TNA: Fortunes Misfortune

Last month I talked about how fortunate Fortune were that Booker T and Kevin Nash signed with WWE.  Just like Edge gaining the money in the bank and going on to cement himself as a main event champion thanks to Mr Kennedys injury, or the Honkey Tonk Man’s incredible reign as intercontinental champion when he was only meant to be a transitional champion, Fortune’s future success looked very much thanks to random chance outside of their power.

However, a month is a long time in the wrestling world, and before they even got their chance to shine, the TNA roster has once again been plagued by former stars that refuse to move down the card and let the younger talent take their spot.  Scott Steiner’s pointless return continues to take up TV time as he carries on blundering his lines making himself and the company look like morons. Devon and “Bully” Ray continue their surprisingly entertaining feud, and most importantly and infuriatingly of all “The Icon” Sting returns and captures the World Heavyweight Title.

The Devon and Bully Ray feud I don’t mind, it’s not going to raise anyone’s profile or do the future of the company any good, but it’s been fairly entertaining, it is what it is, and as bad as Scott Steiner is, with Rob Terry he’s along long way from the top of the card and seeing him doing a top rope Frankensteiner at his age and with his inability to move around the ring like someone with moving parts, is awesome.  My main problem here is with TNA World Heavyweight Champion Sting.

Clearly TNA were aware of the hype that Sting may be debuting in the WWE and that “those promos” were for his debut.  I guess TNA saw how excited people were at the thought of Sting joining WWE and decided that Sting must be a massive draw.  What TNA failed to recognise was that Sting in WWE was the draw, the possibility of Sting vs The Undertaker, Triple H, John Cena, this was the big draw here, the fact that Sting is the only major pro wrestling star in north America who hasn’t worked for WWE at some point.  Like with most things, TNA missed the point completely, hyped him for a week and then put the World Title straight on him in an attempt at spiking the TV ratings.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Sting, I never watched WCW at the time, but I’ve done my best to catch up, and Sting’s initial debut as Crow Sting, and the year that followed is one of my favourite wrestling angles.  I’ve even enjoyed some of Stings work in TNA, but Sting has been in an out of the company for 8 years now, what is left there for him possibly to do?  He’s been heel Sting, face Sting, tweener Sting, Steve Boredon Sting, he has held the world title on numerous occasions and he’s beaten everybody several times.  Sting vs Matt Hardy, that’s pretty much the only new match they can do, and to be honest, if they got to do their own thing and it wasn’t just about immortal then that’s a feud that I’d probably enjoy.  But where does this leave the rest of the guys? I’m sure Fortune will continue to feud with Immortal, but they’re completely overshadowed by Sting now.

TNA just seemed to have dropped ball after ball lately, it’s like they want you to be disappointed, like TNA themselves are the heels.  Here are a few examples since the Hogan/Bischoff regime began:

• Made RVD look awesome by beating Sting in seconds on his debut, then had Sting beat him with a baseball bat for 20 minutes.
• Built up RVD as wanting revenge on Jeff Hardy for months, then stopped the build up for a few weeks before putting them in a throwaway match on Impact, why care?
• Made Crimson look instantly like a star, but then because their Mafia plan didn’t happen, dropped him to a star of the jabronies
• Turned their top face Jeff Hardy heel, simply for “shock” value
• Got Mr Anderson super over and then turned him tweener, because we all know tweeners equal ratings
• Finally saw the MCMG’s were popular, gave them the belts, and then as they were super over and were making the tag division awesome, began the start of a turn (thank goodness Shelley got injured before that happened)

I’m sure there’s plenty more, but that’s all that instantly comes to mind.  My point is, TNA really need to do some long term booking plans and stick to them if they ever want to create some new stars, instead of changing things on a whim, I know this happens in other places too, but more than anywhere it happens in TNA.  Like the rest of you I can’t wait to find out who kidnapped Samoa Joe over a year ago.  They need to pick someone and have faith in them, push them to the moon and they need to do it soon.  I can’t imagine how in debt TNA must be, Hulk Hogan, Sting, Kurt Angle, Ric Flair, Mick Foley, Jeff Hardy, Rob Van Dam, Matt Hardy, Scott Steiner, all these guys combined you’re surely looking at $3 – 5 Million a year.  In 8 years TNA haven’t created a single main eventer, a shocking statistic.

MVP and Best Heel

Jeff and Karen Jarrett *Tie*

My only gripe with this feud is that it gets far too much TV time, but other than that, I’ve really enjoyed the Angle/Jarrett feud.  With the addition of Karen, the couple have been so easy to loathe and the payoff match for this (at Lockdown I assume) has been built up tremendously.  I want to see Angle get his hands on Jarrett, exactly what you want from a feud.

Knockout of The Month

Angelina Love

It’s hard to pick a Knockout of the month, when it’s such a poor choice, and they tend to use crap like Sarita and Velvet a lot.  But from what I’ve seen this month, anorexic Love is the least sloppy of a bad bunch.

Please Fire

Scott Steiner

He flakes his lines, we’ve seen everything he can do in the ring and it’s pretty obvious he’ll get fired again soon because they’ve got about as much clue what do with him as we do.

Worst Moment

Kurt Angle has an axe…oooooh

After making us sit through a long boring wedding ceremony, when we’d already seen what we wanted to see “Karen get caked” the best TNA can come up with is have Angle use an axe to destroy a wedding set that he could just as easily been destroyed with Moppy.

TNA’s Hottest Prospects

1. Robert Roode

There’s no doubt Beer Money are an excellent tag team, but for me Roode is by far the stand out performer of the two, especially as a face.  He shows great intensity and seems so natural on the mic.  I’m sure eventually Beer Money will split (a returning Chris Harris would be personal favourite reason for this, as it’d keep James Storm in tag team wrestling after), and when they do, TNA need to put everything behind Robert Roode, so many things about him remind me of a young Triple H, and he’s got all the tools to make it in this business.

2. The Pope

No one can deny The Pope has outstanding mic skills, the only thing that lets him down is his in ring skills, which aren’t bad, they’re just not outstanding.  But he’s still young and has time to find his style.  Even with this, The Pope is still ready to be given the ball, give him his own stable or something, and watch him shine and draw in the heat.

3. Eric Young

EY was fantastic as the leader of World Elite.  This was truly his calling, a heel that you can truly loathe.  He was superb on the mic, solid in the ring and made the piledriver once again look like death.  EY comes off as someone who loves wrestling and will do whatever it takes to be in TNA, hopefully he’ll stick around past the Hogan era, and someone will see his talent and just let him run with it again, because as much as I enjoy his comedy moments, he deserves better.

4. Hernandez

At a similar time that EY was being pushed, so was Super Mex.  They did a brilliant job of making him a super face, but like usual, they dropped the ball.  Now that he’s back Hernandez has shown me a quality that I didn’t know he had, the guy can talk!  He’s not quite as gifted on the mic as the others on this list but he seems confident; with his size he seems to have the best hope of making it through TNA’s impossibly thick diamond ceiling.

5. Matt Morgan

Morgan has been floating just outside the TNA main event scene since he came in.  He’s passable as a monster heel but is better as a face. I’ve just not seen anything from him that’s made me excited about him being in the main event, which is why he’s only number  5 on this list.  Morgan would have much better luck back in WWE now and surely it’s only a matter of time.