The Rise & Fall Of TNA | Wrestling Timelines
15. January 4, 2010 | The Nu Monday Night War Begins
At the urging of Eric Bischoff, whose one claim to fame and one idea is that he went head-to-head with WWE Raw and defeated it head-to-head on Monday nights, TNA iMPACT moves to Monday nights and goes head-to-head with WWE Raw. This does not end well - after the permanent move is made in March, the experiment ends in May - and it begins in atrocious fashion.
The first Monday iMPACT starts off with a Steel Asylum cage match. The bars are so thick and red that it’s not unlike trying to watch pro wrestling through a brick wall. The eight-man match is impossible to keep track of. One of the combatants, Homicide, gets disqualified, in a cage match, for using a baton. Homicide tries to beat the retreat, but he finds it difficult to escape the cage because the hole at the top can only be reached via upside down crawl. He gets stuck on the second attempt. The fans - on night one, match one - chant “Bullsh*t!”
Then, Jeff Hardy - last seen as WWE’s #2 babyface - debuts in the X-Division to brawl with Homicide. TNA usually pushes lowly ex-WWE guys to the moon, and the guy drawing comparable reactions to John Cena is in the second tier.
Later in the night, Scott Hall and Sean Waltman invade the show in the most bleak (and predictable) retread of 1996 imaginable. Eric Bischoff rips up the format sheet because it’s now 1999, and then Sting watches from the rafters, taking us back to 1997. Genuine sensation Desmond Wolfe loses a match within minutes. The Nasty Boys, who last did something acclaimed in 1994, try to get in the building. AJ Styles Vs. Kurt Angle is a great main event, but after all that awfulness, it almost feels cruel. It’s certainly pointless. TNA, instantly, feels doomed. The six-sided ring is gone by the January Genesis pay-per-view, because it “only got TNA so far”, but it’s not all bad news: Hulk Hogan’s WWE Hall of Fame ring is about to become TNA’s most hotly-contested prize.
TNA’s Nielsen ratings pattern became a meme across 2007 and 2009. Hovering at 1.1, they barely moved, indicating that the false dawns and horrendous misfires barely matter: TNA has developed a modest, loyal audience. This frays badly upon the arrival of Hogan and Bischoff, who drop the pretence of what TNA could be by hiring their mesozoic mates, portraying AJ Styles as a starstruck Ric Flair wannabe, and shortening the matches. The average rating drops from 1.14 in 2009 to 1.06 in 2010, although this is attributed to the disastrous move to Mondays, during which iMPACT never reaches 1.0. 2011 is an improvement, reaching a 1.17 average, but the Hogan and Bischoff era nonsense finally catches up with TNA by 2012, when the average plummets to 1.06 again.
Prior to the arrival of Hulk Hogan, two versions of TNA existed in parallel. There was the awful TNA defined by inscrutable booking, and the excellent TNA typified by futuristic action and actually funny, irreverent comedy. The existence of the first version would always undermine and render pointless the second. TNA was trapped in an endless cycle.
If the expensive arrivals of Hogan and Bischoff and Attitude Era names Mick Foley and Rob Van Dam accomplishes one thing - other than bringing to an end a very brief period of profitability - it is to put fans out of their misery once and for all. The cycle is broken; TNA becomes a very, very bad product with few, if any, redeeming qualities. (Jeff Jarrett’s delusional MMA fighter schtick must be commended, though; it’s incredible).
With WWE (albeit begrudgingly) pushing the likes of CM Punk and Daniel Bryan as the early 2010s unfold, the market leader assumes TNA’s role as the promotion that books fashionable, state-of-the-art wrestling matches in a break from its regularly scheduled sh*tty programming.