Late November last year the wrestling media was abuzz with the news that Hulk Hogan and his long time friend and business associate Eric Bischoff were to join North America's second biggest wrestling company, TNA (Total Nonstop Action). The pop icon Hogan was a huge coup for a growing company like TNA, especially with its owner Dixie Carter's quest to topple Vincent Kennedy McMahon's WWE empire.
The initial excitement led to TNA gaining their largest ever television audience on the January 4th episode of their flagship show Impact! which had moved from its regular Thursday night slot to go head-to-head with WWE's Monday juggernaut Raw and exploit Hogan's debut. The show gained a staggering 2.2 million viewers with a 1.6 Nielsen rating.
Hogan buries TNA youngsters
However, following the success of the Monday Impact! experiment and with Hogan and Bischoff now seemingly calling the shots behind the scenes, TNA decided to try and make the move from Thursdays permanent, with a date of the scheduling change being set as March 6th, some two months after the January showcase.
What many fans and critics alike seemed to dislike about the new direction of TNA though was the focus on Hulk Hogan himself and his lackeys such as Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, The Nasty Boys and his old time nemesis within the wrestling soap opera, Ric Flair. The young guys that had helped build TNA like AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, Jay Lethal and Beer Money were seemingly relegated to cannon fodder for the old stagers just because of their perceived lack of name power.
The problem was that the big names of Hogan, Flair, Nash etc did indeed draw in the fans initially through sheer nostalgia but their crippled bodies and out dated routines seemed to bore many watching, and TNA lost ground in the new "Monday Night War", sinking embarrassingly to a 0.5 Nilesen rating at one point.
Monday Night Impact fails
After a rethink following the dismal viewing figures on a Monday against the WWE's behemoth Raw, TNA headed back to Thursdays and the owner Dixie Carter seemed to realise that maybe Hogan/Bischoff were not the saviours they had promised to be. This led to a fresh impetus from Carter for the creative team to use the younger guys and build the stars of tomorrow rather than hark back to the stars of yesteryear.
This plan was seemingly working as viewing figures returned to the 1.0/1.1 mark with the veterans- especially Flair- doing a sterling job at putting over the younger talents, particularly the hugely gifted Jay Lethal who does a better Ric Flair impression than the 'Nature Boy' himself.
Return of ECW
Despite TNA being on a upward swing the pressure from Spike TV (TNA's network and source of income) seemed to make Carter nervous and the crutch of nostalgia has been broken out once more in the form of the ECW crew re-emerging within TNA.
A census conducted by TNA earlier in the year and reported on by various wrestling sites suggested that fans loved the period of hardcore wrestling epitomised by the Philadelphia based ECW. This led to Carter opting to bring in ECW stalwart Tommy Dreamer and many other ex ECW members including Raven, Mick Foley and Rhino in order to tap into this lust for hardcore.
On 8th August the TNA Hard Justice PPV will become Hardcore Justice:The Last Stand, with the old ECW wrestlers (called EV2.0 due to WWE owning the ECW name) going all out supposedly one last time. The trouble is that WWE already paid homage to hardcore with the ECW:One Night Stand PPV in 2005, and another feels like flogging a dead horse.
Whilst the PPV may see a small spike in buys the long term effect may not be so positive for TNA as where do the young guys fit into all this and where is the scope to use washed up/broken down wrestlers from ECW long term? Dixie Carter may be after short term gains at the moment but without new ideas soon TNA may not have a long term future.
Scott Booth - I have just finished my BA Honours degree in English Literature with Creative Writing, gaining a 2:1 (including a First Class ...
