{"id":32693,"date":"2016-09-29T14:30:46","date_gmt":"2016-09-29T19:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/?p=32693"},"modified":"2016-10-01T18:31:06","modified_gmt":"2016-10-01T23:31:06","slug":"mitchell-total-stop-action-market-forces-drivig-tna-business-years-ago-better-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2016\/09\/29\/mitchell-total-stop-action-market-forces-drivig-tna-business-years-ago-better-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"MITCHELL: Total Stop Action &#8211; Why market forces driving TNA out of business years ago would have been better for the industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pwtor-2274871393\" class=\"pwtor-before-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><hr \/><b>SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)... <\/b>\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?show_id=3076978&theme=light&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&autoplay=false&live-autoplay=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-logo=false&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-download=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\r\n<hr \/><\/div><p class=\"p1\">I kind of figured something was up last Friday night at Dorton Arena when I got a look at Jeff Hardy in the Big Time wrestling main event. Hardy was playing wrestling\u2019s most sensational innovation, Brother Nero, and while he seemed to be all-in, even singing the Obsolete song a-cappella, I noticed he was chewing gum.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Staff11Mitchell_120.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-400 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Staff11Mitchell_120.jpg\" alt=\"Staff11Mitchell_120\" width=\"120\" height=\"138\" \/><\/a>He must have known the gig was up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You\u2019re going to hear sadness at the news of the final end of TNA, at the fact that people are going to lose their jobs, that the number of places to work full-time in the professional wrestling business, few even now, was now going to shrink even further.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You\u2019re going to hear nostalgia for TNA innovations like the six-sided ring, Beer Money, the X Division (\u201cIts not about weight limits, it\u2019s about no limits\u201d), and A.J. Styles. Series like the one between Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle, or the ones between America\u2019s Most Wanted and whoever it that they wrestled will be dug up and praised for their virtues. It\u2019s human nature to become a little sentimental at the passing of something you\u2019ve been familiar with for a certain amount of time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Don\u2019t fall for it. TNA has been a blight on the professional since it was founded on the foolish notion that weekly pay-per-view shows were a sustainable economic model. The wrestling business would&#8217;ve been better off if market forces had been allowed to have their way with this company years ago. Because Panda Energy kept pouring millions into a company which\u00a0created content fans rejected, TNA kept making the same mistakes over and over again because their wrestling welfare money was never going to run out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The list of foolish. money-losing notions that TNA spent millions of dollars to market would take more space and patience than I have here\u00a0 to complete. This is the company that spent years and millions of dollars\u00a0 unsuccessfully trying to prove that entitled perennial mid-card act Jeff Jarrett was somehow owed the main event because his father felt guilty about their troubled relationship and he was next in line to be the King of Memphis, only Jerry Lawler turned out to be the last one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Every washed-up WWE Superstar who wanted or needed an annuity was hired to put over and\/or give the rub to Jarrett. Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Sting, Ken Shamrock, Randy Savage, Jeff Hardy, Christian, Booker T, The Dudleys, Billy Gunn, and Kurt Angle are only some of the expensive talent wasted on\u00a0the effort.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">TNA only stopped pushing this failure when its owner, Panda Energy owner Bob Carter\u2019s daughter Dixie Carter, felt betrayed that Jarrett lied to her about his relationship with the wife of the company\u2019s most expensive star, Kurt Angle. It figured. The amount of strange, shady behavior behind the scenes that damaged this company over the years has never been completely revealed.<\/span><\/p><div id=\"pwtor-361036933\" class=\"pwtor-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280 __336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This is the company that pressured a retired Randy Savage into making his embarrassing last in-ring appearance, the place that sent an under-indictment Jeff Hardy into the ring where he was unable to perform. This is the place that promoted Roddy Piper on live TV accusing Vince Russo of being responsible for Owen Hart\u2019s death, the place that made A.J. Styles act in a series of skits so dumb that the actress opposite him quit in embarrassment. This was the place where Kevin Nash somehow couldn\u2019t make his main events and yet was re-signed to contract after contract. These were the people who\u00a0took in an Olympic Gold Medalist who was struggling with his addictions so much that he was dropped by WWE.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This is the company whose all-time best -selling t-shirt was that of a referee who betrayed one of his closest friends in the business, then got fired for selling bootleg &#8211; you guessed it &#8211; t-shirts, so he had to go work in TNA. These are the people who brought in Pac-Man Jones after a strip-club melee he incited led to the permanent paralysis of a security guard, the ones who brought in the arrogant rock star Billy Corgan, the ones who pushed their untalented owner on TV years after year after year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Then there were the carnies, the ones who saw a money mark to charm and fleece. Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff teamed up to spend millions to use TNA to promote their untalented children, and of course pay themselves. That loser Vince Russo kept conning his way back in, even when Jeff Jarrett had to lie to his father Jerry about it, even on a booking committee with, of all people, Jim Cornette, even when Dixie Carter lying to their network about it helped get them kicked off their programming.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So pardon me if I\u2019m not shedding any crocodile tear over a place so pathetic you had to grade their pay-per-view efforts on the TNA curve. I\u2019ll shed one over the sad fact that one of the greatest wrestlers I ever saw, Kurt Angle, through his own fault, spent too many years doing stellar work for them that most fans never saw.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Pro wrestling would have been better off if Dixie Carter hadn\u2019t bailed the Jarretts out all those years ago. Maybe the good ol\u2019 American capitalist system could have forged another real competitor to WWE in the space that TNA wasted.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<div class=\"entry-content clearfix\">\n<p class=\"p2\"><i>(Bruce Mitchell has been a PWTorch columnist since 1990. He hosts the PWTorch Livecast every Friday night at 7 ET with Travis Bryant at www.PWTorchLivecast.com. The weekly two-hour Bruce Mitchell Audio Show with host Wade Keller is a VIP audio staple for years and is part of over a dozen VIP exclusive audio shows that run usually daily or weekly that online members have access to with their VIP password. His columns over the years have usually been published exclusively in the VIP PWTorch Newsletter paper copy and online PDF editions. If you have a question you\u2019d like Bruce Mitchell to answer on his VIP Audio Show, send that question to askbrucemitchell@gmail.com for consideration on a future episode.) ###<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"pwtor-end-article-groups pwtor-entity-placement\" id=\"pwtor-2577086878\"><div id=\"pwtor-1969458599\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\nTHANK YOU FOR VISITING<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>I kind of figured something was up last Friday night at Dorton Arena when I got a look at Jeff Hardy in the Big Time wrestling main event. Hardy was playing wrestling\u2019s most sensational innovation, <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2016\/09\/29\/mitchell-total-stop-action-market-forces-drivig-tna-business-years-ago-better-industry\/\" title=\"MITCHELL: Total Stop Action &#8211; Why market forces driving TNA out of business years ago would have been better for the industry\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,52,60,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlightarticles","category-opnionandanalysis","category-takes_mitchell","category-opinion_stafftakes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/TNA_3x2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32693"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32760,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32693\/revisions\/32760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}