10 Times TNA Went Way Too Far
5. Whistling Dixie
The first rule of narrative is maintaining the suspension of disbelief. Thats true for movies, novels, the little white lies you tell your parents, and especially for professional wrestling, which relies on the widespread acceptance of some pretty dumbass things in order to be appreciated as an artform. So when TNA insist on abusing what little remains of kayfabe like a drunken stepfather, its not surprising that wrestling fans choose to comprehensively crap on the promotion. Two key examples immediately spring to mind: during the Genesis pay-per-view in 2010, the powers that be became so irritated with the live crowds loud and insistent burial of the rubbish they were being confronted with that they sent their senior director of production, Steve Small, out to the ring to address the fans in attendance. In a weird, rambling lecture, Small made it clear that TNA expected its fans to collude and cooperate with the nonsense they were watching, calling everyone in attendance cast members and informing them that they had a duty to help TNA get the stories they were telling over with the audience at home by acting as though they understood and accepted said nonsense and were into it. Predictably, because wrestling fans are the dictionary definition of butthurt, the TNA audience decided that Steve Small was a douchecanoe and that TNA was even further gone down the plughole than they realised. Many chose that moment to simply stop being fans of the promotion and the product they never went to a live event again, and never watched the show again. The previous year, company president Dixie Carter pulled the roster together for a managerial talk in which she informed them that if any of them disagreed with the direction that she was taking the company in (the hiring of Hulk Hogan and other WCW flotsam and jetsam to turn TNAs fortunes around), they should leave: it was her way, or the highway. Not the greatest of teambuilding exercises, but there you go the trouble was that the meeting was professionally filmed, edited and then broadcast to the public before an episode of Impact. Despite this being a legitimate message to her employees, and not a work in the slightest, she put it on telly for the fans to see. It was widely mocked and criticised by everyone who saw it.