Reality From Ringside #65
May 17, 2010
By: Doug Lackey of Wrestleview.com
TNA Sacrifice 2010: The Hangover
I have never felt so… *silence*… after watching TNA’s ‘Sacrifice’ that followed the debacle of last Thursday’s edition of ‘Impact’. Seriously, I have no way of putting to words how uncomfortable and inadequate I feel right now.
Normally when I sit down to write this column, especially a pay-per-view ‘hangover’, I will take over an hour to research and substantiate my own opinions, form the questions I mean to ask following the program, take another handful of minutes to ‘enter my happy place’ and finally put fingers to the keyboard.
For the first time out of all of the PPV hangover columns I have done… I feel like this one is doomed to failure much like TNA as a company is.
How in the world do I research ‘rape angles’?
How in the blue hell do I verify why Jeff Jarrett was so mad at Sting?
Is it even humanly possible to regard Scott Hall as an ‘active’ member of the TNA roster?
All of these are the dilemmas I ran into trying to organize this week’s ‘Reality’ and this month’s ‘TNA PPV Hangover’.
You have absolutely no idea how hard it is to actually take this product seriously and ask questions that are on the same level with the questions I bring up regarding WWE’s pay-per-views.
With WWE, I grow curious about roster hierarchies and future storylines to compliment the ones currently going on. With TNA, I’m left wondering more about the company’s chances of survival and the surgery it needs to commit on itself to remove the cancers and tumors eating away at its core.
Wow… how’s that for an analogy? Self-surgery… dark…
Alright… enough insecurity about my own talents… here are the questions you love answering:
Why do pundits and columnists among the wrestling media still consider ‘crowd reactions’ as a means of approval for TNA?
I have no idea how long TNA has resided in the same studio space in Orlando, Florida. I have no clue of the percentage of a calendar year they broadcast from a location other than their humble Universal Studios cave.
More to the point, I don’t really want to know how long the same ‘Row 3’ Cheetoh-munchers and X-Division spotfest-droolers have been showing up to these broadcasts. I can only guess that they have been regular participants for the past 3 years.
Imagine how incredibly stale and oblivious WWE Creative would be right now if they saw the same audience in the stands for 3 years straight. Do you think we would even see characters like Jack Swagger or Sheamus? I only envision a WWE Universe full of DX posters and nothing else. Disturbing, huh?
This is the landscape that TNA Creative sees every day. Now sure, I’m imagining that TNA Creative actually knows how to write a storyline and is being clouded by their constant surroundings… but allow me to dream this once.
Would a change of scenery help the TNA product as a whole? Maybe not immediately but it would definitely help the company to see a true focus group and test audience every week.
I have always been fascinated with the wrestling media, full of its pundits and personalities, referring to crowd reactions when it comes to the overall validation of TNA’s product. Of course the crowd is cheering for what they are seeing… they’ve been seeing the same damn thing for 3 years now!
Sure the crowd is silent at times but imagine the reception from a crowd comprised of people FAR different from the same test-tube experiments standing for 4 hours straight on any given day.
If you ever read or hear someone in the wrestling media and they begin to use crowd reactions in TNA’s Impact Zone as a means to verify their own opinion (positive or negative), immediately dispense it in the rhetorical compost pile.
Besides, I would never use ‘Row 3’ as a means of proof to what I think is good or bad. The only time I would need their confirmation on anything is the nightmarish vision of what I would become if I never lost my virginity.
Within three months, TNA will have eliminated 25% of their roster: Over/Under?
Currently, TNA’s roster houses 66 active members on its main page. This includes announcers and other personalities (if you consider Don West a personality… or Amazing Red one for that matter).
With Dave Penzer’s dismissal last night (*confetti launched into stratosphere*), one can only assume that he would be the warning shot fired in TNA’s war on its own budget.
I will not get into the specifics on who I believe should be let go or should be kept within the company. Stuff like that should be left for a radio show or podcast or something like that. I hope some obnoxiously intelligent individual with the abundant amounts of free time and ever-flowing coffee pot could conjure up such a daunting and overwhelming list. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
Huh? You mean you want to take a whack at whacking TNA’s talent roster? Sure… be my guest! Just make sure you bundle your predictions with some realistic logic.
Don’t tell me that Scott Hall should be released because TNA can’t afford to pay him maternity leave after his special day… what? He’s not? He’s just fat? Oh… same thing…
All kidding aside, 18 out of 66 talents released? Sounds rather excessive, doesn’t it? Would you believe that I am choosing the over on this one? I actually see a third of the staff released (22). I may just tell you who they should keep on the roster instead of who should leave instead.
No… Vince Russo is not on the…
NO! Neither is Dixie Carter…
Neither is Hulk… wait… yeah he is… hmm…
Nope. My prediction still stands at 22.
Until next time, mouth-breathers!
Annoy me with your assumptions and affronts… adore me with your adulations and acknowledgements: doug@wrestleview.com
Don’t forget to check out “Reality from Ringside Radio: 3R” this Tuesday on Wrestleview! It’s only available to Wrestleview VIPs though… so sacrifice a Big Mac value meal! Become a VIP! Click here to sign up!