10 Ways TNA Totally Screwed Themselves Over
9. Copying WWE
TNA originally aimed to fill the void left by WCW and ECW, provide a new wrestling alternative, and eventually challenge WWE’s stranglehold on the business. Sadly, they’ve never done enough to truly separate themselves from WWE’s product, even at the height of their powers, and TNA has suffered greatly from presenting Impact not as an alternative, but a watered-down version of Raw and SmackDown.
From their insistence on signing just about every wrestler that gets released from WWE to their over reliance on authority figures and power stables, TNA have aped WWE’s sports entertainment tropes to a tee. It extends to a micro level, too: they tried to recreate Daniel Bryan’s underdog story with Eric Young, copied Money in the Bank with Feast or Fired, and even used OVW as a developmental territory for a brief period of time.
There are countless other examples, and instead of finding their own niche, TNA have repeatedly tried to recreate WWE’s own methods of success. In order to succeed in the long-term, TNA needed to tap into the wants and needs or wrestling fans that weren’t already being satisfied by Vince McMahon’s company. Instead, they decided to become WWE Lite.