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Earlier this year, I posted a blog where I reviewed an episode of Impact segment by segment. I did so to highlight how in almost every conceivable way the show is wretched. It was the first show after the Genesis 2010 PPV, where they went back on a bunch of stipulations and had a Montreal Screwjob angle in the main event of the show. Along with the other numerous failings of that episode, I concluded that TNA was just so shockingly bad that I was giving up on it. Of course, with the allure of the Monday Night Wars and the launch of The ChairShot Podcast it wasn’t long before I was back watching again.

And now I’m giving up again. But let me explain.

The show is still crap. I mean complete crap. But it’s not as horribly offensive as it was in the early stages of the Hogan/Bischoff regime or, lest we forget, the heyday of Jarret/Russo. The problem I have with this show is that it is so fundamentally flawed. In such basic ways, this show is impossible to like. As I have explained in the blog I mentioned earlier and my weekly reviews on the Chair Shot forum, the shows writing and booking is just so tedious and irritating that it makes the show a chore to watch. Because no one is booked to look in anyway credible or strong you have an entire roster of people who just aren’t over. A great example right now is Kazarian. He’s just been turned heel and aligned with the top heel faction of Flair, Beer Money, AJ and Wolfe. But so far, he’s been shown having petty arguments with AJ, lost a three way with AJ and Lethal and lost to Kurt Angle on his first PPV match outside of the X Division. I realise we’re not talking about a future main eventer here, but it’s just an example of how a guy who was supposedly elevated to the top heel stable, wasn’t really elevated at all. There’s more to pushing a guy than simply standing him next to a main eventer. And this is what I’m saying about the show being so fundamentally flawed. No one is booked in any kind of consistent fashion (strong or weak) and so you end up with a roster of BLAH. That’s Kaz. Kaz is BLAH.

Pretty much the one guy who has been booked with any kind of consistency is Abyss. Abyss is an example of the writers trying their hardest to make something of a guy, and the results speak for themselves. Yes, the booking was consistent, but it was consistently bad. The mere idea that you can get a guy over in 2010 by having him be Hulk Hogan’s sidekick, who sports a WWE Hall of Fame ring as his trademark and HULKS UP in his matches, is so absurd. And like I say, Abyss is the only guy in the company who’s actually been booked to look strong. So this is the writers/Hogan and Bischoff really trying their hardest and there is your result. Abyss was viewed as a TNA mainstay for years, and was consistently over with the crowd but somehow is overness has waned so much since the arrival of Hogan. It speaks for itself. They’re not only failing to move things forward, they’re even regressing in certain areas, by taking guys like Abyss (and lets not forget AJ) and trying to take what isn’t broken and fix it.

To return to my original point about no consistency; lets not forget people like Abyss are the rare exceptions. People like Desmond Wolfe are the problem. Wolfe has been booked like a bumbling, comedic side-kick to the Flair stable, frequently doing jobs and never gaining a whiff of credibility. But in the last two months, out of nowhere, he has pinned both The Pope and Jeff Hardy. Moreover, he pinned The Pope TWO WEEKS before he would have a title match with AJ Styles at the Lockdown PPV. This just shows such a fucking mind-boggling degree of ignorance, I struggle to put it into words. We’re not talking about them changing their minds on Wolfe and pushing him. No. We’re talking about one week, just for the sake of doing it, they have a jobber pin a top guy. Because they don’t perceive anything wrong with it. Like Kaz, they think that Wolfe is instantly a credible main eventer because they’ve stood him next to one. But the very next week Pope gets his win back and Wolfe goes back to jobbing regularly. Again, it’s a completely blah roster. Midcard guys never get a push consistent enough to make them main eventers, main eventers are never booked consistently enough for anyone to stand out from the pack, or for anyone to look like a real star. When anyone can pin anyone, wins and losses don’t really mean anything, main eventers are main eventers just because TNA say so, it’s impossible for anyone to truly get over with this promotion.

Obviously the same problems that have been in TNA for years are still there; the confusing angles, the frivolous turns, the pushing of old talent, but I’m jut trying to highlight why I think the show is so flawed on a very basic level. It’s not like every Impact is deviod of good segments. It’s just so hard to care.

The real kicker though is that sense that this is always how it will be. TNA very rarely shows signs of improvement. The show when RVD won the title was an example of them showing signs of turning things around, but it wasn’t long before that soon went away, and we were back to square one. The real reason it’s so hard for me to watch TNA is that I know things aren’t going to get better. It feels like I’m chasing my tail by watching this show every week, bitching about it on the forum and then watching it again next week. And it’s not like it’s growing. It’s not like TNA sucks, but it’s doing a 5.5 rating every week. It’s still the distant number two, and at this stage it’s safe to say “number two promotion” is just a technicality.

So, no more Impact for me. And no more reviews on the forum or podcast. At least for a while. We might still do PPVs. At least they are very wrestling-centric. This isn’t intended to bash TNA. Well… it is, but I’m just letting folks know that you won’t see me reviewing it on the forum any more, or hear about it on the podcast.

Thanks, and I hope to update the blog more often now that it’s Summer, so check back more.

Barry