10 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: TNA (Part 3)

Around midway through the third episode, 'Dark Side' laid out TNA’s decision to go head to head with Raw on Mondays starting with a special trial run in January 2010. Then, they stupidly went weekly with it in March and that turned out to be a total disaster. All of that context is fascinating, but then things go off the deep end.

It’s pretty funny that the producers here chose to show David Hasselhoff (of all people) as guest host of Raw to put over how crap TNA Impact looked in comparison to WWE's flagship. His appearance happened on the 12 April Raw, which was still during the Raw vs. Impact era, but…what a choice.

VICE could’ve shown John Cena, Batista, Triple H, Vince McMahon or any other number of WWE stars, but they went with the Hoff. Hell, even the returning Bret Hart would've been more fitting. He was blatantly booked on that 4 January Raw as a counterpoint to what TNA were trying over on another channel. Nope, it was f'n Knight Rider who got the screen time.

Surely somebody editing this doc was at it with that decision. Fans generally detested Raw's guest host era, so it hardly made TNA look rubbish that the McMahons were frittering away millions looking for even a minor celeb rub. That definitely wasn't why Impact moving to Mondays failed, basically.

Things got desperate on TNA's side though, that's true. Ratings dipped, house show attendance dwindled, and they looked second rate next to WWE - Hasselhoff aside.