I'm sure that's what Dixie says every time she walks into the office

(ITS A JOKE)

.......

I'm gonna regret that, I can already feel it

TNA is already doomed to Fail, they have Matt "I'm an overrated fat guy who does 3 moves" Hardy as their World Champion.

TNA was the 126th most watched show on US cable TV on Tuesday with 276 thousand viewers.

Arguing about what is or isn't the second promotion is pointless, such is the level of drop between 1 and 2.

roh looks and actually is better than tna lmao. joke of a promotion

This.

Who cares who's bigger between TNA and ROH? It's playground stuff. They're both minuscule.

Which if you enjoy pro-wrestling, is a problem. Because WWE is slowly expunging everything that was ever good / interesting about wrestling.

[quote=ags_rule;81434843]In what possible way was having a viable number two company detrimental to the business?/[quote]
This assumes that TNA was ever a viable number two promontion and I remain unconvinced by that proposition. Undoubtedly there have been moments when its felt like TNA could make that breakthrough but I'm not sure they ever have. Its hard to imagine that a star the calibre of John Cena or Randy Orton ever looked at TNA as a viable alternative. It was a landing spot for frustrated or underused or undervalued or unwanted stars and not much beyond that. In that sense I'd say it was more ECW than WCW.


This is a debatable point in the sense that I think you're painting TNA in far too positive a light here. They have a documented history of under paying key talent, simply jot paying people, canceling live shows/tours at the last minute leaving booked talent screwed and the deals they were making in regards to talent working indies where shady as well. This doesn't get into issues regarding the health and safety of their performers.


So the defence of TNA is to lash out at WWE developmental?


Only if you read the post you're apparently replying to here it wasn't a suggestion that they should run live television. The point made was that the company was in such disarray that they had to cobble together television from weeks and months old tapings.


A small number of paying fans is better than no paying fans.

tna should be able to light an arena ffs

At this stage in 2016, people should be lucky there is any wrestling on TV at all.

I totally agree. I think production has always been at least 50% of TNA's problem. If you could do convincing CGI crowds and CGI large arenas, TNA would be competing with WWE right now. There's only ever been a few TNA shows which looked truly bigtime. If they could have done that every week, they'd be a factor now.

Totally agree. NXT is an internet-only show. Various WWE shows like Main Event have bitten the dust over the past few years. TNA in the US is on a former TV listings channel I believe, and in the UK Challenge are quite obviously de-emphasising it. I've no idea where you see ROH or Lucha Underground in the US and there's zero interest in showing them in the UK. Remember when people had a go at me on here for daring to suggest wrestling was in decline?

I don't think there is really a demand for it like there used to be and even then for the last 10 years or it really hasn't been that big of a deal. Over here I remember around 2004/2005 there was more interest in WWE because they started doing more UK shows and started going to cities they had either never been to before or hadn't been to since the mid 90's and that was a big thing, people could go and see WWE and they didn't need to go to London or Manchester or the big cities they usually went to. But that was nothing to do with the product. I don't remember either year being very good.

With TNA they got momentum towards the end of the 00's but that was even more niche than WWE until they made the jump to Challenge and started getting pretty serious ratings but that had a lot to do with the roster and dare I say i say his name but a certain writer who was writing the show at the time.


I think no matter what company you look to, you can always look at their TV product and say 'I've seen this done better'. It doesn't matter if it's WWE or TNA or ROH or LU, although I do like Lucha very much, anyone that watches wrestling in 2016 and has watched it before knows it's not that good. It's definately seen better days with better wrestlers.

I agree with you. I don't think any UK company is gonna pay money to show ROH or LU. I do think when Challenge took TNA, a big part of that was the roster and the ratings it brought in. When you look at what's there now it's not that appealing. WWE is on Sky Sports 5 most weeks now. It's not a priority for Sky Sports and to be honest even in the Attitude Era when Raw was getting 500,000 for one showing Sky Sports rarely went out their way to promote it. Sky has never ever made any effort to promote WWE programming, it's like a little secret they don't want to admit. This little show that draws a good audience in the middle of the night that they don't want to be associated with cause it's not a real sport. Everything else on there is a real sport. You can't really blame them.

I think TNA had a chance to get an identity but blew it and they are still trying to find their way.

I think ROH is just pure wrestling and that's the only people that will watch it, the only people watching ROH are the people that just want to watch wrestling matches non stop. They don't want characters or talking or soap opera, just matches so they feed that audience.

Lucha is trying something different and they are on Itunes now apparantly and are trying to get on Netflix because that would open them up to viewers worldwide and it eliminates TV deals altogether if they can get Netflix behind them.


I just think that is truly how wrestling is in 2016. It's just a case of been there, done it, nothing new to see and i'm taking nothing away from anyone. There will be people in that WWE thread that will love it, they love the Wyatt Family and Dolph Ziggler and they love The New Day and it's so funny seeing them with a trumpet and the Lucha Dragons rolling around.........there's grown men and women that love it. I'm taking nothing away from them. I'm not here to judge but I know there's many that just shake their heads.

With TNA there are fans that are addicted to it, that will go to all the UK TV tapings and will watch the show on Challenge. For many that don't have Sky Sports that will be their wrestling company that they get behind and watch and again i'm taking nothing away from any of them. If they get pleasure out of it good for them but neither show is good.

It's like I said before about some fans. One wanting Kane to be the champion in 2016 for instance. I wish at my age I could be like that. I wish as an adult that's lived life and seen a lot, I wish i could sit back and escape into this dream world where everything is real and magical and I could lose myself in it. I wish I could do that. I'm jealous of those people. I don't know how they do it. It's so innocent. That's why I can't rant as much as I'd like to because even though my points are valid and yours are valid seibu and we know what we are saying is right and can be backed up with facts, there's people out there that don't care, they just want Kane to have the belt! That's it. How can I rant against that? I feel bad doing it.

But at the same time I expect better. I think this is where a lot of fans really let themselves down when it comes to attacking others and on here attacking me and attacking you. They would rather defend a bad product than admit that we are right and yet if you read the threads, all they talk about is how bad things are. It's like saying, i can say bad things and i can give bad reviews....but you're not allowed to. Do you see what I mean? When would they should be doing is saying, I'm spending hours a week watching this, i deserve better. That's what fans all over the world should be saying to all wrestling companies, I deserve better. You are not giving me the best wrestling show you can every week. I deserve better.

Like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Transparent, Man in the High Castle, DareDevil, Jessica Jones and so many others. This notion that it's internet only being indicative of a lack of interest is questionable.

I'd also suggest that a time when there's in the region of 10+ hours of pro wrestling on national television in the US weekly is a bad time to argue a lack of interest in the product. Its obviously not the pop culture phenomena it was in the late 90s but I don't think anyone would argue that point. That it isn't that however doesn't equate to a lack of interest.

When anything scripted is red hot, there's something of a fad element about it. That's why ESPN and NBC started showing wrestling in the mid 80s and dropped it 5/6 years later. Then Viacom went after it in the late 2000s. Apart from that it was usually in the common interest of the TV provider and the wrestling promoter. For example, it was cheap but popular filler in the days of syndication. The relationship between TBS and wrestling was an extension of that; as was that of USA Network and WWE. Only WWE was and still is so well marketed that it went beyond that and is now a brand a large number of the public consider pro wrestling by default.

Same here in the UK. ITV went after WCW in the early 1990s after Eurosport showed it and WWE became the ltest craze, doing for Sky what wrestling had done for Ted Turner. Even AWA was shown here back then. When it became the fad of the late 90s both Channel 4 and Five went after wrestling. Bravo also thought they'd have some of that and started showing ECW, leading to WCW and eventually TNA. Challenge showing it is just a continuation of that. Apart from the above developments US wrestling has never been popular with UK broadcasters.

No surprise Superstars and Main Event have no presence oj US TV as WWE quickly lose all interest in their C shows . ROH, TNA, Lucha and NJPW are all on national TV and will subsequently get more viewers than in the days of regional promotions.

Smh, TNA's UK tapings were 3 weeks ago nearly, at the end of January, and they're only just being shown on Challenge last Sunday and tonight? Que? WWE has its faults, but at least back in the days when they did UK based PPV events, they'd be live on Sky Box Office, and if they did them now they're on the Network, like that NXT event from London last November.

When WWE did their UK PPVs they had limited house shows during the time they were here, this was also before WWE started filming Raw and Smackdown here which I believe was in 2004.

WWE realised they could make far more money taping Raw and Smackdown here and increasing the number of house shows they did rather than 4 or 5 house shows and one big PPV at the weekend.

If WWE thought they could make money by doing UK PPVs again, they would be doing them, the fact they haven't done it in over 10 years speaks volumes.

And also, because of the time difference, they'd have to put the live PPV on mid afternoon GMT to match the 7/8 PM live time in the USA, and a lot of people who are unfortunate enough to work on a Sunday would complain about that.

Anyway, back to the topic of TNA on Challenge, I caught the beginning of last night's show on Challenge, Matt "I do 3 moves therefore I suck" Hardy was in-ring cutting a promo about how he thinks he's better than everybody, especially Ethan Carter 3, his little Baby girt was also in the ring with his Wife Reby Sky, and I was like, WTF?! A Baby in a wrestling ring? :O

Well it's not ideal but as long as they were suplexing it I think it's fine.

For TNA 3 weeks is pretty much live they have had tapings 6 Months before airing in the past in fact just before Christmas.

The UK tapings will be airing for around the next 3 months.

I don't mind the baby in the ring so much but Reby Sky why I mean she could join The Decay she has the face for it well if they made her a bit better looking.

Not a huge Matt Hardy fan, especially in 2016, but firstly, he has more moves than 3 and secondly, having LOADZ OF MOVEZ is not conducive to being a good wrestler.

It's clear that TNA is Matt's playground now, like is was for Bully Ray, Hogan, Russo etc. at various times. It doesn't seem to be too difficult to manipulate your way into political power in that company.

TBH I think it's more Jeff would TNA or anywhere else give a damn about Matt if not for Jeff.

I wouldn't be shocked if this wasn't part of Jeff's resiging deal

They must be offering Jeff silly money at this point cause he could surely make decent money working the bigger indy shows and managing his own career.

Even more when every Jan they have to write him out as he's not allowed in the UK so that is already 3 months off screen.