My thoughts on the company as a whole:


TNA will always be Lisa Simpson to WWE's Bart.

No matter how many A's TNA gets on their report card or how well they do on their science project, everyone will always go to Bart first, despite the fact that Bart is morally reprehensible. This is why I think rather than trying to be JUST like WWE (such as those God-awful pay per view commercials that look like they came from Titan Towers) they should be as different as possible.

Trying to out-WWE WWE ain't going to work.

Thoughts?

I pretty much understand the comparison, since my mind is fucked up already. If we're talking Season 1-9 Bart, then I agree 100%, but I'd rather see Lisa than Bart from Season 10-present.

The WWE like commercials come via David Sahadi, who used to work for WWE but now works for TNA. Notice that WWE has done much less commercials like that since TNA started airing PPV's.

True, but that doesn't really do anything to take away the comparisons.

I would agree with you Stutts, though I must say i think the handwriting is on the wall for TNA. If another company were to come forth, (or by act of God TNA survives) how would you suggest they be different. I don't think a pure workrate fed (ROH) would work for the mainstream. What do you think?

See I don't consider ROH pure workrate personally. Not that I think the ROH concept would fly nation-wide either --I don't-- but it's hard to be pure workrate when you've got Jimmy Rave falling off elephants and a (defunct) faction of drugged out teenagers. It's definitely MOSTLY workrate, which works well in their market with their audience. I think the "sports entertainment" aspects of ROH are considerably smarter (and more minimal) than a lot of the stuff WWE puts forward. But ultimately I do think ROH has the right idea in mind in that the ultimate emphasis is always placed on the ring.

As for a different concept? I dunno.

I don't know of any single niche (pure wrestling, all cruiserweights, all hardcore, MMA/submission style, etc.) that has the potential to work nation-wide, the trick as I see it is to blend together the right combination of styles and niches to create a formula favorable to producing good television and good live events. My initial point, rephrased, is that TNA essentially is trying copy WWE's formula rather than creating a new blend of their own.

"Workrate Fed" may not have been the best way to describe ROH, perhaps "smark" fed would have been more accurate. Nevertheless, I don't think it would work on a national level.

One idea I've had is that wrestling should be booked more as a sport, even to the point of having an off-season. This would allow time to heal injuries, develop plots for the next season, and introduce "rookies" each season. Just a thought.

If TNA were smart they would have reverted back to a more old school approach. They should have intelligently build feuds and making money matches. Instead, they just piss away everything they have and needlessly push guys like Jarrett, Nash, etc. They should have build the company around the x-division and made guys like Daniels and AJ their main attractions. Hell, they took AJ and Daniels away from ROH so they couldn't use them and then they did nothing special with them. They should have been billed as main guys because TNA was the only place where you could see them on TV. This mixed with what they tried to do with Raven's destiny and they could have build a decent fanbase. But instead they just throw shit against the wall and pray it sticks.

Here's the thing, though: Every booker has a different definition of Old School. What we see as old school is what some bookers HATED when they were younger. It's trying to find the booker who's not self-involved in what he thinks will work. They should try booking by committee. It would work better for the situation

I meant old school booking as in taking your time and booking things correct and intelligent. This is also known as, not how anyone books wrestling today.

You'd think "Old School" guys would do that, wouldn't ya?

Exactly.....well except for the fact that they still have to book themselves in bullshit (ex. Dusty booking himself into Traci and Trinity's pants)......

I can understand women drooling over Vince McMahon... he's in great shape and isn't THAT bad looking... but DUSTY RHODES?!? He makes me want to puke in my soup.