Please…Don’t Hate 5.24.09: TNA Wrestling (Part II)

Welcome everyone to Please…Don’t Hate, the column which takes a look at some of the most hated on and complained about wrestlers, companies, and topics within the wrestling world. This is the end of the road again my friends. This is the final conclusion of the Please…Don’t Hate comeback special. If I enjoyed it, I truly appreciate it and if you hated it, then…you have your wish. Again I just wanted to take a step back from my ranting on in my “Against The Grain” column and come back to my original baby that I started with here last year at 411. Maybe I’ll bring it back again…maybe I won’t. But again I hope everyone enjoyed these last two topics (and hopefully this last one as well) and I hope you can all catch me again back in the groove again with my “Grain” column. I’ll list the next topic with that below. Now onto business. Before I step into this week’s topic on my internal love/hate relationship with TNA, I would first like to share my thoughts on my Triple H column a couple of weeks ago.

So for those who missed it last time, I attempted to defend HHH from “hating” a second time around from the first column of the same topic done last year. I had thought that maybe I would open some people’s eyes by seeing that the man didn’t deserve every single ounce of hate aimed towards him. But…what I found out of the 48 comments left for me (and only ONE of them being remotely positive) is that…THE IWC HATES TRIPLE H. I thought it was only a selected few that disliked the guy, but apparently everyone despites everything the man does. Some may say that this may be a over generalization of the IWC’s opinion just based on their comments there…but until someone proves me wrong by going against this thought then I assume that no one really digs the guy’s work especially if a general survey of almost 50 people offer their utter disgust with his skills and current position. Just to offer my last two cents on it, I honestly am not a huge fan of HHH. I like his style and like some of his matches, but I don’t spend my hard-earned money to solely watch him in the ring. I was just defending him because I was (and still am a bit) tired of people just going after him for his unique “family situation”. Again I’m not defending against any wrestlers or people in this manner who only get ahead due to unfair advantages cause I think that it’s sucks when it happens. But I really hope that everyone’s opinion offered on that column were based on their thoughts on his actual in-ring ability and not what they assume is his position of “master backstage puppeteer”. It’s cool to have your own thoughts and opinions on hating the dude’s guts (that’s why I loved writing this column in order to hear people out), but PLEASE I hope that it’s coming from a fan’s perspective on his work and not on the “hot gossip” that one wants to believe.

Now onto TNA. This is without a shadow of a doubt definitely the most discussed and debated discussion topic amongst the peeps in the IWC. With a topic like John Cena, people either love or hate the guy. But with TNA, people are so torn with what multiple and often random directions that they’ve been taking since their creation. Last year I defended the company from haters due to my strong belief for everything goofy TNA has done, they’ve done two other better things to make up for it. But nowadays, I’m honestly am now a bit frustrated like so many others on what I’m seeing every week on my TV screen from them. So I will share why I think this now in comparison to last year and why I still am barely sticking on to my belief that the company will eventually get better.

Before you read this revised column, please feel free to read the original one I did on TNA last year:
Please…Don’t Hate: 4.06.08 – TNA Wrestling

Reader Reverb
“Against” TNA Wrestling

Great article. My only problem is, I cant watch TNA for more than 5 minutes without wanting to change the channel. I too have watched since the Nashville days and its hard to see something that once have such potential, be so utterly terrible.

For me, the good just doesnt outweigh the bad. Im not closed minded, I watch every few weeks to see if its any better. But until it does get better, I just cant watch it.

Posted By: CMG (Guest) on April 06, 2008 at 08:33 PM

try to watch TNA on a regular basis. I do not watch it regularly, but regularly try to watch it and can’t. the show insults my intelligence just for watching it, and usually quickly. Even worse than the cartoon WWF days ysed to. I will turn TNA on but the third time I say to myself, “how stupid do you think I am”, I don’t go back that episode. The last great insult was finding out x-division champion Lethal is both stupid AND week, as he pretended 135lbs was 410lbs and couldn’t lift it. That is a warm up set for people smaller than him who work out. Do you really think these new characters help, I care less about most of the X dicision guys now. And I was very dissapointed in the 1 Daniels/Sting match and the 3D x-division fued didn’t elevate anyone in my eyes. So frustrating.

Posted By: joe (Guest) on April 07, 2008 at 11:33 AM

tna is great..ignorant much?

ROH is a real promo. guess where TNA farmed daniels, styles, joe, shelley, sabin, and homicide from? i’m sure there’s others as well.

the writer of this column embellishes the greatness of his positive points a bit. they’ve false started on joe numerous times. i completely forgot about cage/rhino until i read about that atrocious weapons match they had. booker vs roode has been an overbooked mess.

Posted By: domo aregato (Guest) on April 08, 2008 at 01:39 PM

“For” TNA Wrestling

I am glad somebody said here because TNA is damn entertaining sometimes. I’ll never understand the hate Cage/Angle/Tomko/Styles angle gets. The characters are organic and three-dimensional . Here’s a mind-blowing concept it advanced each week. Progression in storylines and an actual mid-card make TNA great. Not perfect, just a lot of fun.

Posted By: firebreakerchip (Guest) on April 07, 2008 at 12:55 AM

Great work Julian, welcome aboard.

Actually you could’ve throw in “great tag team wrestling” and the Knockouts division as reasons to love TNA. I have become a big fan of TNA and I’m happy they are on the right direction with their World Title scene.

Posted By: Chikara (Guest) on April 06, 2008 at 10:10 PM

I’m still a TNA fan, and I still consider it better than the E if for nothing else than the actual wrestling. Much better on weekly shows and usually the PPVs deliver.

Posted By: Leo (Guest) on April 06, 2008 at 10:50 PM

Oh…TNA…why have you forsaken us…

My Reasoning For Not Hating On…TNA Wrestling
Oh God…where the hell do I begin? To sum up the theme of my feelings for TNA, I would like to use the phase of “Taking two steps forward, taking three steps back”. For the last two years now, I strongly believe that this has become TNA’s unintentional calling card. For every other thing that the company has done very well, they’ve managed to do something else that could be considered very silly or weak to set them back a bit. This is my viewpoint of how TNA has looked to me in the last few years. In the beginning, TNA had three main things going on strong for them that made them stood out from the WWE: the X-Division, a strong undercard and the alternative, but sometimes “wacky” main event scene. I watched every week to see the insane weekly action from the high-flying cruiserweights, saw fresh faces like America’s Most Wanted (AMW) and Team Canada and often check out what crazy main event they had going on with the likes of Raven, Jeff Jarrett, and AJ Styles. In my opinion, this strategy worked out to a certain extend: use very recognizable former stars from other organizations (i.e. Dudleys, Rhino) in the main events to get the casual viewer’s attention and then use the rest of the undercard, particularly with their “crown jewel” with the X-Division, to get their newer unknown talent over. With this formula down pat, I then saw that they wanted to switch it and try to bring in more “higher profile” people in the form of former popular WWE workers. First was Christian Cage. The man came in, immediately made a new impact by shortly winning the TNA title, and then slowly became one of the highlights every week with his excellent work as a killer heel. Still sticking to the formula, TNA tried to continue this trend with bringing in the huge name of Kurt Angle while also trying to push up some of their undercard such as the mega-over Samoa Joe, Jay Lethal and AJ Styles at the same time. Even after the way-too-fast series of matches with Kurt Angle and Samoa Joe and then the following “epic” Christian Collation vs. Angle Alliance storyline (which had mixed results), I thought that the company was still trying really hard, despite some heavy fan criticism, to keep things on the right track. Those were my thoughts from last year.

In the year since I wrote my first column on the subject, I’ve witnessed the company succumb themselves to the aforementioned “2 steps forward, 3 steps back” mentality. For the interesting intrigue from the AJ/Kurt Angle/Karen Angle/Tomko/Christian saga, they managed to crap on the follow-ups by having things like a super-lame AJ/Frank Trigg submission match on a PPV and an abrupt end to the storyline with no explanation of the months-long “mysterious” relationship between Karen and AJ (which I prayed last year wouldn’t happen). Then they bring in Mick Foley (my favorite wrestler of all time) to great hype and then in the last few months they sadly managed to make him seem not that big of a deal, despite now being the current World Champ. Lastly with the Main Event Mafia, I personally had SOOOO much hope for the new group in the beginning because I thought that they would finally be the one unique “mega-stable” that TNA has so desperately needed since day one (not counting “Jarrett’s Army” with Abyss, AMW, and Team Canada back in the day cause that group was really kind of random), but the company has even messed that up as well by first starting off strong by beating up the “younger group” (you know…in an effort to get them over) to now being a group that bitches and complains every week but seems to do nothing about. So with all of this ranting of mine on how the company has kind of been so disappointing in the last year, the question is really…why am I still asking people to not “hate” on TNA for what they’ve done to piss people off? The answer is simply this…hope.

In this column, I usually would ask people to stop hating on a certain topic in an effort to open up their eyes to what good actually exists and not blindly dislike something while also talking junk about those who do like a topic. With TNA, for once here, I’m actually NOT going to ask people to “hate” because I honestly am getting to a point where I am doing so myself due to my own blinding frustration. BUT I do just want to ask people here to not give up on the company by not watching and crapping on every single thing that TNA tries to do right. It is obviously frustrating for any fan in wrestling to watch a company set-up something so right and so good only to slowly kill it off in unnecessary and unintentional ways. The WWE has done plenty of these types of things in the past before, but TNA Wrestling definitely takes the cake in doing this very thing 100x over in so little time. But a personal theory of mine with TNA’s position is that with their focus on expanding their reach with more national and international shows, along with their established major stars (Booker T, Nash, Sting), they’ve lost a little bit on their storyline-end. I think that they’ve expected that by simply having folks like Foley and Angle be continuously in the main-event scene that it will constantly keep the “casual fan” tuning in. But as I’m sure some people in the IWC have stated, if TNA doesn’t change their ways more to bring up the original “pillars” of TNA with AJ Styles, Chris Daniels and Samoa Joe, they will alienate a good portion of viewers in due time (if they haven’t done so already).

I think that while TNA is doing “two steps forwards, three steps back”, the “two steps” are the things that are keeping the company alive. Recently the company has been taking slow steps to fix their mistakes with rebuilding their now semi-damaged divisions that makes them separate from the main “rival” in WWE. Their Knockouts Women’s Division was getting them a lot of good attention in the beginning of its creation a couple of years, but they managed to stall it out quite a bit with a lack of storylines and the huge blow of losing their crown star in Gail Kim. But now they’ve slowly making it work by giving good storylines for the women again (especially with the Kong vs. Angelina Love angle) and establishing new people (Daffney, Taylor Wilde). Their Tag Division was pretty good at one point with multiple tag teams being featured at one point (AMW, XXX, etc), but they lost their focus and only had maybe no more than 4 solid teams feuding with each other for almost a whole year (LAX, Team 3D, Beer Money, Motor City Machine Guns). Now they are making a nice effort with the recent “Team 3D Tag Team Invitational” tournament that featured a lot of various teams and is attempting to establish new recognized teams as not to feature the same people over and over again. Now with the X-Division, I personally think that it’s really “a work in progress”. It’s definitely not as exciting or heavily featured like in the good days with like a 10 different guys being pushed in great matches, but they are intermingling these guys with the tag division (No Limit, Motor City Machine Guns, Homicide-LAX) to work with what they have to give us some diversity. The main-event scene is rightfully so the most criticized aspect of TNA currently, mostly with the Main Event Mafia saga and lame storyline follow-ups such as the current “?!?!?” with Bobby Lashley showing up…and then disappearing. But if everything else is slowly transforming for the good, I think that this will eventually be readjusted as well.

As much crap as they have put out in the last couple of years, TNA aren’t completely stupid. Haters talk shit about them because they think that they have their heads up their asses with their booking, but I think that the company truly means well and is STILL trying to get a winning formula down pat. People think that they just need to push Joe or push AJ and ALL of their problems will go away but this is only one piece of the bigger puzzle that they have to put together in order to be successful. When I say “Please…Don’t Hate TNA”, I really mean don’t give up on a company that has brought a lot of us fans some great awesome wrestling moments that the WWE couldn’t muster up and also has SO MUCH potential to continue to do again in the future. Patience is a hell of a virtue and TNA has tested everyone’s for a good while now. All I ask is that we bite our tongues a little bit longer because I think that the company is slowly but FINALLY starting to understand fans’ frustrations. Hopefully in due time, the “two steps forward, three steps back” will become just “two steps forward”…period.

Good Reasons to Love….TNA Wrestling
Angelina Love/Awesome Kong contract signing (Knockouts are slowly getting better storylines again)

Team 3D Tag Team Tournament (attempting to make tag wrestling a focus again)

Angle vs Styles during MEM/Frontline feud (disappointing storyline, but easily pulls out great match when prompted)

If you would like to check out all of my past “Please…Don’t Hate” issues, please visit my page here:
Please…Don’t Hate archives

The RETURN of “Against The Grain”
Thanks again for those who followed me here from Against The Grain to Please…Don’t Hate and now hopefully back again! In two weeks, I get back to my groove again with much more “casual” feel of talking about the random and wacky things that aren’t talked so often in the wrestling world. My next topic is definitely going to fall into the “weird” catergory. I consider myself a big TV fanatic watching a lot of weekly shows (besides wrestling) on my screen and one of these programs is the super-hero themed show “Heroes”. Like my topic of TNA above, I am also frustrated with the way that the direction of Heroes has gone in the last couple of years. So I will actually compare these two very different, but very similar programs in what I call “Heroes vs. TNA: A Comparison in Frustration”.