With all of the hoopla surrounding the New Jersey election for Governor, I did not have an opportunity to cover a story that is big news for wrestling fans like myself. If you haven’t heard yet, Hulk Hogan – the most iconic name in the history of professional wrestling – has signed a contract with Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling. I own a few wrestling sites that covered this story and you can read some of that coverage by clicking on these links.
As a wrestling fan, I’m excited for this news. I stopped watching World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) programming around two or three years ago. Honestly, it got to a point where Triple H was winning every single feud that he was in and where he and his wife were trying to write him into some mythical figure week in and week out. I couldn’t take watching the utter bastardization of the sports entertainment industry, so I stopped watching. Hey, there are a lot of ways for people to express their support or dissatisfaction with a company or product. With sports entertainment, I decided to vote with my dollars and my leisure hours by taking them away from WWE and giving them to TNA.
That said, it hasn’t been an easy ride as a fan of TNA wrestling. There is a strong argument to be made that these guys have spent the last few years blowing their opportunity to be the clear alternative to WWE programming. For most of the last few years, there was no way that TNA could compete with WWE on a global level. Today, even with signing Hulk Hogan, I think that fact remains. However, bringing in Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff (more on him in a minute) gives TNA a real chance to compete with WWE domestically and, specifically, on the all-important cable television medium. As a fan of TNA, I hope that they don’t blow this gigantic opportunity.
Now to Eric Bischoff. When news broke last week that Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff had signed contracts to partner with TNA, most of the people that I talked to were saying that Hogan is too out of shape and getting up there in age to make an impression on TNA. Well, that’s true. But if you ask me, the real value of this transaction is Eric Bischoff. Forget about the fact that he has connections in the entertainment industry through Bischoff Hervey Productions. And you can even forget about the vast connections that Bischoff brings as the former President of World Championship Wrestling (WCW). What Bischoff brings to the table is a unique view on the wrestling business that is not only proven to be successful, but it is proven to be profitable.
The real value of this deal is Eric Bischoff’s brain with Hulk Hogan’s instant mainstream credibility. The only misstep that I’ve seen so far in this whole thing is the fact that while Hogan was on almost every major media outlet promoting his new book last week, he wasn’t wearing any TNA merchandise. I know that this announcement was a bit last minute and that TNA doesn’t even have a marketing plan built around Hulk Hogan yet, but it would have been nice for the company’s fortunes if Hogan was wearing some red and yellow themed TNA merchandise, you know?
However, that’s only a minor hiccup. Hogan was sure to talk about TNA in almost every interview and he talked about how he has a partnership with them and that he may or may not get back into the ring. In these interviews, he was very realistic about his body and how it has broken down over the years. That’s a good sign for Hogan who, as his new book details, has been battling some mental demons lately.
Anyway, the word is that Hulk Hogan will be featured on TNA Impact on Spike tonight, so if you get a chance be sure to watch the show!
Twenty Hours of TNA Wrestling Last Weekend
Monday, August 24th, 2009Like many people with a DVR, I have a bad habit of letting certain shows build up over time before I sit down to watch them. It’s not that you want to build up this backlog of shows to watch, it’s just that the demands on a person’s time these days are so crazy that it’s hard to spend any time watching a television show. Not good news for the broadcast networks, I guess. Anyway, this past weekend was a great example of what happens when those shows continue to build up on my DVR…I watched some 20 hours of Total Nonstop Action’s wrestling show – Impact.
Maybe it wasn’t 20 hours of action (you have to factor in commercials), but it was ten of their weekly, two-hour shows that I had to push through. I’m not complaining, since I thought it was a pretty entertaining 20 hours. However, I have to do a better job of watching Impact on a more consistent basis. Between a two hour Impact every week and an hour and a half of Cheers every night, my DVR gets clogged up to the point of insanity.
In any event, I thought that the Impact shows were fun to watching and entertaining. There was a lot of focus on the Main Event Mafia, which grew to be tiresome, and only a minimal focus on some of the undercard talent. That’s a shame because there are really some talented folks under contract to TNA. The two best developments that I saw on the ten episodes of the show were 1) the removal of Don West from the color commentator position and having his replaced by Taz and 2) the creation of a tag team championship for the Knockout division. Those are two major steps in the right direction for the company, but adding new tag team titles will probably mean that there will need to be more television time in order to showcase all of the talent.
If I were TNA, I’d try to get a one hour show on one of the Viacom channels (either VH1 or MTV or even staying on Spike). There’s no reason that the promotion couldn’t get a one hour slot on one of those channels and focus on advancing some of the undercard storylines.
Anyway, overall I’m glad I made the switch from being a primarily WWE fan to a primarily TNA fan. Not that TNA doesn’t have a variety of areas that it needs some help with (it’s time to break out of the Impact Zone and have a traveling show already!), but it’s just a better product in my mind.
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