Impact Wrestling’s Never Ending Cycle of Failure
TNA created a culture of failure. That name is gone now with Impact Wrestling is place, but the company remains, culture of failure fully intact.
The company formerly known as TNA, now simply named Impact Wrestling, was sold by Dixie Carter to Anthem. They slightly redesigned their look, hired new backstage officials, and buried Carter beyond belief at the first taping during their ownership. It was a good showing to fans who had given up on previous ownership and were fed up with the product. However, any potential excitement about a brand new product was squashed almost immediately.
Alberto El Patron (formerly Alberto Del Rio in WWE) debuted on the first episode and demanded a world title shot, according to spoilers. He was given that title shot, and he went on to win the belt, thanks to two ref bumps, some confusion at ringside with backstage officials, and a dusty finish.
It was the ultimate classic TNA cliché. Former WWE guy comes in, immediately gets a shot at the top belt, and wins it. Throw in all the extra shenanigans and no event could better possibly describe Dixie Carter’s TNA.
There’s a culture in that company that they are lesser than WWE, and that the only way to overcome that is to use WWE’s popularity to advance their own. It didn’t work when Rob Van Dam walked in and pinned AJ Styles to become TNA World Heavyweight Champion, and it’s not going to work now.
At this point, Impact Wrestling will probably never be taken seriously ever again. The only shot they have is to completely scale back, take a couple of months off, build a roster of young guys, mixed in with veteran talent, then come back and try again at doing things the right way.
It’s impossible to become a major company overnight. Even the biggest successes in TNA history took time to build, like Styles and BROKEN Matt Hardy. So they have to be patient and not just throw money at a guy like El Patron just because he was in WWE. If Impact Wrestling is ever going to draw a big rating again, they’re going to have a find a guy they can call their own.
Over the years, they have had so few big name guys that they could really make a case for being TNA guys. Though it may be short, it’s a very talented list: Styles, Samoa Joe, Bobby Roode, and Eric Young come to mind. Somebody has to join that list. A few years back, it could’ve been Magnus, but they blew that. EC3 had a shot, but he couldn’t overcome some shoddy booking.
The recent mass exodus from Impact had to be tough on the company. Losing Matt and Jeff Hardy, Mike Bennett and Maria, and Drew Galloway, amongst others, is a big blow to the company, but it’s an opportunity to start fresh. They should’ve gone out and filled their spots with unproven talent, but, instead, we’ll just watch these new owners go through the same pathetic cycle that the last one started. It’s like a formula for guaranteeing that they won’t succeed.
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It’s sad. They’ll never be on WWE’s level, but they could at least provide an alternative. Instead, they’ll just stay off to the side being WWE-lite, until this owner runs out of money to put into it. However, there might not be anybody willing to buy this time.