5 Reasons TNA Never Became WWE's True Competitor
1. No New Stars
I recently listened to an episode of Steve Austins podcast where Samoa Joe was the guest. About half way through the interview, Austin mentioned that he couldnt believe that TNA didnt strap a rocket to Joes back and push him to the moon. Joe, being the professional that he is, replied that those decisions were out of his hands and he just does his best to perform each night. Yet, Austins sentiments are something to be taken to heart. Samoa Joe hit TNA in 2005 with an enormous amount of hype and an even larger potential to be a main event performer that, barring his bookings with ROH at the time, wouldve given TNA an entirely unique featured performer.
2006 marked the arrival of Kurt Angle in TNA. Joe and Angle were quickly put into a high profile, strong style feud that placed emphasis on the technical talents of both performers. The matches were intense, hard-hitting, and helped to solidify Joes increasing worth. Unfortunately, Joe would soon become lost in the plethora of ex-WWE talent that TNA would choose to invest in.
In 2002, AJ Styles was a young talent with a good look, incredible athleticism, and a great deal of potential to be the guy to carry the TNA banner. As of 2014, AJ Styles was a veteran talent with a good look, incredible athleticism, and a great deal of potential to be the guy to carry the TNA banner. After 12 years, Styles had found himself pigeon-holed into a role. It comes to no surprise that Styles recently walked away from the company and is accepting bookings from ROH and exploring the potential of working in Japan.
There were numerous other wrestlers along the way that couldve been elevated to the status of being THE talent that represented TNA. Along with Joe and AJ, wrestlers like The Pope, Monty Brown, Desmond Wolfe, Chris Sabin, Alex Shelley, James Storm, Bobby Roode, Chris Harris, and Low Ki were either void of any connection with WWE, or flew under the radar enough to not be viewed as a WWE talent. These same talents, however, found themselves to be recipients of minor pushes, but were ultimately cast aside in favor of former WWE performers.
A number of established wrestlers were necessary to be part of their promotion in order to garner an initial interest. TNA absolutely needed the likes of Sting and Kurt Angle to generate buzz and attract both hardcore and casual fans. However, TNA quickly adapted this philosophy of hiring virtually any performers that had been released from WWE. The volume of the hiring of these wrestlers wasnt the issue so much as TNA programming was becoming flooded with ex-WWE talent that was getting put over by TNA talent that hadnt yet established themselves as viable stars. Where TNA wanted to added legitimacy and name value, they were instead decreasing their value by slowly turning into a WWE Wasteland.
Mentioned earlier in this article was the Main Event Mafia, which was a stable that featured Sting, Scott Steiner, Kevin Nash, Kurt Angle, and Booker T. Wrestling may be a work, but developing a stable dubbed the Main Event Mafia and assembling that roster with main event talent, who achieved that status in a competitors company and are actively associated with that competitor by the MEM title, and having that group cut promos and run segments that look down upon the younger TNA talent, accomplishes nothing in establishing an identity.
Kevin Nashs return to TNA in 2006, which occurred before the Main Event Mafia angle, featured Nash appearing in vignettes with Alex Shelley that openly made fun of the X Division wrestlers for their smaller stature. Each segment would poke fun at the X Division performers for being midgets, not main event talent, or just generally uninteresting and not worth the viewers time. TNAs creative team was actively allowing one of the most original aspects of their promotion to be buried week after week by an ex-WWE talent. At the time, TNAs X Division featured more unique talent than any other part of their card. Yet, viewers were being force fed the idea that they shouldnt watch. To make matters worse, the angle was never paid off and Nash simply moved on to a World Title feud, as the X Division was left with a dunce cap.
It was the consistency of angles like these that led the company to a point where their homegrown talent couldn't achieve the level marketability needed to create an identity.
We live in a sports culture where the individual is promoted above the team so that there is a star for fans to watch. Lebron James and the Miami Heat have a basketball game against Blake Griffin and the LA Clippers. Drew Brees, Jimmy Graham, and the rest of the New Orleans Saints, have a playoff match-up with Russell Wilson, Marshawn Lynch, and the Seattle Seahawks. What TNA has accomplished in their run is the equivalent of that Seahawks team running TV ads for that game against the Saints with a pitch of, "Come watch Drew Brees and Jimmy Graham absolutely crush our Seahawks! Tickets on sale now! Buy Jimmy's jersey while you're at it! Get a football autographed by Drew Brees! Above all else, make sure you move to New Orleans and watch that team after you're done in our stadium!"
TNA caved into the pressure of the competition. As a result, they never became the competition.