TAKE PWTORCH
WITH YOU! Get our iPhone App (FREE!): Click Here Or enter "PWTorch.com" on your Blackberry or other Smart Phone browser for mobile-version of PWTorch.
Torch Feedback
Why I Don't Watch TNA Impact #1: "The booking is often times horrendous, and rarely rises above competent for me." May 23, 2008 - 2:17:14 PM
The reason I don't watch TNA religiously is because there's not enough in my budget for two PPVs a month. It's hard enough keeping up with WWE programming sometimes when they do two a month - like right now with ONS coming right off the heels of JD. Since there's not enough to follow both companies, you got to go with the one you've been following. It has nothing to do with the roster. They have talent. It's just a matter of money right now.
Learnl Jones
Rochester N.Y.
***
It's really a combination of your listed reasons in the poll. Thursdays are NBC comedy night so the TNA show is already behind in my mind with that fact. This also was why I didn't watch Smackdown for years until it moved to Fridays. Secondly, and this is the most important in my mind, TNA isn't entertaining enough to make me overlook the other options. Even as the wrestling talent is better than WWE presents, the booking is often times horrendous, and rarely rises above competent for me. It's the same reason I have cut back on Raw-viewing in the past few months; if the company itself won't take it's own stories and presentations seriously (Adamle, Regal stopping matches), why should I invest any time in what they themselves are loathe to do?
TNA turns its own stars into parodies of their former selves. Samoa Joe from a killer badass into a whiny crybaby. Kurt Angle from world-class athletic talent into a dysfunctional husband. The New Age Outlaws into the New Age Outlaws v2007. End of the day, why should fans take these guys seriously if the company itself refuses to? Add in atrocious announcing and paint-by-number finishing sequences that offer routinely the following sequence: Ref incompetence/bump/outside interference/finish... why watch something that doesn't routinely have a clear outcome?
Good beats bad, bad beats good, we go to the next week. Instead with TNA, you get far too many weeks of a heel gets beat up by a stronger heel, thus the beaten is now a face, but really no one cares. Even Lex Luger would get confused in how often TNA changes it's face/heel roles. That's not a good thing.
So, basically, TNA has a long way to go if they ever want me to watch routinely; because of the incomprehensible plotting and characterizations they offer, made worse by the fact they already are on television in a spot with far more entertaining shows available.
Joseph Metz
Frederick, Md.
***
In todays poll you asked to specify why I picked other. To be honest I just never remember to set the DVR nor do I remember that there is a replay 99 percent of the time. It's not so much that my time is limited I just never got around to setting up the DVR for Impact or smackdown. Because at this point in both shows life cycles the storylines are predictable. The roster is mainly older wrestlers holding onto a spot like in WCW. The few younger wrestlers that I would want to watch are either severly underpushed or, in Smackdown's case, showing up on Raw before the end of the year.
My other main reason is: Well, if I have to watch another gimmick match that involves some sort of cage, ladder, shark tank, or purple mushrooms on a pole from TNA, I'm going to stop watching wrestling all together. They talk about how they are professional wrestling, not sports entertainment, but creating these gimmick matches that are something out of a online e-fed wont make people take you seriously. I don't. I've never wanted to watch any of the gimmick matches outside of the Six Sides of Steel match between Triple X and America's Most Wanted. And that was almost four years ago.
Brandon Conver
Pine Hill, N.J.
Send feedback on this article to pwtorch@gmail.com and we'll regularly publish reader feedback in the "Torch Feedback" category on the Main Listing.
INCREDIBLE BENEFITS! Over 50 full-length audio updates per month (iPod compatible)... New weekly award-winning Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter (text and printable pdf versions) with latest exclusive insider news, new Torch Talks, great columns, Keller's cover story, much more... Hundreds of full-length back issues of PWTorch Newsletter from late-'80s to today... Ad-free access to PWTorch.com's Main Listing... VIP Forum with interaction with other subscribers and Torch staff... Torch Talk Library with text and audio of hundreds of interview installments from last 20 years... Great layout... Deepest archives on pro wrestling history anywhere... Keller's PWTorch Today PDF Bulletins with email alerts... VIP Email reports on major PPVs and TV shows... Staff Roundtable Reviews (text and audio) followiing major events... The best staff of writers and world class reporting since 1987... We'd love for you to join us and experience the most entertaining, authoritative, experienced staff of professional reporters and commentators in the business...
Compare the value of four or five months of PWTorch VIP content to the price of just one PPV. Can you cut 25 cents a day from your budget to make room for PWTorch VIP?
AND NEW FOR 2009! Monthly "Vintage Audio Torch Talks." We are releasing for the first time ever audio versions of our text Torch Talk updates, the historical first series of insider interviews ever. Wade Keller's newsmaking in-depth interviews with wrestling's biggest names are now being made available exclusively to VIP members. But you must be a member each month, as these are not archived, so they are replaced with a new one each month! This debuted in January 2009 with a 68 minute interview with the late "British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith. Who's next? Hulk Hogan? Eric Bischoff? The Rock? Goldberg? Jeff Hardy?
