The Evil History Of Pro Wrestling: TNA Victory Road 2011

Writing in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer was incredulous. His cynicism, finely-tuned through years of wading through the muck that is his area of expertise, led him to suspect it was a work - “a way to get attention”. Meltzer, as with everybody else, could scarcely believe that nobody with influence backstage was able to conceive of a better plan or an alternative main event. Dave Meltzer chronicled the rise and fall of WCW in real-time more comprehensively than anybody else. Meltzer, though, also wrote “there are no indications that it was [a work]”.

Eric Bischoff, whose catchphrase and autobiography title is ‘Controversy Creates Cash’, did not withdraw Jeff Hardy from the main event. He has since claimed that he lacked the power to do that; on his podcast 83 Weeks back in March 2021, Eric clarified that, while he was “technically the executive producer of the television show”, he “had no authority whatsoever and no official role in the pay-per-view”.

“I was concerned about the show,” Bischoff continued. He made the decision to make the decision, since nobody else would.

Bischoff spoke about what was best for the show, but betrayed this facade by revealing his first instinct: to be a carny and turn on Jeff. Eric said he wanted to stay within the parameters of his heel character and punch a struggling man in the face, triggering a disqualification, before remembering his own audible.

So who is to blame?

In May 2012, then President Dixie Carter opened up on the debacle in an interview with Busted Open Radio. Or rather, she didn’t; she completely, shamelessly ducked the question, offering zero accountability, choosing instead to put over Jeff’s latest plea to clean himself up. Carter even put herself over in the process, saying “I feel blessed to have been a small, small part of supporting him and helping put the structure in place”.

Perhaps Bischoff - a man with a toxic reputation in many circles, the man who booked the Kevin Nash Vs. Scott Hall storyline in WCW in 1998 - was correct when he said:

“I think [the Victory Road incident] reflected a tremendous amount of a lack of professionalism within the entire TNA organisation from top-to-bottom.”

(It should be noted that TNA in the aftermath acknowledged that Victory Road wasn’t good enough, and offered anybody who purchased it six free months of the on-demand online video library).

A lot of TNA’s dumb history is, more than anything else, very amusing - in a perverse way. A beneficiary of nepotism hired the world’s worst booker, sank the only vaguely well-financed alternative to WWE in 18 years, and had the temerity to blame the only one good thing the promotion ever had going for it, the talent, in an onscreen meeting.

While the wasted generations of great talent was a sad encyclopedia, the TV was nevertheless corking fun, if you’re prone to enjoy a bit of schadenfreude.

The ‘LOLTNA’ business becomes altogether less funny when you consider that these comically inept morons were tasked with safeguarding the agonised wrestlers who bumped for them.