Now if you visit boards like Da Wrestling Site or TSM, where the majority of the posters are people who have been wrestling fans since the last big boom (or beforehand) and have settled into a "smart mark" way of viewing and discussing wrestling, you probably won't see much of what I'm about to say. However, in the past months I've been frequenting Youtube to watch opinion videos on wrestling, and I've been noticing the start of something that could lead to big things with the wrestling industry (though at the moment, ratings don't reflect this).

The word "Fanboy" is being tossed around. There are a group of people who love TNA and bash everything WWE related. And thanks to the emergence of the "TNA fanboy" a lot of WWE fans are expressing opinions that are more passionately in favor of the WWE than what I've seen since the last time the WWE was hot (early 2000's).

For example, a WWE fanboy will make a comment like "Slobmoa Joe." A TNA fanboy will fire back with "He's more intense and cuts a better promo than YOUR champion (ie, Triple H)."

Is this immature and a worthless discussion? Yes, it kind of is. But what's delightful to me about this is that it reminds me of the banter we used to see during the Monday Night Wars. "Raw is more edgy!" "Nuh uh, Nitro has the bigger stars!" "Nuh uh, Raw and Nitro both suck, ECW is where the real wrestling is at!"

The other thing I've noticed is that (for the most part) TNA fans want nothing to do with Ring of Honor, and that there's a lot more people on Youtube who watch ROH and WWE, but want nothing to do with TNA. I'm not sure what the explanation could be for that.

Anyhow, there are just some things I've been noticing, and while the intelligence levels when these people argue is pretty low, it's refreshing to see people enjoying wrestling again and focusing on the positive aspects of their favorite promotions. I guess this is why competition is good and needed in the wrestling industry. If there is another promotion out there to make your favorite company look better by comparsion (at least in your eyes) then it's easier to ignore the flaws.

I totally think we're in for another wrestling promotion war. It might be a far way off still, but I think it's inevitable. TNA is only getting more popular, and granted it's in very very very small steps, but still, and they are picking up WWE favourites (whether they're washed up or not...it's name power). It's only a matter of time, really.

The TNA/RoH thing is I think TNA fans had enough of the RoHbot crap in the early days. Now that TNA is a true national/global promotion I think they just ignore the argument completely because it's pointless and silly to have now.

As far as promotion wars. TNA just doesn't have the money to compete with WWE on any sustained level. They're finally making money and they should just keep staying the course and being what they are. They have a good deal going and trying to get into some talent war with the WWE is a bad choice. Plus, there really aren't many worthy pieces of talent in the WWE currently. TNA, for all of their faults, has been really good at picking the pieces of WWE talent that they can do something with. Christian, Angle, Booker, Rhino, Tomko and Morgan have all been good additions. People accuse them of just grabbing every WWE reject but they really don't at this point. It's usually a very calculated move on their part.

As far as when TNA will be ready. Well, they should be easily beating ECW in the ratings by the end of the summer. That's a good first step by beating the C show. I imagine Smackdown's move will weaken it in the ratings significantly and probably knock it into the ones. So that would make them an attainable target. I also think Raw's going to start dipping into the high 2s every now and then with the recent ratings trends.

Really, TNA just needs that hot angle to shoot them into the stratosphere in popularity. Unfortunately, I think they hit that angle about 2 years too early with LAX. That angle hits now and I think the impact would've been huge for them.

Actually, most of the TNA fans on youtube don't seem to know anything about Ring of Honor. Last year, the most noteworthy TNA shooters, the infamous Bill and Doug, made a comment that they don't like ROH because the shows take place in "dark gyms" and feature headliners such as "Amazing Red and Teddy Hart." I see what you're saying about a certain group of TNA fans, but the ones I'm talking about seem to be emerging as a new generation of wrestling fans, and they are learning about all these promotions for the first time in the last year or two.

Agreed that TNA doesn't have the money to compete with the WWE, but the promotion wars I'm talking about exist amongst the fans on the internet. They aren't concerned about that, and if they are judging the promotions on their television product, then it doesn't matter if TNA's budget is far less, because they still get two hours of television and a 3 hour pay-per-view every month.

Agreed that TNA should overtake ECW within the next few months, and that Smackdown's ratings are going to be decimated with the move to MyNetworkTV. Even if TNA's ratings don't improve that much, just by being able to brag (and have their fans brag) that Impact is beating/matching 2 out of the 3 WWE shows is going to go a long way.

Gotcha on the RoH thing. Well... TNA has a mark fanbase to go with the smart fanbase now. So that's a big part of the reason. A smart fed won't draw what TNA does in their stronghold cities because smarts are too limited of a fanbase.

It is really neat to see a mark fanbase for TNA in some aspects. I'd consider that to be a good sign of growth for the promotion.

Here's kind of the way I stand on everything in wrestling as far as this is concerned.

Any wrestling fan that likes a single company over just watching "wrestling" is a fucking idiot.

The wrestling heirarchy shit cracks me up too. All it is is varying levels of the same shit. The WWE fans pull the "Oh, your champion is a fatass" to TNA, then TNA fans respond with "Your champ can't wrestle" and throw down the ROH insults of "You fight in poorly lit gyms" argument and they all sound like douches.

Back when wrestling was wrestling, there were badly build guys that could wrestle their ass off in "poorly lit gyms". These people wouldn't know about that because to them wrestling didn't exist before 1998 and that pisses me off. I can't stand "hardcores" that don't know their history when it comes to anything that they are into. Because to me you truly aren't a "hardcore" until you have some sort of working knowledge on the history of whatever it is that they are into.

I agree that it's stupid to like a single promotion over the industry in general and that it's annoying to see someone acting like a know it all when they only know about the last five years. However, the reason these people are interesting to me is because they are reminding me of the banter that used to exist between WWF/WCW/ECW and that the business was a lot more successful back then. If this type of banter can keep growing between the feds now, it might be obnoxious for us to read, but then again we don't have to read it, and perhaps another boom could be possible in the next decade.

Honestly, it's the type of banter that's one the internet, which to me isn't even close to what was happening during the Monday Night Wars era. Fuck, people would talk about wrestling at school or work, which outside of Benoit going nuts.....I rarely see or do anymore.