This was the main event of TNA’s Victory Road PPV.
“Debacle” doesn’t do it justice. It is a disgrace.
The man showed up ‘unable to perform’ for the December PPV, they allowed him to sleep it off and then perform anyways. Now they’re saying this was because he was in no condition to perform last night. If so, then as far as I am concerned, not only does he need to be fired, but the people who were unable to come up with an alternative at the last moment need to be fired as well.
Well…not only that, but seriously, given the booking on the rest of the card, this is well beyond a “stern talk with the booking crew” point and well into “Fire the head booker, maybe a few other top people, then start fresh and hope that we can rebuild our audience one more time” position.
Yuck. Hogan, Bischoff, and that whole crew are cancers on the corpse of pro wrestling. This particular debacle seems particularly stupid. They’ve essentially burned the PPV buyers with a “main event” that stunk, because one of their workers wasn’t able to stay sober long enough to perform.
From a booking perspective, almost anything would have been better. Hardy being a heel makes it tougher, but still…shoot an angle where he is injured, or just announce that he missed his travel connection, whatever…and replace him in the match with someone that’s able to perform.
I agree. They’re stuck with the same characters they’ve been playing for 15 years and it isn’t working. They’re stuck with the same attitude toward how to run a wrestling company and it isn’t working. They’re too full of themselves, their past successes and their surety in their own skills to change and adapt to the new reality.
But beyond that, why TNA still has Russo behind the wheel is beyond me. His stench is all over the card and it won’t change until he is gone.
I said from Day 1 that Dixie made a mistake in bringing in Hogan and Bischoff. The parade of cronies that came in behind them was further proof. No one wanted to see The Nasty Boys in TNA in 2010 except Hogan. The only small grace I will give them is that we didn’t get Brutus Beefcake in along with them. (Although we certainly got appearances by Brooke Hogan :rolleyes:)
I’m wondering if Sting is really regretting his decision to re-sign with TNA. Everyone was buzzing about a possible Sting/Undertaker Wrestlemania match in Atlanta, particularly with the initially ambiguous 2-21-11 ads. But instead of a huge payday and one hell of a memorable moment near the end of a career, he gets a ripoff 3-3-11 add, a mediocre Hardy match on Impact and a 10-second squash on a PPV.
And what happens to the “Jeff Hardy Memorial Title Belt” anyway. Eric Young has the old one, so to they make him #1 contender (since the #1 contender match went to a double-count-out anyway), or just make a new belt?
It’s always amazing to me as someone who used to watch wrestling religiously about 10 years ago to hear the same names doing the same thing all these years later
For the record, I followed wrestling a bit in the 80’s and 90’s as a kid, but not having cable made it difficult. When we got cable, it coincided with the 1996 NWO “invasion” of WCW, which kicked off a resurgence in wrestling. Those were great times
But fuck, Sting is still there? Hogan and Bischoff still booking? And that fucking moron Vince Russo is there too? They’ve learned nothing from WCW going bankrupt and being sold to Vince McMahon???
Forget the NFL and NBA strikes, pro-wrestling really needs a shakeup more than any sport or entertainment. The parade of young guys dying all the time doesn’t help it’s reputation either.
Well, ECW did things the right way (that is, they didn’t put themselves into the red buying talent from their competitors, because they were able to develop their own) and they went bankrupt.
WCW didn’t go bankrupt; their parent company merged with AOL, who immediately put the brakes on all of Ted Turner’s pet projects (see Atlanta Braves, 2006-present).
In fact, WCW very nearly put the WWF/WWE out of business. It was only because McMahon took ECW’s playbook and started developing his own talent that the company was saved. Well, that and a lot of tits.
With all that said, TNA absolutely needs to dump Hogan, Russo and the rest of its WCW backwash. Too much money for virtually zero return.
Jeff needs help. He appears to be in a downward spiral, and TNA has been enabling him to continue that. Don’t blame the player, blame the game.
If he can beat the charges against him currently, he will probably continue the downward spiral. A jail sentence may be the best way to get him dried out. Remember, he turned down an offer to rehab from Vince, he’s not likely to do it voluntarily.
I haven’t watched wrestling on TV since sometime around when the WCW started going downhill (1998-ish), and aside from watching “Wrestle! Wrestle!” when it comes out (which is sporadic to say the least) I don’t follow it anymore these days. The horridness of the match aside, the entire production looks absolutely bush-league. Does TNA usually have such small crowds at pay-per-views - that arena couldn’t have been holding more than 2,000-3,000 people tops. It stretches the imagination to see Sting and Eric Bischoff still doing the same angles (Goth anti-hero and weasel-ish heel executive) from 13 years ago. Sting looks like he’s at least trying to put on a good show, but he’s showing his age (he’s pushing 50 by now?) and most of his moves didn’t come anywhere near connecting. I understand that they’re trying to bring back the “glory days” of the WCW, but dinosaur wrestlers, shows that are a five-to-one radio of talking to fighting aren’t the good parts of those days.
And why is the world championship belt purple/magenta? It looks more like a gag belt that a heel with a drag queen angle would wear than something that’s supposed to project majesty and power.
All I know is thank goodness WWE brought back The Rock. That’s what TNA lacks most is an interesting character. TNA, from what I’ve seen, is just plain uninteresting. And, frankly, the wrestlers aren’t very good, either.
TNA tapes shows at Universal Studios Florida in bunches. The attendance is really based on how many people show up on any given day; tickets are free. The weird thing is that they don’t promote their tapings. They could quite easily draw tens of thousands of people if they wanted to.
Vince McMahon started the modern WWWF by taping a bunch of matches with free attendance. There was no substantial marketing cost to get an audience, the matches could be reassembled into TV shows spread out over a month, and re-ordered to promote upcoming paid events at different locations. The TNA TV shows are like the old WWWF shows, basically advertisements for the paid events, with little or no advertising revenue from the broadcast.
That’s sad. This kid needs help, and he’s just going to keep refusing it if it’s offered. It needs to be forced on him.
Bischoff and Hogan are enablers. Because it’ll make them a buck and because they’re too afraid to try a new idea or a new character, or too incompetent to develop one. These idiots are ruining AJ Styles (look at me! I’m mini-flair circa 1989!), Abyss (look at me! I’m the bastard child of Mankind and Green Lantern!) and Matt Morgan (look at me! …wait, where am I?), and whatever potential talent they might be able to scrape up.
Umm, this is going to sound pedantic but I’m not aware of Vince having ever held “free to attend” events of any sort. In the mid and late 1980’s Vince struck television deals with the USA (cable) and NBC networks to broadcast nationwide wrestling telecasts to promote closed circuit and, later on, PPV events. These shows, (the cable ones at least) were cobbled together using house show matches from across the country. They were never free.
This is true, but TNA Impact is more like the old “WCW Saturday Night” shows where you have regular attendance in a small fixed venue. TNA takes a lot of it’s cues from WCW much to it’s detriment.
TNA could probably draw larger crowds if it started touring but it’s trying to strike that delicate balance between breaking out like WCW did with Nitro in 1995, (backed with Turner money), and ECW as a regional promotion with a national TV show. WCW flourished for a time, but ECW crashed and burned fairly quickly.
I always thought Matt was the better performer of the Hardys. What’s he up to these days?
Did Jeff get addicted to pain killers after doing all those high spots he used to do or was he always so wasted and that’s what enabled him to do those high spots in the first place?
Matt is also with TNA, and by most accounts turned in a good match at the same PPV.
One thing that is interesting is that, while we have no true visibility into their financials, they have pretty much stated that they only do PPVs because they are contractually obligated to, they don’t make money off of them and they would probably rather not do them if they had a choice. They make their money (and they do claim that they are paying money back to Panda Energy, their main investor) primarily off of TV licensing, which explains why sometimes their PPVs sometimes seem like they are building to Very Special Episodes of Impact and not vice-versa.