guys the spotlight and making them a focal point of the product, but I say no. First of all, this is something that should have been in place since the beginning of the second Russo era in TNA, and second, they don’t deserve credit for finally pushing the young guys.

The main reason they don’t deserve credit is that these young guys have always been there. When Russo was given the book back in October of ’06 the following guys who are now being given pushes or T.V. time at the least: Samoa Joe, A.J. Styles, Christopher Daniels, Chris Sabin, Alex Shelley, Jay Lethal, Eric Young, Petey Williams, and Kazarian. In the time from Russo’s arrival to the current day, Joe has been devalued and booked to be a choker before being given a title reign that was as halfassed as it gets from a booking perspective; A.J. was turned into the village idiot despite the potential for him being part of two great tag teams when he was with Christian Cage and Kurt Angle, neither team was ever really made; Daniels was given a horrifically bad feud with Sting that could have been saved if Sting was motivated to make it something, was given a XXX reunion with Russo not willing to do anything with it, and only now is being booked effectively for the first time since ’06 with Curry Man being done strictly for laughs and was something I supported and had no problem with; Sabin & Shelley have had to spend their entire time as a team in TNA being undervalued and booked to look like fools most of the time (remember their feuds with Bob Backlund and Mick Foley?); Kazarian got the worst feud of last year with Dustin Rhodes and despite rumors of a bigger push, got saddled with the Suicide gimmick which ran its course after about a month or two; Lethal got saddled with the Macho Man gimmick because he did a good impression of him, and the disastrous feud with Sonjay Dutt was only saved by both men’s talent in the blowoff of the feud—something TNA didn’t get the hint on; Petey was given basically nothing to do until he was made Scott Steiner’s little sidekick in a move that went somewhere, but then plummeted because there was no blowoff to it, and then was fired as a cost cutting measure because Russo had nothing for him to do; and Eric Young’s comedy schtick as the nervous member of Team Canada was turned into him being more child than man, and both were around much too long with Eric only getting a serious push in the past couple of months.

The X-Division was at a point in late-2006 where it seemed like it was going to become the face of TNA once again. The Sabin/Low-Ki match at that year’s Bound for Glory show was the showstealing match and the division itself was packed with Sabin, Shelley, Low-Ki, Jerry Lynn was about to come back, Petey, Matt Bentley, Kazarian, Austin Aries, Roderick Strong, The Naturals, Elix Skipper, Daniels; and Joe had set the precedent that heavyweights could be intertwined into the X-Division as long as the in-ring results were good. TNA’s heavyweight division at the time had guys like Joe, A.J., Cage, and Eric Young who could have good and even great matches with the smaller guys.

On the X-Division, TNA’s severing of its work relationship with Ring of Honor was one of the many huge mistakes that went unnoticed at the time it was made in 2007. When TNA broke its ties with the NWA (like WCW did in 1991), its work relationship with Ring of Honor was next because of ROH’s debut on pay-per-view. The reason this was such a mistake was because ROH had plenty of guys that weren’t getting PPV time that TNA could’ve brought in for the same per appearance price that most of their own talent was being paid with, no harm no foul.

The other reason Russo doesn’t deserve credit for his current pushing of the young guys is because in the summer of 2007, TNA had its best collection of heavyweight talent before or after. At the time there was Angle, Joe, A.J., Cage, Rhino, James Storm, Robert Roode, Chris Harris. All were motivated and all wrestling pretty good. And with Storm, Roode, and Harris in need of direction within the promotion, booking them as people to be taken seriously against the more established guys would’ve done wonders and probably would’ve kept Chris Harris in TNA. And while Beer Money was a byproduct of this lack of proper use of the heavyweights, that team became a successful one because of Roode & Storm’s work ethic to make the team work. Out of above mentioned group of heavyweights from that summer, only Cage and Angle were booked to be effective; Storm, Roode, and Harris were barely booked to even be there, Joe was booked to be a guy who couldn’t win the big one, A.J. was booked to be someone’s lackey, and Rhino was able to keep him job by just being there instead of serving a greater purpose as a heavyweight advancement talent (ditto could go for Sting, Steiner, and Nash at that time).

And finally, the Main Event Mafia/TNA Originals feud was not only Russo’s last real chance to do anything with the young talent he had at his disposal, but also showed how unwilling he was to do anything with that talent. This was a golden opportunity—something I noted in my article a few times—to finally put the younger talent over the top and justify a lot of the older talent even being there, but again it didn’t happen. And the transformation of the feud from an old v. young feud into an old v. old feud only showed that this was no longer TNA, but a ripoff of The E; think HUSTLE in the U.S., but toned down.

This disaster ended up being what necessitated the Samoa Joe heel turn just so it would be something different for Joe to do after having him off of T.V. for several months despite Joe not being injured at the time—ironic considering he was kept on T.V. in the summer despite some broken fingers and bicep injuries in a weightlifting incident. The heel turn was poorly done from the start with the Nation of Violence gimmick; I had no problem with the gimmick himself, but the One Man Gang vest that Joe sports now would’ve been better from the get-go, but did we need the facial tattoo and the machete? Plus, I always thought that “I am a nation of violence” would’ve been a better quote to go with the heel turn and return to Joe being a guy randomly kicking people’s asses. And in Detroit when he literally gave the world title to Angle in the king of the mountain match made me begin to question Russo’s sanity (and that’s not even a joke).

In the end, what it comes down to is people are giving or considering given credit to someone for doing something right after three years of fuckups. If this were any other kind of work (and I just mean in the writing world), he would’ve been out on his ass before the end of his first year. Not only would he have been out on his ass, but he would’ve become the laughingstock he deserves to be known as by this point if he continued to pitch the ridiculous and stupid ideas that Dixie and Jarrett appeared to think were good enough to give the green light to.

“The fact that these older guys don’t do house shows, rarely put over younger guys, and seem to be in an angle that has already run its course as far as making people remember these guys are great, all point to a conspiracy theory that Russo is using TNA as a final big push for these older guys with Kurt Angle included because he’s Kurt Fucking Angle.”
-The Reality of Wrestling, 11/19/08

Now that I’ve gone over how the past three years have destroyed, derailed, or set back many careers, I’m going to look at the older talent who are largely responsible for all of it happening, as they were the people who had the power to put a stop to it and did nothing.

I’m going to start by noting that Kevin Nash has had a career-long pattern of unwillingness to job to younger talent, even if the situation calls for it. However, in this case, I’m not going to put a ton of blame on Nash because I’m doubting Russo had a problem with this selfish tendency of Nash’s and probably didn’t even push Nash to do many jobs anyway. Plus, unlike most of the people you’ll read about in this section, Nash didn’t come into TNA at any point saying that he was there to help give the younger guys the rub or pass the torch or any of that. It is worth noting that he did mention that he was a fan of A.J.’s work when he came to TNA in ’04, but that’s about it. Nash’s best attribute has always been his ability on the microphone, but that doesn’t justify being in the ring and being booked more effectively than a good chunk of the promotion when his legs have been no good since he tore a quad getting into the ring back in 2002 (laughed my ass off), and even being in the ring—as he was earlier in the year—while still recovering from a staph infection.

Booker T was one of the people who came in under the phony guise of helping to elevate the younger talent. When you consider the circumstances surrounding his exit—not getting what he wanted in his contract and backing out of a house show obligation—combined with the fact that he did so few noteworthy jobs that I can’t recall if he really did any that helped out a wrestler with less name value. The fact that he ran a small Indy promotion in Houston did help sell his “helping the young guys” act, but even that turned out to be something idle as we really haven’t heard much about former TNA talent or Indy talent from around the U.S. being booked in that promotion, have we?

I will lay no real blame on Scott Steiner for the old guard reducing TNA to rubble because Steiner pulled out his A-game when he needed to. The match with Joe back in ’06 is the best example as that match turned out to be the surprise of that summer because of how it exceeded everyone’s expectation. And he did pull out his game in ’08 in matches against younger guys and older guys. The fact that at this point in his career he would pull out the Screwdriver in his PPV match with Petey is both scary and very, very commendable.

Kurt Angle’s morphing into HHH (in terms of backstage behavior and when he jobs) in 2007 is something that no doubt set the promotion back and helped the downward spiral of the promotion. However, he did have a rejuvenation in the ring during 2008 that saw some great matches with Joe, the dream match with Nagata living up to the billing, and a return to the Kurt Angle of old that could light it up in the ring every night. Angle is still arguably the best talent TNA has as far as workrate and in-ring performance goes and the fact that he is the only member of the old guard not to become a shell of his former self in TNA shows that his improvement after a disastrous 2007 was not only sincere, but appears to be long-lasting.

Mick Foley should be ashamed with his run in TNA. That sums up Foley’s thirteen months in TNA and as a fan of Foley’s since his arrival in The E back in ’96, it pains me to have to think that, but it’s true. Terry Funk would be very disappointed Mick; Terry made a separate career at the end of his time as a full-time wrestler helping the next generation get their first big breaks, and while Mick is largely responsible for making HHH a star, he had an even better chance to become his most famous rival and a man he respected greatly. This was Mick’s chance to really put over the younger talent and give them the same kind of jump-start he gave HHH on two separate occasions. Instead we got Mick in a comedy feud with Sabin & Shelley where the MCMG were booked to look foolish on a weekly basis, the majority of Mick’s time being used for comedic backstage segments in his “office” with some being very funny and others ranging from terrible to downright sad, and of course Mick’s brief world title run, which marked the absolute end of the TNA title being anything more than prop (sorry A.J.).

And finally, Sting. Steve Bordum as I nicknamed him in my first column calling for Russo’s firing—in March 2007—living up to that nickname by proving how over-the-hill he was as a wrestler during his entire stay in TNA. Granted, he was just shy of 47 when he came into TNA so my expectations weren’t too high going in. But apparently TNA’s expectations of his drawing power were despite the fact that his only appearance in the U.S. since the fall of WCW up until 2006 was at TNA’s first anniversary show in 2003, and that the fans who watched him in WCW likely didn’t watch wrestling anymore since the business’ downward spiral in the years following that promotion’s demise. Sting was easily the most vocal of the older wrestlers who came into TNA about helping out the young guys and giving them the rub they needed to become bigger names within the business, specifically citing guys like A.J. and Abyss. However, those jobs never came while main-event matches and brief title reigns did; the title reigns I’ll equate to Giant Baba’s three NWA title reigns in the 1970’s, which like Sting’s were short ones and only served the purpose of being able to say that that guy won that title without needing to mention how long the title reign was. It’s also funny that his last title reign (Oct. 2008-April 2009) was one that began with him winning a match he would have served a greater good losing—last year’s Bound for Glory main-event—and ended with a match that killed the belt’s value possibly for good—the cage match with Foley that main-evented this year’s Lockdown PPV).

Some may have read this last part and think I’m piling on mainly because they were fans of these guys when they were little kids and don’t want to let go of that. If that’s the case, then it’s a good example of why these guys were able to run rampant through the promotion without consequence: because they already had a legacy. But how do you get a legacy like that? How do you get to the positions with the most notoriety? The simplest answer is that you have to either be a great wrestler or have incredible charisma and interview ability, or both. But you also have to get those wins against the older generation because that signals to the fans that a change is taking place; Misawa over Jumbo in their first meeting, Flair over Race at Starrcade ’83, Sting going 45 minutes with Flair at Clash I (a rare example of a non-win doing the job), Warrior over Hogan at Wrestlemania VI, Austin over HBK at Wrestlemania XIV, Nagata over Muto in the ’01 G-1 Climax final are all examples of a previous generation wrestler putting over a younger generation wrestler and ushering in a new chapter in the history of the promotion in which the match happens. TNA did not have such a match during the last few years as all of Sting’s in-ring credibility was gone by the time A.J. got the clean win a month ago, and Joe’s title win over Angle last year was a title win almost two years over due by the standards of anyone who had watched TNA since Joe’s arrival.

The bigger reason that I may appear to be piling on against the older generation in TNA is because a lot of this could have been avoided if these guys had actually been looking out for the greater good and not themselves. When Sting dropped the NWA title to Abyss at Russo’s first PPV in charge, he lost it by DQ since that’s an old NWA rule allowing a title change without a clean finish. Days later it was reported that Sting wanted to drop the belt clean to Abyss, but Russo vetoed that suggestion. For the $500,000 they were paying Sting at the time, you’d think he’d have more pull and would’ve put up more of a fuss about it if he truly believed that was the right way to go. Why didn’t Foley—a normally knowledgeable guy about the business—not tell Russo that giving him the world title in literally his second pay-per-view match in TNA was a bad idea? Wouldn’t Sting/Foley had been just as effective as a “dream match” and not as a title match? If Angle had the respect for Joe that he said he did after their third straight PPV match back in ’07, why didn’t he pitch for Joe to win the belt from him that year? Why didn’t Sting use his clout to convince Russo or Jarrett that he should put over A.J. last November when they first had a match for the title? These are the questions whose answers all point to these guys not being guys who wanted to make stars, but guys who wanted to be stars even if their time had passed. If these guys were truly leaders and truly realistic about their age and their place within the business, they would’ve taken it upon themselves to make the next generation and to hell with Russo’s stupid booking tactics. But they didn’t, which makes Sting’s mic time talking about Ric Flair last year in hyping his Bound for Glory match against Joe all the funnier and sadder. It was funny because Flair did for Sting what Sting didn’t do for anybody in TNA and sad because people actually believed what Sting was saying was something that he embodied.

As for Jarrett, I’ll get to him in a little bit…

——————Where TNA talent should go if TNA really is done——————

NOTE: The condition of the global economy has put the kibosh on most promotions bringing in foreign (in this case American) talent. This has been felt particularly in Mexico, but Japan has suffered just as much to the extent that New Japan is the only promotion that has been willing to bring in foreign talent and not just use the foreigners they already have. The following section is based on the notion that by the time TNA dies (should it die) the global economy will have improved to the extent that Japanese and Mexican promotions can afford to bring in foreign talent the way they were able to prior to 2008.

Samoa JoePro Wrestling NOAH
I honestly don’t believe that The E will ever take Joe solely based on his physique—something solidified to me with the Morishima situation earlier in the year—so Japan is the best bet for Joe to prosper. And of all the Japanese promotions, NOAH fits Joe’s style and range as a worker better than any other. New Japan is the place to be in Japan right now because it has been the WWE of Japan for almost its entire exist. However, NOAH may be on the comeback trail in the next few years and if you look at their heavyweight division, it’s all big bruising guys who wrestle a mostly brawling style; that’s Joe in a nutshell. A lot of these guys—Go Shiozaki, Takeshi Suguira, Jun Akiyama most notably—have the same kind of wider range that Joe has where they could wrestle matches other than brawls and make them entertaining while maintaining quality. Add to that the fact that almost every light heavyweight on the NOAH roster is one Joe has either wrestled at some point or could have a great match with ala his X-Division beginnings in 05-06, and I don’t think there’s a better option for Joe as far as Japan goes.

A.J. StylesNew Japan Pro Wrestling
While I think The E would go after A.J., if he gained a reputation in Japan in between TNA and The E, he wouldn’t have to risk the “other promotion” stigma that Punk went and all the high-profile WCW guys went through. Plus, A.J. has wrestled in Japan in recent time with all appearances being noteworthy. With New Japan looking to recreate the glory years of the 90’s in the ring in the light heavyweight division, A.J. could help the process along the same way he helped make the X-division the face of TNA. The added bonus with A.J. is that he can wrestle with heavyweights and a feud with Tanahashi—the wrestler from New Japan that’s he’s wrestled in every recent appearance there—would be a good starting point to establish him as a new gaijin force in the promotion, even if it happened a year or two from now.

Christopher DanielsNew Japan Pro Wrestling (Curry Man) or All Japan Pro Wrestling (Fallen Angel)
I make the distinction because what character or what mode Daniels would go with in Japan does make the difference as to where he’d be best suited. First of all, he’s already wrestled for a little bit in New Japan as Curry Man, so that seems to be a given if he were to go in that direction. With All Japan, their wrestlers tend to have darker characters—The Voodoo Murderers, The Great MUTA and all the people who copy it—and The Fallen Angel would be a good fit for Voodoo Murderers or even by himself as someone menacing AJPW’s light heavyweight division and everyone in it while speaking the gospel.

Jay Lethal & Consequences CreedDragon Gate
Neither of these two guys have enough classic matches or word of mouth attached to them for The E to pick them up, and the same could be said for three of Japan’s big four (New Japan, All Japan, NOAH), but the fourth of that group—Dragon Gate—would be ideal for these guys. Dragon Gate has made Japan a four promotion country as far as major wrestling promotions go with its gradual and successful build culminating with their first ever Sumo Hall show back in March, which outdrew all but one show New Japan and All Japan has run there in the past two years (not bad for a promotion that’s only been around for a little over five years). Lethal Consequences is a team built on speed and athleticism—two things Dragon Gate feeds on—as well as plenty of personality, a lot of it untapped by TNA. Should these guys end up in Japan, that personality and charisma would be unleashed since Lethal would more than likely no longer rely on the Macho Man character and the two would be in a position where they’d have to bust out and go full-bore because any elevation they would hope to make as wrestlers would be at stake.

The Latin American Exchange (Homicide & Hernandez)AAA (Asistencia Asesoría y Administración)
I know they broke up and Homicide went heel and Hernandez went face and all that, but I still think this would work in a big way south of the border. With Konnan being the main writer for AAA right now, the promotion has taken a sports-entertainment approach (think Mexico’s version of The E). And despite the goofiness and sometimes rampant stupidity of some of their angles, Konnan is still on T.V. in Mexico and is still revered mainly because of his importance for the business in Mexico during the 90’s. All that aside, even after Konnan officially is done wrestling or when he’s regulated to wrestling against aging wrestlers, non-wrestlers, or in comedy matches, he’s still going to be the center of attention when he’s out there. I couldn’t think of anything better than a L.A.X. reunion in Mexico with Homicide and Hernandez coming in as Konnan’s bodyguards, Homicide of course bringing the trusty fork along. It would be a perfect catalyst for both men whether it be a singles run for each or a collective tag run. Homicide’s charisma, style of wrestling, and heel tactics would work incredibly well in AAA. As for Hernandez, even if he used “Super Mex” only as a nickname, it would resonate because natives (or people of Mexican decent) are always going to be cheered over all others; the best example would be Dr Wagner Jr. (born in Mexico) coming into AAA after spending basically his whole career wrestling for the competition, CMLL, and getting cheered over Mesias (born in Puerto Rico) who had been the company’s top face for the seven months prior to their feud beginning.

Beer Money Inc.New Japan Pro Wrestling or World Wrestling Entertainment
The E’s tag division needs some Beer Money. There it is, and it’s true too. While Cryme Time and the Hart Dynasty did have a nice series of matches recently, Miz & Morrison and the Colons had a great little feud earlier in the year, JeriShow is doing some fun things as a team, and Jericho & Edge were a fun team in the making, it’s all temporary as far as the tag division is concerned. A team like Beer Money has the gimmick and the charisma to get over right away and have the benefit of being a heavyweight team where as most noteworthy teams in recent time for The E have been light heavyweight, in between light heavyweight and heavyweight, or have been a combination of the two. And I know Beer Money could get over quick because I didn’t like the idea of teaming Storm & Roode together when they did because I saw it as a cop out of both men’s half-hearted singles pushes. However, they did grow on me to the point where I chant “Beer…Money!” right with them when they do it in a match. Enough said.

Eric YoungNew Japan Pro Wrestling
I would’ve suggested HUSTLE as a location for Eric if he wanted to revert back to Tweak from South Park, but then I remembered that Eric probably wants to have a career, so New Japan is the place for him. Like Lethal Consequences, Eric doesn’t have a list of classic matches or great performances to his résumé and has been a good worker (not great) throughout his career, a consistency New Japan could use (they’ve pushed A-Train for crying out loud). The added bonus for Eric is the fact that Masahiro Chono booked him on both of his disastrous Pro Wrestling Expo shows last year meaning that he either sees something in Eric that nobody else does or thought that Eric was a nice choice to add some flavor to his card. Whatever Chono’s motivation, it works for Eric because if Chono wanted to bring Eric in, he at least has the pull to potentially make it happen. And Eric’s heel turn has been a good one from where I’m sitting, so I think if he can continue on that path, it might not be impossible for him to get that job combined with Chono’s backing.

Matt MorganWorld Wrestling Entertainment
Morgan is one of the few times I’ve ever questioned Jim Cornette’s ability to scout talent. The funny thing about the wrestling business is that if you have the right image for a promotion, they will forget every negative you have. In Morgan’s case, he is exactly what The E looks for—tall, muscular, imposing—and has the added bonus of having more athletic ability than most of the big guys The E has, and that’s why The E got him in the first place. The fact that Vince fired him means nothing as 99% of people Vince fires gets a second chance. That Morgan apparently put his work boots on for one night against Angle along with A.J. carrying him to the only good T.V. matches he’s ever had should be enough for Morgan to get a job in The E should TNA go down. Forget that Morgan’s entire run in TNA has been lackluster both in how he was handled and in how he performed in the ring because you have to remember that as far as The E is concerned, if you’re over 6’2” you don’t really need to be any good at wrestling to wrestle for them.

The Motor City Machine GunsNew Japan Pro Wrestling
The fact that The Guns have wrestled in New Japan prior to their IWGP jr. tag title win while in TNA does help their chances of reentering the promotion after TNA. Also, they had a very unnoticed and underrated run in Zero-One prior to any time in New Japan, so I’d say their Japan cred is well in place within the country. They’re fast, they’re flashy, they’re great tag wrestlers and a great team, so they have all the pieces they would need to at least get a job. They have the added bonus of being American and have proven that they can be punk heels so well that there are times that they are heelish even when they’re trying to be faces. So even if they had to go with the typical xenophobic storyline of our country versus another country that has been done since countries began to send their wrestlers to other countries, it would still work for The Guns. The fact that New Japan has been focusing more on the in-ring aspect of things when it comes to their light heavyweight division means Sabin & Shelley would fit like a glove. Remember, they got New Japan’s jr. tag titles before they got TNA’s tag titles.

Suicide/KazarianDragon Gate
Again, this has a lot to do with the fact that Kazarian doesn’t have that many classics under his belt in recent time. Flash back to the end of ’07 and Kazarian still had a great rep within the business as far as his workrate and ability to have great matches. Add that to the Angle T.V. match from that time period and he probably would’ve gotten another shot in The E. Now, with the shit feud with Dustin Rhodes, the many big match losses, and the suicide character, the options are much less for Kazarian as far as Japan or even Mexico goes. However, Dragon Gate—maybe Dragon Gate USA more specifically—can always use guys like Kazarian: fast paced, good worker, and still capable of putting on really great matches when he is motivated to do so or is given enough time to do so.

AbyssWorld Wrestling Entertainment or All Japan Pro Wrestling
Considering his style, his character, and his willingness to do the hardcore bumps that few in The E would even consider doing, Abyss would be a natural pickup for Vince if or when TNA dissolves. However, All Japan is WWE Japan in many, many ways and would be just as good a place for Abyss. There isn’t much of a style difference between the two and from a character standpoint, Abyss could come in and team with MUTA, thus allowing the darker and cooler Abyss to reemerge. If not, he could go to The E and become Kane version 2 and be an example of the sequel outdoing the original.

——–TNA’s “Look in the mirror moments” during the second Russo Era——–

To say that TNA has been a self-destructive entity since Vince Russo’s most recent arrival into the promotion would be putting things mildly. It’s already been documented in this piece that TNA seems to have quite the skill went it comes to fucking up sure things. However, with all of the mistakes and successes the promotion has experienced since Vinnie Roo’s latest arrival, there have been several moments where those who had the power to do something—Jarrett, Dixie, and maybe some of the other older guys—should have been awakened to what the promotion had become and what could be done to improve things, something they have only recently realized. Here are such moments where TNA could have turned things around if they had just woken up:

RUSSO’S FIRST MONTH ON THE JOB
Whatever benefit of the doubt I gave Russo this time around evaporated during the first month he was in charge of the product. First, he had a reverse battle royal (a match that still makes no sense to me) to determine the #1 contender for the world title that ended up winning worst match of the year on many lists. Then all of Chris Sabin’s post-Bound for Glory momentum after his hometown X-division title win was taken away by Russo having him drop the title to A.J. Styles (who should have been a full-time heavyweight by this time), and followed that up with a nonsensical heel turn against Jerry Lynn. Then in his first pay-per-view in charge—one that was fabulous looking on paper—he made all the wrong moves; the two biggest were Abyss winning the world title over Sting via DQ (a stupid old NWA rule) instead of a clean win, and killed almost any chance Samoa Joe had of becoming the top star in TNA by having him lose in the first and most important match against Kurt Angle. As far as the direction of the promotion had through Bound for Glory and the direction Russo took it in during his first thirty days, there couldn’t have been any more polar opposites.

CHRIS HARRIS’ FINAL MONTHS IN TNA
This one was another gimme that Russo messed up by being Russo. Because Russo couldn’t think of anything to do with Harris after his feud with former AMW tag partner James Storm, he simply let him fade away by having him on iMPACT! less and less despite the fact that this was during the time where Shark Boy became Stone Cold Shark Boy and was on the show every week. You must remember that before Harris’ steady departure from TNA T.V. he was given Jeff Jarrett’s spot in that year’s King of the Mountain match at TNA’s anniversary show. This came after Jarrett’s heartfelt tribute to his recently deceased wife, and the symbolism of giving Harris his spot should have been enough of a catalyst for a singles push for Harris. Instead, it wasn’t acted upon and Harris left the promotion in disgust by the end of the summer. This would set an ugly precedent of TNA undervaluing and eventually firing talent that had been with the promotion either from the beginning or for most of its time at the Nashville Fairgrounds.

THE JOE/ANGLE MATCH WITH EVERY TNA TITLE ON THE LINE
The notion of one match having every single belt on the line is ludicrous enough, but what ended up transpiring in the match was even more ludicrous, and even more sad. That two people held all of the titles not only showed Russo’s inability to make the promotion’s titles mean anything, but also that he really had no idea how to book anyone in the promotion without name value already. As for the match itself, it was another example of Russo not listening to the fans or executing common sense. Even when Russo wasted the Joe/Angle feud by having the two in singles matches against each other on three straight pay-per-view’s (Angle’s first three in-ring PPV’s with TNA), it apparently wasn’t enough just to have them go out and wrestle each other again, they had to insert Karen Angle into the mix. Why? We don’t really know that one. The matches themselves were well received by those who reviewed them and by the fans who were there, the feud itself was still simmering in the months separating their three-match series and this one. But for some reason, every title in the promotion had to be on the line, and Karen Angle was at ringside after “leaving” Kurt on the go-home show leading to the pay-per-view. Now even if you hadn’t heard of Russo, the “Russo Swerve” (a form of bait-and-switch where every element of a storyline is set up one way, but at the end there’s a heel turn that makes absolutely no sense) has been adopted by The E since Russo’s departure in ’99 and has become a joke within wrestling because of The E’s overuse of it, as well as Russo’s continuing use of it in TNA. Well, TNA felt the impact of it as Karen Angle wasn’t really leaving Kurt and helped Kurt beat Joe via a chairshot to take all of the titles. In what was billed as the biggest match in the promotion’s history (because of all the titles being on the line) we get a Russo Swerve and an interference-laden finish all to begin the set up for Sting/Angle.

SAMOA JOE’S SHOOT ON TNA
Scott Hall had already been in TNA several times with mixed results, but the silver lining every time was that at least he showed up. This was not the case in December of ’07 when Hall no-showed TNA’s Turning Point PPV. The weeks preceding the show had Hall, Nash, and Joe form a trio to go against Angle, Tomko, and A.J. The night of the show, Hall didn’t show up and it seemed that this was the tip of the iceberg for Joe. Before the match Joe noted that “they gave me a live mic on pay-per-view” and proceeded to deliver what should have been the wake up call to the entire promotion: a rant in which Joe noted how it was the younger, harder working guys that made the promotion what it was, but there were plenty of older guys there just to get paid and bask in the spotlight one more time. If you have never seen this clip, please do, and watch it with the knowledge of the Main Event Mafia/TNA Originals disaster in mind, something that began almost a FULL YEAR after this rant happened. What it should have been was the last time TNA trusted an older wrestler with a main-event position whether because they wouldn’t show up or they just couldn’t handle that position anymore. Instead it was simply the last time Scott Hall was brought into TNA.

JOE/ANGLE, LOCKDOWN 2008
This was the only time in Russo’s most recent time in TNA that he used a more realistic approach to hyping a match. The last Joe/Angle pay-per-view encounter was for the all-cage Lockdown PPV and as such was booked to be a UWFi-style (shoot-style) match since it was in the cage and UFC is fought in a cage. With that came training montages, interviews with people all around TNA, and more elaborate introductions, all done to create the big-match feel that had been lost in TNA since the first Joe/Angle match in late-2006. The strategy worked as the show had one of the top three paid attendances for a TNA show in the U.S., and is still one of the two most bought pay-per-views in TNA history. Sadly, the change in philosophy and approach that this seemed to single didn’t come as the more elaborate intro’s were the only thing that Russo decided to stick with after the match was done.

What I’m getting at by calling these moments “look in the mirror” moments is that each one of these moments represented what TNA was becoming, had become, or was completely different from what it had become. Each moment represented a brief period of time where people like Jarrett and Dixie and Russo could have reevaluated the promotion and even themselves, but chose not to. These were all incidents where if they were acted upon and if changes were made, could have prevented TNA’s downfall or at least would’ve have shown the talent and the supporters of TNA that those in charge were open to change and weren’t going to keep making the same mistakes until they hit rock bottom.

“Jarrett was the man who hired Russo in the first place. Why did he hire him back? Well there friends and he needed a job and he was booking WCW near the end, when Jarrett got his first real big push in the big leagues, so may be he felt grateful and wanted to give him a job in his promotion for the second time.”
-The Reality of Wrestling, 11/19/08

If the past three years have proven anything it’s that Jeff Jarrett is a good friend.

The fact that Jarrett’s friendship with Vinnie Roo was enough to put his promotion at risk by giving this guy the kind of control that ended up killing WCW (something Jarrett was around for) shows how good of a friend Jarrett can be. However this is exactly why the king of the mountain is the most to blame for the current state of TNA: he hired Russo and did not act as the filter for most of Russo’s nonsense the way J.R. and Daddy Vince did during Russo’s time in The E.

Considering Jarrett had the veto power that Vince has in The E, it’s all the more pitiful and all the more confusing as to why he didn’t put an immediate stop to Russo’s new direction for TNA by the six month mark when the pay-per-view buys failed to increase, the ratings failed to increase, and it was already clear that the younger talent was being sacrificed and misused to a great degree. Time management was also something Jarrett should have intervened with because the episodes of iMPACT! prior to Russo’s arrival were pretty well organized and when they weren’t, the excuse was that TNA only had one hour to The E’s two for their shows. Russo inherited the two-hour time slot and thus there was no reason that there should be the disorganized madness that we have been subjected to for the better part of the last three years; all matches getting under fifteen minutes of air time, too much commercial time, the majority of each show being dedicated to angle advancement that is usually nonexistent, i.e. the same thing week after week with no end in sight (see the A.J./Rhino feud, see the M.E.M. disaster, see the A.J./Karen Angle fiasco). Match time became atrocious and instances—most notably the Sabin/A.J./Joe match Thanksgiving Night of ’07—where matches were given time at the tapings became instances of futility when they were criminally cut on the broadcast itself; compare that to the fact that SmackDown! has been able to fit in multiple matches of at least ten minutes each week (and this is dating back to ’07) and RAW was able to do the exact same thing up until recent months when they decided to imitate TNA’s approach to television and still make a better go of it than Vinnie Roo. Quick aside: on RAW in recent months: why is that sports entertainment better than TNA’s? Two reasons: the people involved are better suited for writing it and TNA’s wrestlers are more pure wrestler than “superstar.”

So these are all things Jarrett could have went over Russo and changed because even after the first six months of non-rising buy numbers and a ratings number that stayed exactly the same, even then (let alone years later) it should have seemed obvious to a guy like Jarrett who was (at the time) day-to-day in charge of TNA, that whatever promises Russo made when he first took the job had not and probably weren’t going to be fulfilled.

Some may point to the fact that TNA turned a profit in 2008. How do we know they turned a profit? Because they made a point of letting people know they turned a profit last year. But that was last year, and we didn’t hear jack about turning a profit in 2007. Does that mean they didn’t turn a profit in ’07 (Russo’s first full year with the book)? If that’s the case, then why didn’t Jarrett intervene then? It would seem to me that with ratings and house show business on the rise in ’06, and both either staying where they were or going down in ’07, that that should have been enough to earn Russo a pink slip, let alone all of the mistakes he made with the product.

Concerning the product, and Russo’s time with the book as a whole, any notion over his career that Russo doesn’t know the first thing about proper booking was confirmed along with an even worse sense of timing than he had in The E or WCW. Taylor Wilde’s knockout title reign is the perfect example of both: having her win the title in Santino Morella fashion out of the crowd on her first night against an unbeatable monster and then get a long title reign is again completely opposite to the way that push should’ve been done. Think about it: if she had put up a good fight and lost, the crowd would’ve been on her side from the onset of her time in TNA instead of viewing the win and subsequent title reign as bullshit because someone out of the crowd just beat the Samoa Joe of the women’s division. It would have also made her win in Chicago at last year’s BFG all the more meaningful if it were for the title after a two-month chase instead of a win in a so-so triple threat. I’ve covered the first and fourth PPV installments of the Joe/Angle feud and any person who’s watched or knows of TNA from the beginning of Russo’s latest stay understands the b.s. and stupidity (just from a booking sense) of those two matches; I just felt the need to bring it up again because insanely stupid decisions deserve to become a broken record. And on that note I will go back to the M.E.M./TNA Originals disaster because this was Russo’s best opportunity to prove that he could actually be a competent booker when he had complete control and it turned out to be his biggest disaster. The reason it deserves repeating is because an old v. young feud is not a tough one to book, and we’re talking middle school education level thinking needed. This kind of a feud is either about giving the young guy (or guys) a first big push or about the older guy (or guys) “passing the torch” to the younger generation and making them the focal point of the promotion. Last November, when this feud was already dead, I noted that the Jumbo/Misawa feud from All Japan in the early 90’s will always be the standard-bearer for how to create new stars using old stars. This is the feud that produced over 200 straight sell-outs in Tokyo and nearly decade of great business as a whole for All Japan and is why it is so revered of a feud; and that’s just from a financial standpoint without mentioning the multitude of classic and nearly classic matches that the feud produced in just a two year span because the older generation were just as motivated to perform at their best in the ring as the younger guys were. In the case of TNA—like Misawa/Jumbo—they had enough old guys with name value and enough young guys who were already big with the TNA crowd and could help produce good matches. What sets a feud like this apart from other types of feuds is that wins and losses do matter more than anything. Recreating the NwO would’ve been fine before the feud started so the eventual blowoff with the young guys taking their place at the top of the promotion would’ve been more meaningful. But two problems arose: the blowoff never came, and after a short period Russo shifted the feud to where more older wrestlers comprised the spot where the young guys once occupied. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the very action of replacing the young guys with older guys in a feud against older guys devalues the younger guys and makes the whole experiment pointless.

And now we get to Jarrett, and more specifically Jarrett’s full-time return to TNA T.V. last September. It either points to greed for the spotlight or a lack of creativity that Jarrett couldn’t think of any better way to build to his comeback than to merge it with A.J.’s feud against Kurt Angle and Joe’s title reign, and by merge I mean steal the spotlight from. It was bad enough that TWO Angle/A.J. T.V. matches ended with Sting-like light play resulting in guitar shots from A.J. to Angle hinting that Jarrett was helping, but then the same thing occurred during the Joe/Booker title match from Hard Justice—the main-event of the pay-per-view—all leading up to the return speech, which ended up inadvertently showing Jarrett to truly be a hypocrite. While the parts about how his wife’s death effecting his life were legitimately heartfelt, it was the part where he claimed to be the champion of the young guys that immediately turned the speech into something much more surreal and was an example of trying to rewrite history in the moment. The fact is that nobody held down more people than Jarrett during the first years of TNA. Monty Brown was a slam-dunk, but Jarrett just had to get another senseless PPV win and that opportunity to make a new star was wasted, never even to be attempted again in the final fifteen months of Monty’s time in TNA. And the part about A.J. and Joe made me shake my head in disbelief. Jarrett talking about how guys like Joe and A.J. have carried the company? Remember, this is September 2008, so if what Jarrett was saying about A.J. and Joe was truly heartfelt, he sure has a weird way of rewarding people’s hard work. The fact is if Jarrett truly felt that A.J. and Joe were the future of the company, the aces of the company, the men he wanted to be the faces of TNA, he would’ve done everything in his power to make it happen, and had countless opportunities to do so. The reality is Jarrett barely lifted a finger for either man once Russo came in as the many examples throughout this piece show. In reality, to Jarrett, there is and always has been only one face of TNA and that is Jeff Jarrett. So in some ways I’m not too disappointed that the king of the mountain is likely gone from TNA, but at the same time, the guy does have a greater knowledge of the business than Dixie & Russo combined, does care about the people working for him, but he just cares more about himself and his image since it is a promotion that he started from the ground up. However, with that sense of entitlement, Jarrett lost the thing that all of the older wrestlers that came into TNA lost: a sense of obligation to the guys who can’t live off of their name yet. And because Jarrett is the one (along with Jerry) who built the promotion from scratch, it was his responsibility more than anyone else to make sure that the next generation became the new stars of the business. I remember in that interview he said (and correctly) that TNA was where “young guys could get their foot in the door” or something to that degree. Old J-E-double F was right on the money there, the catch being that apparently that’s all the young guys were going to get from this promotion.

“Then again, TNA probably would’ve saved themselves all of the stress and heartache if they had gone after Jericho instead of Sting late in 2005.”
-The Reality of Wrestling, 11/19/08

“Russo has the potential to do well, but I’m not holding my breath.”
-The Reality of Wrestling, 9/27/06

I’ve been a champion for TNA since my article’s inception and, even during the darkest periods of Russo’s time with the book, was willing to give TNA the benefit of the doubt that they would overcome their mistakes and eventually things would get better. And while the product itself has gotten better only after the promotion as a whole hit rock bottom, and the only time TNA was able to get a fully functional women’s division going was under Russo watch, they keep taking one step forward and then two steps back. Bringing in Nigel McGuinness when The E didn’t want him was a step forward, but bringing in Hogan is two steps back. Giving the young guys adequate T.V. time is a step forward, but continuing to focus on older guys like Foley and Sting is two steps back. Bringing Sting into the promotion in ’06 was a step forward at the time, but continuing to allow ex-WWE and WCW guys to come in after the Sting experiment failed was two giant steps back.

The fact that the promotion wasn’t able to attract any new fans (again the stagnant ratings number and lack of PPV buy increases) during the fist twenty-eight months of Russo’s time with the book shows that TNA will probably never become competition for The E. October 2006 was really their chance to make a move and they blew it. And I’m not saying that because of my hatred for Russo and his philosophies (if they can even be called that) on the business, I say it because their house-show experiment (as it could be referred to at the time) was a success, the ratings numbers were increasing little by little, and their shows were just dynamite to watch; there was a sense of collective enthusiasm in all areas of the promotion.

Maybe it was impatience on the part of Jarrett and Dixie to become real competition for Vince that motivated them to bring Russo in, maybe Jarrett had always envisioned TNA as a ripoff of The E because he wasn’t in WCW when it was killing The E; whatever the reason, they made a mistake with Russo in allowing him to shift the direction of the promotion. Why rock the boat when it’s smooth sailing? Had Russo been put in charge of continuing to book the promotion in the direction it was in at the time he was given the book, he probably really would’ve been gone quickly and guys like Tenay and D’Amore would’ve been brought back into the fold. I honestly believe it was a case of TNA’s growth giving Jarrett and Dixie a high opinion of what they were in charge of. Remember, we didn’t really know anything about Dixie Carter until Russo came in, and if TNA really needed Russo that badly, Jarrett would’ve put him back into a writing position or given him the book after the Hogan deal fell through in ’04.

I am fully aware that the past is the past and there is nothing that can be done to change it. However, history is all about teaching lessons. My column has repeated the old George Santayana quote several times—“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”—for the purpose of reasserting the notion that learning from your mistakes and successes is the key to a successful future. In TNA’s case, they don’t seem to remember either as a lot of the people associated with TNA’s beginning are gone, and it seems that they are content to ride things out either until they do break through or until they whither and die. It’s quite sad to have documented such a fall after documenting the rise while believing that the good times were to be more long-lived for TNA. It’s been a hell of a ride TNA, and I’ll be buying Turning Point (Joe/A.J./Daniels, MCMG/British Invasion, Nigel/Angle, you better believe it) and I’ll continue to watch and I’ll continue to hope that things will turn around. But if it is all a prelude to the end, at least it was a hell of a ride.