TNA Wrestling (On TNA+ and Triller TV)

[Bomberboyokay]

Watched all of this week's Impact. I hadn't watched Impact in a very long time and to be honest... it wasn't too bad compared to a typical Raw. Wrestlers are decent, less drawn out promos/backstage interviews, less tryhard attempts at comedy, and being an hour shorter certainly felt brisk.

How Lashley still gets work is a head scratcher though. His time as a WWE 'star' was like ******* 8 years ago now.

 

[Testekill]

Watched all of this week's Impact. I hadn't watched Impact in a very long time and to be honest... it wasn't too bad compared to a typical Raw. Wrestlers are decent, less drawn out promos/backstage interviews, less tryhard attempts at comedy, and being an hour shorter certainly felt brisk.

How Lashley still gets work is a head scratcher though. His time as a WWE 'star' was like ******* 8 years ago now.

The funny thing is that Lashley as world champ is one of the few things that TNA have done right over the last two years. Specifically his run in the BDC where he was the silent muscle with MVP as his mouth piece.

 

[TooUglyForFugly]

I've read enough to lose sympathy for the company in terms of its HR ability. BFG results made me roll my eyes.

 

[Cleavy]

at least you cared enough to roll your eyes though

 

[Shaxx Attaxx]

I've read enough to lose sympathy for the company in terms of its HR ability. BFG results made me roll my eyes.

Just saw what happened. HILARIOUS!!!

 

[TradeDraft]

Matt Hardy is there New Champion

 

[Cleavy]

Matt Hardy is there New Champion

well that lasted all of a couple of days...

 

[TradeDraft]

well that lasted all of a couple of days...

So they just let Matt win the World Title just because they where Wrestling in his Home State?

Guess EC3 will win it back quickly then

 

[Cleavy]

there's some convoluted tournament cobbled together from matches from the previous tapings

 

[Hawks1523]

******* lol they made matt hardy champion?

 

[Shaxx Attaxx]

there's some convoluted tournament cobbled together from matches from the previous tapings

I see there's a knockouts pool...

 

[Zach Package]

The current kerfuffle is just the most TNA thing ever isn't it?

 

[TooUglyForFugly]

I can't defend that s**t.

 

[Shaxx Attaxx]

Certainly making us appreciate the final months of WCW.

David Arquette > Matt Hardy

 

[Testekill]

Certainly making us appreciate the final months of WCW.

David Arquette > Matt Hardy

I don't know what is funnier

Samoa Joe debuts on NXT Takeover opposite to Impact and immediately gets people talking on the same day that it looks like TNA were going to be cut before the end of the year
James Storm debuting in NXT while he's still appearing in their tournament (WWE announced it on twitter, they spoiled it for everyone)
TNA taping a tournament months before anything even happens that would warrant a tournament.

 

[TradeDraft]

******* lol they made matt hardy champion?

Hey they have Women competing for the World Title in there Series they are doing for the Title Now

 

[Hawks1523]

Hey they have Women competing for the World Title in there Series they are doing for the Title Now

Who cares?

 

[TooUglyForFugly]

Eric Young was half of the last Knockouts Tag Champs. Not shocking.

 

[Ry009]

Pre Hogan to now....wow.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

BFG recap video tape airs.

We then find out in a series of videos that Ethan Carter, protesting his title loss, has taken out an injunction against Matt Hardy that will prevent him from defending the belt on Impact. He also tells his aunt Dixie she is dead to him now. Wow, that's some impressive legal work. How did Carter swing that? Is David Otunga his lawyer?

We see Matt at his home announcing he will abdicate the belt, he apologizes to the fans and vows to settle this score in the ring at some point in the near future.

Dixie Carter and Billy Corgan appear at a press conference and announce that they don't want TNA to go without a champion for months, so they plan to do a rather complicated world title series...which will probably take months to crown a new champion anyway. Yeah, this whole angle has been widely criticized over the web today...and it's hard to argue with the critics, frankly.

http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/2015/1007/602462/tna-impact-wrestling-results/

So stupid.

If you were a regular viewer and didn't watch the Bound For Glory main event you effectively didn't miss anything.

Did they really go "Bound For Glory our biggest show is in North Carolina so let's have Matt Hardy hold the belt for 5 minutes"? Or do they think this is good TV?

 

[Bomberboyokay]

If they wanted the "Bound For Glory moment" but didn't really want him to be champion they should have just had him lose to someone on Impact

 

[Bomberboyokay]

When TNA crowned Matt Hardy as their world champion on Sunday, heads were scratched and eyes were rolled. Hardy is one of the most popular talents on TNA's roster and the event was in North Carolina, but still, taking the championship off of a young champion like Ethan Carter III and putting it on a 41 year old former WWE tag champion who was likely to either retire or leave the company within the next couple years was seen as kind of a backwards move by TNA.

Well, the discussion about it didn't last very long, because just one day after the event, TNA introduced a bizarre storyline concept. EC3 had filed an injunction against TNA, Matt Hardy had vacated the title as opposed to fighting the injunction since EC3 threatened to bring up Jeff Hardy's previous criminal history, even though by doing so Matt essentially brought up Jeff's history anyway. So Matt was the champion for barely 24 hours before vacating the championship.

Ideally this whole storyline would have played out on the first post-Bound for Glory episode of Impact Wrestling, but TNA was unable to do that. For whatever reason, either Destination America isn't willing to fund anymore domestic TV production, TNA couldn't book enough talents, etc. TNA has no TV tapings scheduled until the UK tapings in January. So instead of having fresh programming for the audience, TNA is forced to just air previously taped matches that they randomly taped months ago, probably just in case something like the current situation were to occur. Because they are just showing matches taped from months ago, TNA is forced to tell their story through backstage promos; as far as anyone knows, no actual allusions to the current storyline will be made in front of a live audience on episodes of Impact. After all, nobody knew that this was the storyline they would be using months ago when they taped all the matches.

TNA could never just show random matches from previous tapings with no explanation for anything, so they came up with the idea to crown a new champion. Dixie Carter and Billy Corgan introduced their new plan, a wrestling world cup featuring 32 wrestlers, with eight groups of four wrestlers. The wrestlers will wrestle all of the other competitors in their group, earning points for a win or a draw. The top two finishers in each group will advance to a 16 person knockout round, which will lead to a final match between the last two wrestlers, the winner of whom will become the new world champion. Carter and Corgan explained that they came up with this idea as opposed to waiting to fight EC3 in court because they didn't want TNA to go months without a world champion.

So now that all the details have been explained, let's make a logical examination of this storyline. Carter and Corgan chose not to fight EC3 in court because they didn't want TNA to go so long without a world champion, which makes sense since a promotion without a champion isn't much a promotion at all. The issue is that Carter and Corgan's solution to the problem was to introduce a huge and complex tournament to crown a new champion, which is probably going to take months to finish anyway. If TNA was on a normal taping schedule, they could just have a rematch between Hardy and EC3 on Impact, maybe a steel cage or ladder match. TNA can't do that because they have to stretch this storyline out until perhaps the end of the year, so they were forced to come up with one idea that would occupy two hours of TV time a week for the rest of the year.

Another fallacy is that EC3 apparently has the greatest legal team in the history of the universe because he was able to get an air-tight injunction against Matt Hardy in 24 hours. EC3's explanation for getting the injunction is that he felt that Jeff and Matt conspired to illegally take the world championship off of him, and that as the plaintiff he deserves to get his title back. EC3 doesn't even want to bother around with getting a rematch; he wants that title back around his waist without having to step in the ring. Despite that original complaint, EC3 is apparently willing to get involved in this tournament to crown a new champion, which using the same logic that he used to filing the injunction, makes no sense. At least if he had a rematch EC3 would have a 50/50 chance of winning, now he has to compete against 31 other competitors to get his title back. Why couldn't his crackerjack legal team stop TNA from doing this?

Also, at Bound for Glory, Tyrus won a gauntlet match to become the new number one contender for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship, so he should be upset about this new formula since as a heel number one contender, he should feel that the vacated title is his. Strangely, TNA hasn't mentioned Tyrus winning the number one contendership at all, even though he won it just 4 days ago.

From a viewership standpoint, I don't know how successful this formula is going to be. I'm sure we will see some pretty strong wrestling matches, but putting on decent matches has never been a problem for TNA. As I already pointed out, the matches were taped long before the storyline was enacted, so the fans will have no idea that the match that they thought was just a normal one-on-one encounter is actually a match that will have a big impact on the next world champion. Not only do the fans not know, but the wrestlers don't know it either, so who knows how good the matches are going to be.

Taking random old matches and piecing together a tournament out of them is pretty unique to say the least. Imagine if you watched a bunch of random Nitro matches from 1997 and on a sheet of paper kept track of wrestlers' wins and losses, with the wrestler with the most victories becoming the world champion, even though none of the fans or the wrestlers in the matches have any idea what is going on.

As easy as it is to count this storyline out as a ridiculous ploy, what exactly were the alternatives for TNA? They were caught in a situation where they couldn't tape TV, yet they still had time to fill. They could have shown a series of "Best of…" matches, but that would have gotten old fairly quickly. As wacky as this storyline is, at least it gives fans a chance to watch matches that actually matter from week to week.

It is unclear on how long TNA plans to go with this. Obviously, TNA doesn't have any matches taped where the winner is holding up the world championship, so whenever the final match is going to be, that will have to be taped. TNA hasn't made a peep about new TV tapings in 2015, the next scheduled tapings are not until January in the UK. TNA does have some house shows coming up in Louisiana at the end of the month, so those could become TV tapings, although TNA hasn't mentioned anything about that. They also have a One Night Only PPV taping in New Orleans on Oct. 30. The theme for that PPV is a one-night tournament called the "Battle of New Orleans" but I assume they could potentially convert that into an Impact taping. If not, it appears that this storyline could last all the way through December, which seems hard to believe but I guess they could stretch it out that far if they had to.

TNA has gone through a lot of turbulence pretty much since their inception, but right now things have gotten pretty low for them. They are rumored to being cut by Destination America, a C-level cable channel, and it appears that Destination America is no longer funding their TV tapings, hence why they have none. TNA recently went back to house shows leading up to Bound for Glory, but unfortunately they did wretched attendance, suggesting that their fan base has mostly abandoned the brand. TNA has been down for the count before and have managed to hang on for longer than most people expected, but at the current rate they are going I seriously doubt whether we will see TNA around this time next year.

You can follow Jesse Collings on Twitter @JesseCollings

http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news...nbuckle-tna-world-title-tournament-and-their/

They're so ****ed. Those Louisiana shows have been cancelled since he wrote that by the way.

TLDR version: TNA have come up with this tournament as a way to air a heap of previously recorded matches because they can't afford to film new episodes.

 

[Damon_3388]

The current kerfuffle is just the most TNA thing ever isn't it?

So much this. Such epic farce.

 

[The Casey Cat]

They're a joke. Feel bad for the good and hard working people at this company but I hope it wraps up soon and those worthwhile wind up at ROH, Mexico or Japan with some LU in-between.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

It lives!

On Monday, TNA announced its next round of television tapings: five straight days in Bethlehem, PA, at The Sands Bethlehem Events Center, a building TNA has taped at in the past.

Announced for the tapings are Kurt Angle, Matt & Jeff Hardy, Bobby Lashley, Ethan Carter III, Drew Galloway, Bobby Roode, Gail Kim and Tigre Uno.

The tapings will start with a live show on 1/5 that will serve as the debut episode of Impact on Pop TV. It's more likely the show will be semi-live as previously advertised live shows over the past year plus have actually been same day tapings delayed by two hours.

They will also be taping every day through 1/9. Between these tapings and scheduled tapings in the U.K. at the end of January, the promotion should be covered for all television for the first quarter of 2016.

There will be an Internet pre-sale starting at 10 a.m. on Wednesday through Thursday at 10 p.m. TNA will be announcing a code for tickets shortly. Tickets will go on sale on Friday at 10 a.m. to the public at Ticketmaster or at 800-745-3000.

Last week, TNA announced their move to POP TV, a station that reaches 85 million homes.

http://www.f4wonline.com/tna-news/tna-announces-five-night-run-tv-tapings-202256