TNA and their Asylum Years
So I’ve been watching the Impact Wrestling youtube posts of their old weekly PPVs. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen these shows and a few of you who are familiar with them will obviously be wondering why I’m choosing to sit through segments featuring “talent” such as The Dupps, Puppet the Midget Killer and two guys in morph suits portraying wrestling penises, and that’s just scratching the surface. I’ll tell you why, it’s because even with all of that the episodes still find their way to be entertaining, fun and unpredictable alongside featuring some honest to god world class wrestling. It speaks to my inner wrestling fan, it makes me mark out and it is very rare that I ever feel that way about mainstream national wrestling anymore. Lucha Underground and the live experience notwithstanding nothing else captures my emotion or passion of being a wrestling fan than these old episodes of TNA. I think that’s why I find it so hard to accept what they have become, a comedy of wrestling errors resulting in TNA becoming a shadow of it’s former self, a business world black mark with horrible practices coming out of the wazoo. Still, they try. On January 5th they have their live “debut” episode on POP, they crown the winner of their championship tournament and those of us, the foolish wrestling fan who wants a thriving prosperous industry where even TNA can flourish and survive, hold out hope one more time that they finally get it right. That they finally hit that sweet spot they’ve been looking for to right the ship that is at this moment in time so firmly heading straight towards the iceberg. How will they manage that? Can they manage that? I don’t know, in all honesty it might just be the impossible. Fans have left in droves, viewing figures have dropped dramatically and even I, the perennial wrestling geek abandoned their semi-current product a while ago, only checking in on the promotion via compilation packages, youtube videos and dirt sheets. A promotion that back in their seminal years brought me so much joy and even in a way shaped my mind on wrestling reduced to something that in all honesty I became embarrassed to be a fan of. An image so poor that not only did I not want to talk to people about being a TNA fan but I didn’t want to be a TNA fan at all. Though again they have a chance, an opportunity when in all logic they should be dead and while being a shadow of their former self, very recently they have been showing signs of improvement. Their talent pool is still good, while thin and they have something that with some effort could be marketed. Sadly marketing has never been TNA’s strong suit. That is where they need to put focus with this new POP deal, marketing and advertising. Creating a brand to be proud of and making sure that brand is in the minds and on the TV sets of every household in America and beyond. Not the easiest task I know but if they focus more on that instead of thinking big shakeups and surprise money players are going are going to fix everything. Take the money from Kurt retiring, Sting leaving and all the rest and put it into something worthwhile and no I don’t mean bringing in Bill Goldberg. As much as the little 12 year old mark in me might love it. Now it’s time to bite the bullet, now it’s time to make that change. You’re no longer the little sapling anymore TNA, you’re a tree and now it’s finally time to stand on your own and grow into a mighty oak or fall over in the wind. Either way, I’ll be there January 5th, 2016 to find out and honestly even if it is blind faith I think you should be too. I owe it to The Asylum Years.