By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

TNA wrestler Kevin Nash says he shakes his head in disgust every time he sees another hardcore-style match in TNA. He said he might be an old veteran, but he doesn't see that as the art form of pro wrestling, but a shortcut to get heat.

Nash was asked specifically about TNA "keeping that kind of brand of wrestling alive" with the Monster's Ball matches, thumbtacks, and virtually every Abyss match.

"Every time I see it, I go back there and I shake my head and I go, 'I don’t get it. I don’t know why you would do this to yourself' and I state my opinion. I say it’s wrong," Nash told Alfonso Castillo of Newsday. "It’s like when you watch the old Dusty things and everybody says, 'Dusty! Dusty! Dusty!' You know, you take a blade to your head and bleed for 25 minutes while people pound on you – that ain’t working. That’s a shortcut. That’s all that is."

Nash was also critical of his Hard Justice PPV opponent, Mick Foley, for setting the business back with his infamous fall off a Hell in a Cell against The Undertaker at the 1998 WWE King of the Ring PPV.

"Mick Foley being thrown off a cage to a table 40-feet below him (exaggerated by 24 feet) was the worst thing that probably ever could happen in our sport," Nash said. "Because what we do is we go out and we put on a performance, and you should never, ever hit each other. That’s not the art of what we do. When you light yourself on fire and jump 40 feet, that’s a stunt. That’s not a work. To me, ECW was pornography."

Nash was asked about his hardcore-style match against Shawn Michaels on an In Your House PPV 13 years ago in WWE. Nash said they made the match work because they practiced it at a house show, weapons were not customary on WWE TV, and they never touched again on TV to make the match special.

Nash said too much is given away on free TV, which causes promoters to shoot themselves in the foot when it comes time to draw money with PPVs.

"How could you possible follow a Hell in a Cell on one pay per view? It’s just like, 'OK, then we’ve got to have a ladder match. Then we’ve got to have this. Then we’ve got to have a tables and chairs, oh my!'" Nash said. "I remember what a big deal it was when King of the Ring was added as the fifth pay-per-view. Now you’ve probably got 90 wrestling pay-per-views."

Nash went back to his first run in WWE when he could ask Vince McMahon a week before WrestleMania what he would be doing at Summerslam four months later and McMahon would have it written out already. Nash said that's nowhere near the case with WWE or TNA anymore.

"The creative process – Vince has brought in people from Hollywood for Christ’s sake. I look at it and I say to myself, 'How were we so successful in the WWF when the only two people booking it were Pat Patterson and Vince?'" Nash said. "It used to be that you would work a 25-day tour with Duke 'the Dumpster' Droese before you ever touched him on TV. So you worked your kinks out on the road, and then when you went on TV you had a match that you had a match that you had 25 times."

Caldwell's Analysis: This was the second major "philosophical take" on the wrestling business from Nash in the interview. The business is much different than in mid-'90s WWF when weekend programming was more important than squash matches on Raw, so you're not going to get back to Show vs. Orton eight times on house shows before they hook up on live TV. However, 2009's formula for selling a PPV is Joe vs. Angle at Lockdown 2008. Believable, credible, emotionally-investing storylines featuring two wrestlers who have the reputation for delivering in the ring, and have an issue to play out in the ring. Wait, that's the same formula for all eternity in wrestling. Amazing how simple it is, yet WWE and TNA have a tendency to over-complicate everything by burning out the audience.

For TNA, it's giving away gimmick matches, like a three-minute ladder match, on FREE TV. I understand TNA's need to fill eight hours of TV in-between PPVs with original content, but that's where character development comes into play. Build the issues to be blown off on PPV. Don't blow off the feuds on TV, then ask people to pay for those pesky "house show wrestling matches" on pay TV.

WWE simply has too many PPVs during the year. They've formed terrible habits of not building long-term story arcs to where you can see Orton vs. Swagger for the WWE Title at WrestleMania 26. That isn't being developed. The philosophy is very short-sighted: "adjust the storylines to fit the guest host." I'm not sure, though, if WWE dropped one or two PPVs per year if that would help correct their bad habits. It might intensify their bad habits. "Well, we have two extra weeks until a PPV, so we can wait a little longer to start building up the event." We're less ten days away from the second-biggest PPV of the year, Summerslam, and WWE hasn't even filled out the card. Heck, in 2005, WWE had Michaels vs. Hogan ready-made five weeks in advance. WWE didn't even book DX vs. Legacy until two weeks in advance this year. And the match has no juice anyways because Legacy has been treated like Orton's powerless henchmen for five months and WWE all of a sudden wants to draw money with them. ... Didn't think I would re-visit a Raw Rant, but that's where Nash's take took the analysis.

Link: Read more of Kevin Nash's interview with Alfonso Castillo, including his thoughts on the Torch and how we would book TNA.

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