Making less and less of an Impact each passing day.
This past weekend TNA (Impact) wrestling put on what is traditionally been its biggest event of the year, Bound For Glory. In over the years, the number two wrestling company in the U.S. would build up this show for months, often including the Bound For Glory Series, a points based tournament where 12 of the company’s top wrestlers compete for the shot at the world title in the main event of the big show. Storylines that had been simmering for months would be resolved and would start things anew for the promotion for the next number of months. Although it was MUCH smaller in scale to the WWE’s Wrestlemania event, it served a similar purpose.
And this year they didn’t give a shit.
This year’s Bound For Glory was an afterthought. It was held in Japan and a co promoted with Great Muta’s Wrestle-1 promotion. Not exactly the top company in Japan. The card wasn’t announced until 2 weeks before the show, the World Title and the Tag Team Titles were not only not defended but the champions weren’t even on the card. The main event of the show was a mid card tag team match with James Storm and Muta student Sanada taking on Great Muta himself and Tajiri. The major stories surrounding the World, Woman’s, and Tag Team Titles were either resolved before the show, or went on as if the show didn’t exist. Not only was this not a top flight card, but TNA already filmed weeks worth of TV to air after the event, basically spoiling the two title matches they did have, and not featuring any of the Wrestle-1 guys at all. It was the same level that their pretaped, months old, “One Night Only” shows get. For a company that only offers 4 live pay-per-view shows a year, this is about the worst way they could have approached this show. Not only did they send a message that the company didn’t give a damn about this show despite hyping the show for over 2 months, they told their small and devoted group of fans they shouldn’t care either.
As the year draws closer to a close it is becoming apparent that TNA/Impact Wrestling is on a decline that they are not going to recover from, at least not without some major changes. I could go into a list of all the things TNA has done since day 1 that left people scratching their heads at best and pissing people off at worst. A year ago when Jeff Jarrett left the company he helped create it was a sign. Arguments could be made about how much he did for the company V/S how much of it was for himself and how he kept the company from growing, but either way, when the guy who helped create the show walks out it’s a sign. And it wasn’t a good one. Since then we’ve seen a lot of talent leaving, less and less show’s being booked, smaller and smaller crowd to the point where the average TNA show will draw less then 700 people, reducing their ppv schedule from 12 events a year to 4, the return of the 6 sided ring despite a lot of talent protests, and also blatantly ripping off WWE storylines. You can see the road this company is traveling is the same road WCW, the AWA, and World Class all traveled in decades passed. The big difference?
All those companies were successful at one point in their existence.
Truth be told TNA has never drawn a profit in it’s 12 year existence. At best on a yearly account, they would maybe break even. They only kept going this long becasue they were owned by a Billionare couple who seem to only have wanted to make their daughter happy. Yes, despite what TNA would have you believe, Dixie isn’t the actual owner. Her father is. Her parents pay all the paycheks, not her. Spike TV also had a big hand in the company lasting as long as it has, they chipped in a lot of money too to bring in people like Hulk Hogan and Sting over the years. They always viewed the show as an investment. If Spike chipped in some money, TNA would grow and that money would be returned. TNA never really grew, the money never came back, and Spike TV finally gave up. Although the original television deal was set to expire (right around the time of Bound for Glory) Spike decided to air the show for the rest of the year.
And then what? The future, as it looks right now, for TNA, doesn’t look very positive. If Spike TV doesn’t want to air the show anymore, even a show that regularly brings in about a million people each week, then there must be a reason.
TNA/Impact Wrestling as we know it, is on borrowed time.
Taking a look at possible futures for the company, things look like this. They could find another network. This probably won’t end well for them anyway. Wrestling isn’t popular for TV execs right now. Look at what happened when the WWE wanted to negotiate a new deal for their programming and how bad that turned out to be. What chance does TNA have? The few names that have been batted around are things like Velocity and WGN America, both of which are HUGE reductions in audiences. Sure, TNA fans are loyal for the most part, but those kinds of channels are basically dooming the show to obscurity. And even if they end up on one of those channels, they would be able to offer nearly the amount of resources that Spike TV gave them over the years. I’m not even sure a syndicated TV deal would work out well for them either, at that point even your most loyal fan base would have a hard time finding the show in their area, if it aired at all.
And those are the best options right now. Without TV the company is dead in the water. They don’t even have another house show scheduled until sometime next year. They are only operating maybe a couple of shows every two months so they can’t make any sort of money to support themselves on a touring schedule. TNA doesn’t have the general audience fanbase that WWE has, and the fanbase they do have majorily don’t want to invest a whole lot of money into the product anyway. The buyrates for their pay per veiw shows are low (and that is when they actually TRY with those shows) and in the past it has been shown that if put head to head, people would watch WWE anyway. A large part of their existance was performing in front of fans who weren’t even paying to see the shows.
So, in looking around to see what the future holds, what they have left, and what they’ve lost. I say it’s time to end it.
This company is trying to sell a product that no one wants. If the WWE had to settle in their deal to keep TV, TNA/Impact Wrestling doesn’t have a prayer. They have proven time and time again that they are incapable of growing and it doesn’t matter what they do booking wise they just aren’t going to bring in anything more than a million people. They don’t make any money for themselves and are only this far along because people didn’t mind throwing money away. When a major cable channel like Spike TV gives up on them, what kind of incentive do you have to give anyone else to carry your show? If you throw money into working on your own indy race car and no matter what you do for 12 years, it only reached 45 miles an hour, at what point do you just give up and resign yourself it was just never meant to be? This was a company that was number 2 by default, not by earnest. It’s amazing what they’ve done over the years but things have finally caught up to Dixie and the Carters.
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