The Final Edition
Recently I have realised that I have been skipping large quantities of the weekly Impact Wrestling show. It just isn't as interesting to me anymore. Now this is something that I have been doing for a long time with Raw and Smackdown, but I did not think that I would end up doing this with the TNA product considering that in previous months, it has been far superior.
But it has been the combination of stale challengers to the world title, as well as silly storylines (AJ sleeping his way to the top) has made me turn off at various points. The only two sections of TNA that have kept me watching are the Bully Ray/Austin Aries feud and Samoa Joe & Magnus as TNA World Tag Team Champions. TNA messed one of these things up at Sacrifice by putting the straps on Daniels and Kazarian, which in my mind was an unnecessary move considering they were already busy with the AJ feud.
In my opinion, TNA is going in the wrong direction. Those in charge seem to prefer to focus on the like of Garrett Bischoff, King Mo, Brooke Hogan and the older non-wrestling personalities; while the likes of Samoa Joe, Magnus, the X Division and others sit at home.
I am not going to suggest what TNA should do because this column could go on for years and years. But something needs to change. The majority expected the product to improve once Bruce Pritchard took over as Head Of Creative from Vince Russo, but very little has changed if anything at all. The same ex-WWE guys are challenging for Bobby Roode's title and Roode's act has become stale with him simply hitting the same bulletpoints every single week: "selfish generation" this, "it factor" that.
I do not believe that the switch to airing Impact live this summer will change much, in terms of the strength of the product or the ratings for the show. When TNA aired shows last time, they concentrated on shocking the audience with debuts and returns. This has me worried, especially considering the rumour that Melina and John Morrison may soon be debuting in TNA. It seems they would be willing to sacrifice the morale of the locker room for surprising the fans with debuts of two ex-WWE stars who have a long history of being troublesome in the locker room.
The Gut Check Challenge is a concept that TNA have brought in that I was looking forward to a lot. However, I feel that management has destroyed the concept from the very beginning. By having the first guy who came in (Alex Silva) get a contract, they seem to have suggested that everybody who comes in should be able to win a contract. The second problem with the GCC is that Silva was terrible. He looked terrible, he wrestled terribly and his promo the next week was terrible as well. Hopefully, it gets better with some stronger talent coming in with others coming in and getting absolutely destroyed.
TNA seem to be trying to do absolutely everything to get me to switch off, and I'm coming very close to the end of my leash. Something needs to change. What exactly, I'm not sure. But something needs to be done, whether this is a change creatively, managerial or talent-wise.
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This will be my final column as a member of the TNAsylum staff and it has been a great two years at THE haven for TNA fans. I'd like to thank Talon and the rest of the guys for supporting me during my time at the site, and before that as members of certain other sites.
I'd also like to thank everybody who has read and commented on the columns that I have written over this site the past two years.
Thank you,
Irish Yid
