Ranking The WORST Era Of Every Major Wrestling Show
Featuring something truly evil and abominable. And AEW's naff Devil.
The weekly episodic US TV pro wrestling model is fundamentally flawed. Wrestling can never make sense.
Consider the part of the show in which the heel executes the beat-down on the babyface.
The heel needs to get heat. The babyface also needs friends, or at least one peer who respects them, otherwise they're a loser and thus difficult to get behind. This in itself is a plot hole, since both events must occur at separate points. The friends can't care all the time. They should, if they were any kind of friend at all, but to contrive the plot, they can't. Compounding this, pay-per-view exists and wrestling never ends. A promoter can't give away every big singles match all the time. Often, that babyface will tag with others along the way - others who suddenly stop caring in about a month or so.
WWE's invisible camera approach is of course beyond stupid, but the very idea that a wrestler can simultaneously perform on and watch the same event creates yet more scope for stupidity. By watching the show, they'd be able to sniff out something like an imminent betrayal.
If the WWE fans who can't use Google can notice that the Rock is throwing up a "loser" gesture and not the Bloodline pose, for example, how stupid is Roman Reigns?
Combine this model with some frightfully moronic "creatives", and you will end up with complete dross - as you'll read.
Even the more intelligent bookers succumb to the flaws eventually...
7. TNA Impact
The question isn't "What killed TNA?"; the question is whether TNA ever stood a chance of becoming a respectable #2, one capable of touring live, attracting a decent fanbase and drawing talent that perceived the company as a destination unto itself.
Realistically, the promotion was stigmatised as a punchline upon launch. The best version of TNA was almost projected onto it by fans who were as desperate as they were genuinely enthused. Everything good or promising was invariably ruined by Vince Russo's dismal, hateful, nonsensical booking (which at timed was so bad it's good, granted).
In a bid to go big, owner Dixie Carter drafted in Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff ahead of the January 4, 2010 relaunch. Their creative vision forever annihilated the hope, that once surfaced now and again, of TNA ever developing its own identity.
This hope was killed almost instantly when fans, revolting against the four-sided ring, were told by Hogan that "six sides only got you so far". The message was clear: Hogan knows best.
Except he didn't, of course.
The first night of the Nu Monday Night War - a publicity stunt that only succeeded in further casting TNA as a small-fry outfit - was a disaster. A total botch-fest on which Hogan brought in all his mates, Hogan treated Jeff Hardy, a main eventer in WWE, as an X-Division act and the washed Val Venis as part of the division where the big boys play dude.
Hogan nor Bischoff hadn't watched anything in years and years. This "era" wasn't just sadly inevitable in how out of touch it was; it was a parody of what their booking could look like in the worst-case scenario.
Across the first six months of 2010, Abyss was powered by Hulk Hogan's WWE Hall of Fame ring. AJ Styles became the Dink to Ric Flair's Doink. Every week, the match results became more and more demented. Orlando Jordan beat Samoa Joe. The impressive Desmond Wolfe was 50/50'd into oblivion. The Nasty Boys went 50/50 with Team 3D. Get lost. The matches were short, incidental to the usual authority figure nonsense.
TNA, when it wasn't an animated shrine to WWE, was Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff booking Heroes of Wrestling.