Is TNA the worst wrestling promotion in history?

[El-P]

25 minutes ago, Alucard said:

Doug Williams was on fire that year.

Oh yeah. I remember enjoying him in NOAH in the 00's but not feeling the whole British Invasion stuff where he didn't shine. But his whole solo X-division stint was terrific. Someone should pick up his rolling german suplex thingy, it's one of the most beautiful finisher ever.

[RingoPlaysDrums]

Chad Gable's used it for a few years (I assume he still does - I don't think I've seen him doing anything for a while). 

[El-P]

As I've reached the end of Team 3D in TNA, I have to point out the following, when put in context of the booking, whatever it was worth (very often not much), of where they were in their career (veteran workers with nothing to prove anymore) and what they had to work with, I'll declare Team 3D stint in TNA as one of the best ever. Not that they had the greatest matches or angles, although they did have a number of winners, but they *always* did not only the most with what they were given, but always the right things too. They put over guys left and right without losing one bit of legitimacy, they did everything the best they could, Bubba's promo work was always fantastic, they adapted to whomever they worked with, from Hall & Nash to The Motor City Machine Guns, they were as good as heels or babyfaces, they were as efficient doing comedy stuff as blood feuds. And again, they always did the selfless thing. Just an incredible run that adds so much to their legacy to me. Just 100% positive from A to Z. 

Also, MMA Jeff Jarrett may be the best thing he ever did. Can't wait to dive into his feud with Angle and Karen showing up.

[War is Raw]

I avoided TNA, only caught a few episodes here and there, maybe 2 PPVs. 

But lately I have been watching the TNA Knockouts for the first time and saw that Gail Kim is light years ahead of any woman in WWE during that time period. Awesome Kong, too, and some other women were prolly better than most of AEW's current roster and would be good hands in WWE or NXT. Obviously a lot were your typical soft pr0n workers, but there were good ones.

TNA deserves credit for have the women's revolution years before WWE.

Just sayin'.

[SirEdger]

I think everyone could agree on that. At one time, TNA had the best women's division in North America by a big margin.

[TonyPulis'Cap]

14 hours ago, SirEdger said:

At one time, TNA had the best women's division in North America by a big margin.

And didn't they used to get the best ratings on the show as well? They also had women with lots of different looks to them as well, whereas WWE at the time only seemed to be hiring, or featuring women that all looked the same.

[rovert]

18 hours ago, SirEdger said:

I think everyone could agree on that. At one time, TNA had the best women's division in North America by a big margin.

They might have the best or best utilised now.

[Alucard]

^ Agreed for sure on that. Taya & Tessa were my two favorite wrestlers of last year. Now they've got so many new hires. Nevaeh and Tenille Dashwood I am huge fans of both, Kimber Lee is great, they just got Deonna Purrazzo who is excellent. Kiera Hogan has been a highlight, Tasha Steelz is a great pickup, Kylie Rae has been impressive. Su Yung is still the best character. Plus Rosemary, Havok, Madison. Really loaded lineup.

Also agreed on Team 3D's run, lots of great stuff all throughout their run. the Fish Market Street Fight against Shark Boy and Curry Man remains one of my favorite comedy matches. 

[SomethingSavage]

Furthermore, I think Bully experienced exceptional growth throughout his TNA stint as a performer. According to both Bully and Cornette, it's when he first got turned onto the idea of watching & studying Memphis matches and footage for inspiration as the Bully Ray character. I think that absolutely shows through.

The breakup of Team 3D during a faux retirement speech, the way he'd stooge and show ass for smaller guys like Aries, etc. are tremendous highlights.

I realize you were referring more to their time as a tag team (and you're absolutely right), but yeah. I just loved Bully's run overall with TNA.

Hell, even after Aces & Eights fizzled out, they reunited and went on a tear of great (albeit abbreviated) matches with the Wolves and the Hardy Boys. All of those are shorter versions of what you would've gotten on a WWE pay-per-view, but they're still totally worth checking out.

On Jericho's podcast, Bully talked about pitching the Bully Ray idea to Vince after the Dudleys had run their course against the New Day and Wyatt Family.

Just hearing the process of pitching and tweaking and negotiating for the idea, I can see how & why it never panned out - but damn. I would've LOVED to have seen Bully rip it up with Roman and company for another year or two as a top-tier singles guy in the biggest company. I really do hate that he was sort of pigeonholed in the tag team position after improving so much and putting in all that work to show he was a viable world class heel worker.

[El-P]

If I look back at TNA 2010 now that I'm done with it, I'd say overall it wasn't as bad as most of 2009. Well, it was sometimes as bad, but not as boring because of the Hogan/Bischoff factor. There wasn't any super fun stretch like the final run of 2009 though. And although 2009 was bad, it was a still a year where the company grew, for whatever reason (can we credit Foley although his stint had been mostly awful ?), and I believe by the end of 2010, the company was actually declining thanks to the genius idea of the Monday Night Wars redux. Really, Hogan coming in did nothing positive for the product in the end. Bischoff is always a good performer, so when he's not fed bullshit, he can be entertaining. Of course he overseas the bullshit he was fed, so all the blame goes to him anyway. 

If there was an MVP, it's still Kurt Angle. Great worker, had the MOTY for the promotion with Anderson in the cage, terrific promo and angle worker too, works perfect in every role you put him in. The guy has been amazing since he showed up and his work in TNA by far surpasses his WWE stuff to me. His "climbing the top ten" angle leading to a great three-way (which in itself is amazing considering I don't like that formula) with Anderson (again) and Jeff Hardy (who never looked better than against Angle... wonder why) was quite the compelling stuff.

Speaking of Mr. Anderson, he was a good surprise in the end after a bad first impression. I was not familiar at all with his WWE stuff (or I forgot the very few I had seen back then if I ever). Not a great worker, but he sure works his ass off. Not that much of a Rock/Austin clone (not to the ridiculous level of Eli Drake), although he's definitely influenced by them, and why not. Terrific mic worker, easily the best in the company in term of charismatic promos and a bunch of solid matches and eventually more than that when put in with really strong ones.

Doug Williams was also a highlight of the year, working strong TV and PPV matches for the forgotten X-div title and the brand new TV title (because when you fuck up your secondary title, what you need is add another one). 

On the tag team front, Motor CIty MachineGuns vs Young BucksMe was clearly one of the peak of the company for this year, with two great matches, including one you would call MOTYC if it happened today (not the ladder match, the straight one). Insane to think the Bucks were in TNA ten years ago and already so fucking good too (and terrific heel workers). This was clearly the style of the upcoming decade.

The women's division was sad, because of course the booking did them zero favors. Not to mention Awesome Kong getting fired because of racist piece of shit Bubba the Love Sponge.  Sarita and Taylor Wilde (the forgotten super strong worker of the era) really carried the load. Way too much emphasis on the Beautiful People catty stuff, which got really terrible when they turned babyface, which doesn't work at all to me. On the more positive side, great signing of Mickie James who had quite a terrific brawl with Tara (the first time I ever really enjoyed a Tara match) toward the end of the year. And the rise of Madison Rayne, whom I became a fan of really this year on IMPACT, but now I can see she was already quite the terrific heel character by the second half of 2010, once she got away from the BP. But really, the women division still is not out of the trappings of the awful Russo booking yet. Long gone are the glory days of Gail Kim vs Awesome Kong...

Tons of wasted guys too of course. A.J Styles turned into a Nature Boy and soon relegated in the mid-card, to make space for the former WWE guys. Ditto Samoa Joe, who at least ditched the stupid face tattoo but was even more of an afterthought. Pope for a moment looked like a legit star but then got injured and never got the momentum again. They had Desmond Wolfe and had him in a stupid angle with Abyss.... The talent level was ridiculous, and yet...

Yeah, Abyss. Clear lowlight all year long, including the eye gouging Abyss-a-mania angle, a Evad Sullivan Redux legit main event push. Stupid beauty and the beast angle with Chelsea, who not only was hot as fuck but displayed some potential to be a cool character (as opposed to, say, Miss Tessmacher, your typical Russo bullshit Attitude Era/WCW redux). Dumb as fuck "THEY" angle followed by a swerve and more nWo redux (only the second one this year mind you)... Yeah, Russo and Hogan in the same company... yikes...

Fast-forward worker of the year : Eric Young. From the last days of his lame stable to his involvement with Da Band to his GODFUCKINGAWFUL tag team with totally useless Orlando Jordan doing the worst Goldust ever, poor Eric Young had easily his worst year yet. That's saying something.

Best show of the year : the ECW reunion show and angle. Not even close. The only legit great moment of the year in TNA. Loved the two main event of Dreamer vs Raven and RVD vs Sabu.

Fucked-up angle/match that I liked despite... whatever good taste I have left : Mick Foley vs Ric Flair. The promo segment itself was insane, both were totally out of control. The match was disgustingly entertaining. As a matter of fact, I have mostly enjoyed Flair as the old, out of his mind manager, he also had a good match with Jay Lethal, whoever he is. Oh, and of course, the infamous Benny Hill moment... WCW Highway to Hell level hilarity.

The concussion angle at the end of the year was the closest thing approaching to smart and relevant this company has probably ever done in term of dealing with a real life issue. But sadly, Matt Morgan on top doesn't work. He's just too nice to be a pro-wrestler, that's the way he comes off to me. And Jeff Hardy doing third rate Raven-like promo doesn't work either. I don't feel his heel work at all. His heel theme song is great though...

Anyway. It took me a long time to go through that one. Probably because now I have much more interest in current companies, including IMPACT. Hey, I was warned it was terrible and it mostly was, really. One day I'll probably watch those supposedly "last glory years" of 2011-2013. As of yet, only 2005, half of 2006 and then 2008 were really good. That's 2,5 out of 7,5... Yeah... TNA.

[Alucard]

On 6/3/2020 at 6:23 PM, El-P said:

If there was an MVP, it's still Kurt Angle. Great worker, had the MOTY for the promotion with Anderson in the cage, terrific promo and angle worker too, works perfect in every role you put him in. The guy has been amazing since he showed up and his work in TNA by far surpasses his WWE stuff to me. His "climbing the top ten" angle leading to a great three-way (which in itself is amazing considering I don't like that formula) with Anderson (again) and Jeff Hardy (who never looked better than against Angle... wonder why) was quite the compelling stuff.

Speaking of Mr. Anderson, he was a good surprise in the end after a bad first impression. I was not familiar at all with his WWE stuff (or I forgot the very few I had seen back then if I ever). Not a great worker, but he sure works his ass off. Not that much of a Rock/Austin clone (not to the ridiculous level of Eli Drake), although he's definitely influenced by them, and why not. Terrific mic worker, easily the best in the company in term of charismatic promos and a bunch of solid matches and eventually more than that when put in with really strong ones.

Doug Williams was also a highlight of the year, working strong TV and PPV matches for the forgotten X-div title and the brand new TV title (because when you fuck up your secondary title, what you need is add another one). 

 

Glad you managed to finish 2010! Hope to see the eventual following years, late 2011 to late 2012 is one of the best eras. The beginning of 2011 also had peak Madison Rayne greatness there.

Angle/Hardy 30 min draw at No Surrender 2010 was one of my favorite matches of that year, loved it. Agreed on Mr. Anderson, someone I never liked in WWE but became so much more enjoyable in TNA. And as we mentioned before, seconding the love for Doug Williams 2010. 

[El-P]

19 hours ago, Alucard said:

Angle/Hardy 30 min draw at No Surrender 2010 was one of my favorite matches of that year, loved it. 

Oh yeah, that one too.

[SomethingSavage]

I remember REALLY digging that Jeff/Angle match (their program from Jeff's 2012 redemption run was good fun from a story standpoint, too) but I also recall something being off-putting towards the finish.

The numerous draws and restarts never bothered me. I actually felt like they helped to enhance the story and really put a memorable stamp on the match. It still stands out from the pack, clearly.

The big bombs. The finisher spamming. Those SNUG sentons. All of that was solid stuff. But I think maybe there was an ankle lock or something that felt like it went wayyy too long. I might be confusing this with one of the Kurt/Shawn matches though, which I know I had a similar gripe about.

But yeah. Great match. Kurt actually has a ton of lost gems in his TNA run that don't get talked up enough. The Jeff matches were always solid, but there are encounters with everyone from Lashley and Drew to Jarrett and Anderson and Roode that still don't get enough love. All worth cherry picking and revisiting, even if you don't find time to see everything else surrounding them.

[Migs]

18 hours ago, SomethingSavage said:

But yeah. Great match. Kurt actually has a ton of lost gems in his TNA run that don't get talked up enough. The Jeff matches were always solid, but there are encounters with everyone from Lashley and Drew to Jarrett and Anderson and Roode that still don't get enough love. All worth cherry picking and revisiting, even if you don't find time to see everything else surrounding them.

TNA is like early 90s WCW, in that while I'm sure it was a frequently a slog to watch at the time, if you cherry pick and make comps out of the good stuff, it's a very fun watch. One of the best things on Impact Plus is all the retrospective shows - Impact in 60, Unfinished Business, Greatest Matches, etc. - that let you knock out a feud or get a vibe for a period of someone's career.

[SirEdger]

If you have the Fight Network in Canada, those retro shows are on the Tuesday night wrestling block they have (I believe Impact in 60 is at 6 PM, with Impact from 8 to 10. Then they got Ring of Honor TV, an hour of British Wrestling at 11 PM and in the graveyard slots, you got Unfinished Business, Legends and Greatest Matches - often replayed on the Wednesday afternoons).

[El-P]

Okada as Samoa Joe's cameraman. Holly shit TNA ! 

[El-P]

Watching Victory Road 2011 is notable for two things mainly :

_the Young Bucks & Kazarian (and Robbie E, who as usual did not bring much to the table) stole the show in an Ultimate X match. It's really crazy to think TNA had these people back then when you look back from the 2020 perspective with AEW going on. The idea that the Bucks were killing it on PPV in early 2011 (and already the previous year) and people *now* are acting all bitchy about them are not just behind the times *now* they were behind the times in 2011... 

_and of course, the main event is an embarrassment of epic proportion. It's insane to think they got the point of ring introduction and they had to send Bischoff to talk to the guys inside the ring and basically had Sting shoot pin Hardy. A fan shouting "This is bullshit !" and Sting replying  "I agree ! I agree !" is a crazy scene, Sting looked pissed as fuck-all. Both Hardies were a mess at the time, as Matt, who had the second best match of the show with AJ Styles was month away from getting fired for substance abuse or something (and to think Jeff had problems as soon as last year and they actually make light of it in WWE these days). Crazy times... Brucie worked in the company at the time too... 

[sek69]

I'll never understand how the Sting/Jeff thing got to that point. It's not like Jeff suddenly got fucked up seconds before the match was about to start, no one backstage could step in and say "you know, this isn't going to work".  Do some kind of angle, say mysterious forces took him out before the match, anything but allow the train to fly off the tracks in front of the whole world. 

I'm guessing the logic was something along the lines of not wanting to be in a position of being unable to deliver the main event, but if there was ever a time a company would have got a pass on doing that it would have been then. 

[El-P]

This time in TNA was quite amazing is that it had some of its best stuff with the Angle vs Jarrett feud and angles, the rise of Bully Ray (the AJ Styles injury angle, the D-Von feud) and also some of the worst, Russoesque pure crap. Including :

_the Pope (poor guy, he looked like a surefire babyface star the previous year) torturing Okada, who's dressed like Robin and named Okato (in hindsight it's probably better he wasn't called Okada during that stuff), complete with a few racist overtones .

_Mexican-America, which was an interesting faction of workers (hey, Zelina) BUT, the gist of it was cutting promos about Mexicans being the *superior race* (that was said in promos) and taking over the jobs, lands and women of America. Just WOW. This is easily one of the most blatant racist angle I've seen in a long time, and to think it happened in 2011 ! Well, Trump became POTA in 2016, so maybe it was not that surprising. Still, I'm amazed that this stuff actually happened. 

_and of course the whole Beautiful People & Winter stuff, which has been god-awful and was really the apex of the Knockouts being all about "bitch this", "skank that".... 

[El-P]

Well, Lockdown 2011 was an amazing shit show. I honestly can't remember a TNA PPV in the last previous years that had been so bad, poorly booked and poorly produced from top to bottom. A bunch of totally pointless matches to begin, a long-ass Bischoff promo (on PPV...) that had nothing to say, Mickie James vs Madison Rayne with the big Mickie win after a whooping 36 seconds (was she injured for real ?), just plain bad matches like Hernandez vs Morgan or the three-way TNA title match between Sting, RVD and Anderson (Sting was a trooper, but he was long past the point of bringing anything to the table in what should be great main event matches), complete with missed big spots, the cage door hilariously opening up during matches, stupid run-ins all the time and some of the most un-cagey cage matches ever (compare that with former Lockdown PPV when they had managed to at least be a bit clever about having the cage in every match). By the time the main event came, which was an ok garbage brawl if you don't mind 60 year old + Ric Flair in street clothes bleeding like a pig, I was just begging for a mercy killshot. Daniels jumping off the cage to the outside (man was crazy but the catch was really good by Abyss & Matt Hardy) and AJ Styles making a comeback were really the only highlights.

Oh, and the most LOLTNA moment of the card : they managed to ruin Jarrett vs Angle, by making it, from nowhere, a dumb as fuck 2/3 "falls" match, with the first one being submission only (won by BABYFACE Angle, of course, so the psychology would be all fucked up from the get go), then pinfall, then escape because it's such a great gimmick especially in a personal blood feud. And then also you send Karen backstage (and then don't get her reactions which would help the match get heat) because that way she can't interfere in a fucking CAGE MATCH ! What is the purpose of the cage then ? Well, not too sure since she'll come back anyway and interfere because the door is open anyway. And Kurt Angle almost kills himself twice. Just Russo at his shitty "best". Amazing.

So yeah, just an awful show, worst TNA PPV in years really because even at the low points of 2009 and 2010 you always had a really good, even great, match here and there on PPV. Nope, not this time. The fact they managed to fuck up their best feud with this dumb-ass over-gimmicked match is both amazing and a testament of how awful Russo really was and he will always be the worst guy ever (although Senile Vince is getting close). Also, I have no idea what Bruce Prichard was actually doing at this point, but needless to say things haven't got better at all in term of production since he got hired. Hell, it's actually been worse in many ways (like the super obvious piped crowd noise on Impact, I won't even go into Jeff Hardy at Victory Road reaching the ring). 

[Alucard]

I believe Mickie was legit injured, recovering but not fully recovered at that point. I absolutely hated that as the blowoff to what had been a great feud. Madison was killing it at her peak best at that point. Her promos leading up to the Against All Odds match before this were on fire.

[El-P]

On 8/18/2020 at 3:22 AM, Alucard said:

 I absolutely hated that as the blowoff to what had been a great feud. Madison was killing it at her peak best at that point. Her promos leading up to the Against All Odds match before this were on fire.

Word. Madison Rayne is totally carrying that women division at this point, and there's a clear disdain of the booking for it. No good match, crap angles, Rosita & Sarita used as background dressing for the super racist Mexican-America angle... TakerAngelina is so bad it's almost good.

Honestly, this period strikes me as another low point of the booking in the company. The involvement of Chyna was straight embarrassing (showed up to do three moves, two of them looking like complete shit). Jarrett is having the performances of his career (not as a worker honestly, but as a character) and Karen is just awesome but the angle has been ruined by two awful PPV matches in a row. Also : Tommy Dreamer, the heel turn. And of course; Mr. Anderson doing an impersonation of Surfer Sting. In 2020. And also, Crimson as Random Goldy Wannabee doing the undefeated streak gimmick. And Bischoff pinning Gen Me on TV. And so on I know Russo was gone by the fall, but at this point he's just running wild again it seems, to the point the first months of Hogan's stint in 2010 looked better because it had this Wrestlecrap appeal to it, while here we are just running potentially good stuff into the ground, so it's actually coming off worse.

Blue Impact Wrestling is on and the TNA logo is gone, but by this point, it was too late. Still a good move though as at least it refreshed the visuals. Funny, I was thinking one good thing AEW did is that it did not use either red nor blue in the show's color scheme. Impact switching from red to blue was a nice little change, but it was still RAW > Smackdown, it did not look different from WWE's aesthetics. Which was a mistake.

Gonna make my way through the build-up to Slammiversary, but thus far, 2011 has been a few great angles, mostly during the few first months and a whole lot of awful stuff. And very, very few really actual good in-ring stuff. This period actually reminds me a lot of WCW 2000 in some respect, in a much worse way than 2010 did.

[Alucard]

4 hours ago, El-P said:

Gonna make my way through the build-up to Slammiversary, but thus far, 2011 has been a few great angles, mostly during the few first months and a whole lot of awful stuff. And very, very few really actual good in-ring stuff. This period actually reminds me a lot of WCW 2000 in some respect, in a much worse way than 2010 did.

I think you're just about the tide turning with Austin Aries showing up the following month. BFG in October kicks off one of my favorite year runs from 2011-2012, until the greatness of 2016. 

[El-P]

Well, two matches clearly stole the show at Slammiversary, making it the best show of the year by a wide, wide margin thus far. AJ Styles vs Bully Ray was a legit great match with a crazy-ass performance by Styles and Ray stepping up big time, proving he was worthy of a single push right at the top of the card. And the final match between Jarrett & Angle, capping off the feud of the year (and really, along with the Bully Ray angles, carried the entire promotion on its back for the first six months) by an excellent match, which I would guess would be Jarrett's swan song before he went to AAA. It's sad the Impact Zone by that point had turned into a really dead venue and they really did not get the heat they deserved.

Rest of the card had some good stuff like the British Invasion (yeah, again, the creative was dead for these guys) vs James Storm & Alex Shelley (subbing for injured Roode), the really stupidly booked X-division three-way between champ Abyss (yeah, total Russo-ism gimmick of "rebuilding" the division by making Abyss the champ and beating the actual X-div guys), Kazarian & Kendrick which was still good thanks to the two X-div guys and Abyss being okay in his role. But also some really dull stuff Matt Morgan vs Scott Steiner (ok thanks to Steiner, honestly) which reeks of 2009, Crimson vs Joe which was okay but Crimson is such a nothing happening worker/character and a wannabe Goldy streak gimmick (for ONE MORE YEAR ! To accomplish NOTHING !)... Mickie James vs Angelina wasn't very good at all, James has not been able to get some quality matches out of the rather depleted women's roster (Madison Rayne was totally carrying the division as a character, but the booking never allowed her to have actual strong solid matches either). Winter is coming, so it won't get any better on that front. And yet another flat Sting title match, he sure had the star power but he really couldn't go very hard anymore. Bullshit finish too. Mr. Anderson has not quite worked either as a main event guy, despite working his ass off every time. And he's back at being a heel too despite being one of their hottest babyface just a few months prior.... The booking is all over the place...

At this point with the conclusion of Jarrett vs Angle, the entire promotion fells rather flat and without any momentum, despite the change of look and rebranding. After one year and a half, the whole Hogan era has produced exactly jackshit in term of actual results, and the product is still continuously ruined by terrible booking ideas, to the point I'd argue from 2008 on, each passing year (apart from the last few months of 2009) has been worse in some ways than the preceding one (2010 was probably "better" or "less boring" than 2009, but it had hurt the company).

More later... when I'm motivated enough to dive into this AGAIN... (why , WHY ?)

[cm funk]

Today is the 11th anniversary of TNA going head to head with RAW on Mondays

We're now a year and a half away from 20 years of TNA.....