Orlando Jordans first night in TNA he defeated Samoa Joe, a former Heavyweight Champion. Orlando Jordan! Kurt Angles first match in TNA he defeated Joe as well, and thats when Joe was red hot. Rob Van Dam went over clean on AJ Styles for the World Title even after Van Dam already competed once that night. Team 3D went over Americas Most Wanted in their first feud. Booker T beat Robert Roode in matches for months. It goes on and on and on. If you have any name value from WWE or WCW, you are immediately better than anyone in TNA. It was incredibly misguided and self-defeating to push WWE wrestlers as superior. Wrestling is all about perception. If Joe had beat Angle his first night in, it would appear that TNAs best is better than one of WWEs best. Then, Angle could have cut a promo and said how hed never fought someone like Joe in WWE. There was no one in that company as good as him, and he wasnt prepared for it. Now, hes going to train like never before because he realizes the competition in TNA is the best in the world. Fans would then take the product more seriously. Instead, WWE's lowest talent like Jordan have been pushed as better than TNA's best. It made no sense. In ECW it was basically a rule that any name wrestler who joined had to do the job their first night in. It was a sign of respect, and a way to let management and the wrestlers know that they were there to do business. In TNA it was basically the opposite. If you appeared on TV during the Monday Night War, you could come in, win, and then be treated as a bigger deal than anyone already in the company. It was such a backwards way of thinking and had such a detrimental effect that it has damaged the TNA brand and made it hard for anyone to think its anywhere near the level of WWE.
As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at."
Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week.
Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com
