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Is TNA the worst wrestling promotion in history?


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Yeah, this really has been my take from what I saw of his TNA stint as the lead of creative (6 months left, won't get better now). Amazing that he has been able to convince people he was more than a useless yes-man during the first years of his podcast because he's (was) a good storyteller. His comeback to WWE (and his MLW stint where apparently the workers there thought Corny got modern wrestling more than he did, ponder that for a second) really has exposed him completely too.

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Hogan's thing about Roode winning the title, was that he didn't see him as a face, but as top heel which he then became. Roode's title run reminded me a lot of JBL in 2004.

Roode/Aries is maybe my favorite match (and moment) in company history. A shame that Aries' reign wasn't able to last longer.

I thought Roode's brief NXT run was excellent (the Nakamura series being MOTYC level) and he came off like a legit star with stuff like the Flair-esque entrance with all the ladies on his arm.

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7 hours ago, Big Pete said:

Ha, Final Destination was my second guess as well.

That would be more akin to TNA actually ! :D

9 hours ago, Alucard said:

I thought Roode's brief NXT run was excellent (the Nakamura series being MOTYC level) and he came off like a legit star with stuff like the Flair-esque entrance with all the ladies on his arm.

All I remember is that godawful Glorious song which was gimmicky as hell (really, only to have him do like he used to in Beer Money during his matches) and musically reminiscent of that amazingly horrible Paul Orndorff theme in WCW at the beginning of the Nitro days. I did enjoy te KENTA hIdEO HiTaMI match though, from memory, although with the PTSD I got now from watching his TNA main event stint, no idea what I'd think about it today.

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Roode's match with Roddy Strong from July 2017 was excellent, one of my all-time fave NXT matches. May not have as much impact in a vacuum, as it was part of a quest for the NXT title storyline for Strong that had played out on TV for several weeks. Still, definitely worth checking out. In general, I enjoyed Roode's NXT run. Can't say I've seen much more of him over the years other than TNA circa 2005-2008 or so

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  • 4 weeks later...

Bully Ray's reveal at Lockdown as the President of Aces & Eights is an easy 11/10 on the "It was me all along !" idiocracy scale. And it legit makes Aces & Eights the worst heel ploy ever. I mean, really now, considering the months and months and months of mysteries, manipulation, beatdowns and physical toll paid by Bully himself (not to mention the faction), all of this just to get the world title, the ratio effort/result ends up being quite pathetic. I mean, Bobby Roode also fooled the people but he won the TNA title with one fucking beer bottle after one match.

Speaking of Roode though, funny how booking works. After the neverending boredom of his single heel main event push, he's now tagging with Austin Aries (who's at the top of his game still) and he's terrific again because he can now work like he did in Beer Money as opposed to be a dull as dirt Randy Rorton-like in overlong single main events. And the interactions and bickering between the two are actually really good and funny. 

The only other really good stuff at this time is the Gail Kim and Taryn Terell storyline. Kenny King and Zema Ion in the X-division are also good. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/21/2022 at 3:40 PM, El-P said:

The only other really good stuff at this time is the Gail Kim and Taryn Terell storyline. Kenny King and Zema Ion in the X-division are also good. 

Huge fan of the Gail/Taryn feud. Their Slammiversary match was my favorite of that year and they had a pretty good ladder match on Impact after. Taryn looked like the next big superstar babyface for the women at the time, but all of her runs since then have been heel and she's fun at that too. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

So, I've finally reached the last Prichard era episode. What a ride. Overall, although the product was much more focused and definitely upgraded in term of production, the creative direction instilled by Prichard was extremely detrimental to the company (not even mentioning the financial aspects of going on the road with no backup plans while hype and ratings were dropping). Basically there has been two phases, the Bobby Roode reign of terror and Aces & Eights. The first was dull, repetitive, marred by tons of shit finishes on big shows. The second was dull, repetitive, never ending, dull, repetitive, stupid, never ending and really by far the worst major angle the company ever ran, if only because of its length. As much as Bully Ray was a nice reinvention in the first months, once he was the leader of Aces & Eights, he got just as unbearable as Bobby Roode the previous year. Also, the company never felt as much like WWE, which shouldn't be surprising. The long-ass promo segments setting up matches, the in-ring style of Roode as a single champion (Randy Orton-like crawl and dullness), the unnerving repetitive booking with people seemingly paired up for EVER, leading to a billion matches together, making even the best pairings boring after a while. Sure, there was some good things here and there (Aries short rise to the top, Jeff Hardy's best work in years, Gail Kim killing it and the Taryn Terell feud, the Joseph Park character which was fun for a while, before at the end all you get is still Abyss in the ring, Brooke Hogan in the stupid wedding angle which was quite surprising honestly) but much less peaks in in-ring work than before (which is kinda ironic since there was a bigger focus on actual wrestling following Russo's departure). 

And so this was really the beginning of the end for good ol' TNA, with budget cuts galore, AJ Styles soon departing at the end of the year which would be followed by an endless flow of departure, the demotion to smaller and smaller TV stations, the Carter wanting to sell it to Corgan then the GFW fiasco, then another Corgan fiasco, before Anthem would basically save the company with D'Amore & Callis at the helm. 

Really now, the Hogan era was a disaster for the company on every level, and Prichard seemingly only made it worse (2010 was at least watchable because of the car crash WTF aspect of the TV, while not good it was perversely entertaining sometime, there's no bigger sin in pro-wrestling than to be dull and boring). Last time the company still looked like a pretty cool alternative was 2008. Next time would be what ? The Broken Matt stuff ?

On 3/4/2022 at 8:23 AM, Alucard said:

Huge fan of the Gail/Taryn feud. Their Slammiversary match was my favorite of that year and they had a pretty good ladder match on Impact after. 

And oh yeah, this episode had that Kim vs Terell ladder match. Gail was on fire at this point, she really had been a top worker in the company for a while now, and Terell showed tons of will and potential. Really a surprising bright spot during this time.

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2 hours ago, sek69 said:

https://www.f4wonline.com/news/impact-wrestling/impact-world-champion-moose-attacks-jade-chung-in-angle-at-indie-event

Why does Impact keep doing angles that involve domestic abuser Moose beating up women? 

Let me preface what I'll say with this : to me any kind of violence against women is a red flag.

Now, being involved in one incident (not very clear either from memory, but I may be wrong) 13 years ago doesn't make you a "domestic abuser". I always have an issue with this kinda of essentialization of people (in general BTW, not strictly in term of bad stuff like this). It's like people can't change or even bad stuff can't happen even once before getting labelled for life. The Moose stuff happened. Ok. There's no talk of him being a domestic abuser since (does I mean I *know* there's none going on, of course not). Plus and on the other hand, I don't see the return of Steve Austin being presented as "domestic abuser Steve Austin", despite the fact he was involved in patterned domestic abuse for a while, as opposed to one incident. So there's a bizarre (not really) difference of treatment when referring to some people as opposed to others, despite their stories being a bit different (one incident / patterned abuse going on for a while).

The angle is what it is. IMPACT does intergender matches and physical interactions, it's not just Moose. W. Morrissey did it a few weeks back. Matt Cardona just did it last week on IMPACT (on Mickie James).

For the sake of explanation, the storyline stems from Moose basically stealing the title from Josh (by cashing up) taking place while his wife and kid were still in the ring after his victory, then two weeks ago showing up at Josh's house to scare the wife and kids to. The escalation basically makes sense. 

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I'm not even mad at Moose per se, even if it's very VERY unlikely this was the only incident of him being violent towards women, Impact has booked him to have physical confrontations with women several times now and it seems like at best they are being tone deaf and at worst trying to send some sort of message.  You can do intergender matches and physical confrontations but to keep doing it with the one guy who has a public history like that is suspect. Not to mention the long standing rumors/allegations that Impact management is basically a perv factory.

Also the Austin stuff you're mentioning honestly is just whataboutism. Yeah it's fucked up what he did too and if he comes out this weekend at Mania and stunners the whole women's locker room I'd be asking the same questions. WWE didn't go out of their way to book Austin to have physical interactions with women after it happened either. 

Also this guy is the Impact champion, they aren't doing their top guy any favors by constantly put him in positions to remind people "oh yeah he got arrested for beating up a woman once".

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7 minutes ago, El-P said:

Not at all. It's an example of a difference of public treatment and perception. 

If WWE had continuously put Austin in situations that Impact is booking Moose in, there would absolutely have been a reaction to it. 

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15 minutes ago, sek69 said:

Also the Austin stuff you're mentioning honestly is just whataboutism. Yeah it's fucked up what he did too and if he comes out this weekend at Mania and stunners the whole women's locker room I'd be asking the same questions. WWE didn't go out of their way to book Austin to have physical interactions with women after it happened either. 

They did book a segment where he gave Stacy Keibler a stunner for not liking the beer he gave her. That did receive a fair amount of criticism, although probably not nearly as much as it should have.

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7 minutes ago, sek69 said:

If WWE had continuously put Austin in situations that Impact is booking Moose in, there would absolutely have been a reaction to it. 

See, this is also where the issue lies to me. Maybe the fact Moose had that incident makes it awkward to some people. Ok. But then again, the fact Austin did not do *fake prow-wrestling shit* with women anymore makes it ok to not remind the public he used to beat the shit out of Debra until she was fearing for her life ? Whereas the fact Moose does intergender angle makes it ok to remind the public of that one incident (again, I can only talk about what's known, and it's not up to me to basically imagine wether or not there's more) and call him "domestic abuser" and basically to reduce him to that sole moment of his life (if indeed that's the only occurence, which obviously I don't know) ?

Again, to me the issue here is both the essentialization of people and the difference of treatment based not on reality of facts but perception of fictional work in a given context. 

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I know hes referring to storyline in this but it is particularly tone deaf

It really shows just how far under the radar Impact is, tbh, as if this were AEW or even ROH I think there'd be uproar. 

There's excusing him or Austin really but the company playing into his history and making a storyline of it is really quite something. 

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The thing with Austin also is that he did face the repercussions of the law. You can argue that he got away too easily, but he was arrested, he was sentenced, he carried out his sentrnce, and by all accounts he has not repeated that behaviour. A lot of people - not sure about Moose's case but this is true in general - want redemption without actually putting in any work, in which case it is not redemption as much as denial. I don't know whether Moose faced the law or not, but most wrestlers accused of shit like this do not. 

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  • 1 month later...

Two interesting bits of under-the-radar TNA greatness from the One Night Only Knockouts PPV in September of 2013 (WWE Evolution my ass, here's one women only PPV already, years before) : Mickie James having a very good match with Serena Deeb of all people (who basically was already a version of her current self); Gail Kim doing one of the greatest bits of selling I've ever seen at the end of the gauntlet match, when after one bump on her leg (she's legit a GOAT contender in term of the art of bumping) she does such a great job of selling it like she legit injured her ankle and is pissed at Mickie (with the help of Mickie who sells it right and the actual medic checking her out) that despite being the oldest heel trick in the book, people actually began to clap for her when she hobbled seemingly out of the ring, before of course jumping on Mickie's back (and winning the match in a super smooth way to boot). The more Gail Kim I watch, the more I'm convinced that you throw her in her prime today and she's legit a very top female worker in the world still (not sure who would be much better actually, Sasha Banks and the very top Stardom workers I guess), she was just great as so many things.

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