Beyond the Ring 10.25.10: Hogan and TNA – One Year On

A lot can happen in a year; a country’s entire government can change hands, sports teams who once ruled the field can suddenly and surprisingly find themselves languishing at the bottom of their respective leagues, wrestlers can be hired by the biggest company in the world, mocked on air, fired, rehired and go on to become US Champion.

Then again, absolutely nothing could happen in the space of twelve months; days, weeks and months pass in an endless cycle of the same old faces, the same old places and the same old same old.

With TNA Wrestling, how they’ve spent the past year depends entirely on who you talk to.

Speak to anyone from the company, or even just tune in to any episode of flagship show, iMPACT! (yeah, that weird capitalization thing bugs me too), and the promotion would have you believe that every day is like some sort of wrestling revolution in the crazy world of Dixie Carter and friends.

Promises of new stars, new stories and new events which ‘Will change the face of professional wrestling’ are all commonplace in the-little-company-that-could.

Yet chat to any of TNA’s critics (and let’s face it, there’s plenty of you out there!), and it’s arguable that the amount of times the company has promised such things, and ultimately failed to deliver, means that the company has spent the last year in that endless cycle of the same old, same old.

Why focus on the past year in particular? Well, partly because it makes sense for this writer to try and make my inaugural 411 column at least a least a little bit relevant, but mostly it’s because this coming week marks a somewhat significant milestone in TNA’s ongoing journey to the peak of professional wrestling prominence, which is this:

One year on since ageing, perma-tanned legend Hulk Hogan announced he’d signed with the company.

Hogan Signs with TNA

Yes folks on October 27th 2009, Hogan, 24 inch pythons and all, stood side by side with foxy TNA head honcho, Dixie Carter and made it official; he was heading to the iMPACT Zone.

Make no mistake about it, the Hogan/TNA partnership was huge news.

Say what you want about the master of the Legdrop of Doom, his in-ring performances and backstage politics, it’s hard to deny that, especially to those outside the business, the name ‘Hulk Hogan’ is more synonymous with professional wrestling than any other.

Throw former WCW chief, Eric Bischoff into the equation, and, on paper at least, TNA looked to have found the answer to all their prayers.

“[Hogan’s] biggest contribution to TNA will come from him partnering with me,” said Dixie Carter in an Interview w ith UK tabloid, The Sun. “I can’t imagine a door that the two of us could not open or a deal that the two of us could not close.”

Yet whilst Carter and company all looked to have found answers, wrestling fans had nothing but questions.

“Does this mean talents like AJ, Beer Money and Joe will be pushed down the card to make room for knackered Hogan Hang-ons like the Nasty Boys and Brother Bruti ‘The Bootyman’ Beefcake?”

“Are Hogan and Bischoff going to be running the company?”

“Will we see ‘Hulk Hogan – TNA World Champion’ stinking up venues in his four title defenses per year?”

And, most importantly:

“Will Hogan in TNA actually make any difference?”

The Monday Night Wars V.2.0

Unfortunately, the answers to those questions would be a while in coming.

After the deal with TNA was sealed, Hogan buggered off to Australia to fumble around the ring in a series of matches with a broken-down and penniless Ric Flair in the heavily panned Hulkamania: Let the Battle Begin tour (unsurprisingly, Hogan went 4-0 over Flair on the tour), announcing that he wouldn’t actually be starting with the TNA until the new year.

Hogan vs. Flair 2010

Meanwhile, back in Florida, TNA went all out to ready themselves for The Immortal One’s arrival. To them, this was the one thing they needed to finally shed their image as ‘that other company’ and compete at the same level as the domineering pro wrestling powerhouse that is Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment.

Never was this more evident than when the company announced that Hogan’s debut with the company would take place on a special three-hour edition of iMPACT! broadcast on a Monday night. Yes, the same Monday night that also played host to WWE’s flagship show, Raw.

This was it, TNA were playing in the big leagues, the Monday Night Wars were back!

Well, sort of.

Hogan’s massively-hyped debut, on January 4th, saw him tease an allegiance with erstwhile New World Order colleagues, Kevin Nash and the recently rehired Scott Hall and Sean ‘Syxx-Pac’ Waltman before telling ‘The Band’ that this was a ‘different time,’ and that he wouldn’t be joining them.

Eric Bischoff also arrived on the scene and announced that he and Hogan would be shaking up the company, and that everyone on the roster would now have to earn their spots.

It wasn’t enough though, as despite the show, which also featured a surprise appearance from the ever-popular Dayglo-painted druggie Jeff Hardy, pulling its highest ever viewing figures (peaking around the three million mark), Raw countered with over five million for the return of Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart.

Undettered by the ratings defeat, TNA went ahead anyway and, in mid-February, announced that their show would be making a permanent move to Monday nights.

In hindsight, it’s easy to claim that the move was a failure; after just a few months of failing to make much headway in the battle to compete with The Big ‘E, iMPACT! was shifted away from the Raw-dominated Monday nights back into its comfortable, competition-free Thursday nights, and not even the mighty Hulk Hogan could do much about it.

That said, from another angle, you could say that TNA did at least achieve some success in one area: they had lots of people talking about them.

Mock them for failing their Monday night experiment if you want, but at least give the company some kudos, not only for trying, but at least succeeding in generating a buzz about them.

Riding a wave of momentum caused by the arrival of Hogan (and those who followed in his footsteps such as Flair, RVD, Hardy and Ken Anderson), and their plucky challenge to WWE’s dominance of the Monday night wrestling scene, TNA were hot news.

Sadly for Hogan and company, that momentum, much like all good things, wouldn’t necessarily last.

As 2010 wore on, it quickly became business as usual in t he world of Total Nonstop Action Wrestling.

Despite the star power at their disposal, TNA, as they’re often criticized for doing, failed to make the most of the assets available to them and it was back to the usual business of the occasional awesome match (see: Motor City Machine Guns vs. Beer Money and most bouts involving Kurt Angle) overshadowed by silly storylines and implausible booking and weekly promises of ‘something that will change the face of the company’ which failed to materialise so often that they became a running joke amongst the IWC.

Add in the inevitable complaints about homegrown stars such as AJ Styles and Samoa Joe being shafted in favour of ‘WWE cast-offs’ like Hardy and Anderson (and yes, the Nasty Boys did show up for a spell) and it seemed that TNA, even with Hogan on board, was in no better position than it was a year ago.

We’re taking over…again

This is especially true if you look at the current storyline involving Hogan, Bischoff, Jarrett, Hardy and Abyss, or Immortal, if you will.

Hmm, evil stable hell-bent on controlling the company, where might we have seen that before?

Looking back, it seems that, even before Hogan and Bischoff’s arrival, TNA have only really had one idea in mind; taking the blueprint created by the original New World Order and rehashing it over and over again until it works. Which, arguably, it hasn’t done yet.

It started back in the day with Russo’s Sports Entertainment Xtreme (SEX, geddit? Oh Russo, you funny guy!), then we had the moderate success of the Kurt Angle-led Main Event Mafia (which, despite Sting’s failed heel turn and the way the TNA Originals/front-line looked like a bunch of chumps, was at least entertaining), followed by the short-lived Band earlier this year, Fortune (or is that Fourtune?) and now Immortal.

If I were in charge of TNA, I’d seriously be starting to think that maybe an angle that has been done to death a million times over isn’t the way to, and come up with a new idea.

After all, it hasn’t done them much good so far, and if you were to be overly harsh about things, you could say that the Hogan/TNA partnership hasn’t really done the company much good either.

Yet let’s not give up on them just yet.

A matter of time.

When talking about Hogan, it’s easy to forget that the legend we know today hasn’t been an instant success everywhere he’s been.

Let’s not forget that Hogan had been in the business for several years, including an earlier spell in the WWF, before McMahon had him turn face, hear the praises of one Bob Backlund, and capture his first WWF title from The Iron Sheik before the phenomenon of Hulkamania was born.

And how can we forget his ill-fated early years in WCW?

After leaving the WWF in 1993, Hogan would later go on to to join the Tuner-owned company amidst much fanfare, a huge street parade through Disneyland and much hype as you could ever ask for.

But once he arrived, he failed to live up to such hype and spent time delivering such Wrestlecrap classics as his feud with Kevin Sulivan’s Dungeon of Doom and that awful triple cage match in which he and on-again-off-again-on-again-off-again ally, Randy Savage pretty much burried half the company, rather than the epic ratings and PPV buys the organization were hoping for.

No, it wasn’t until somebody came up with the idea to turn Hogan heel, align him with Hall and Nash and form the New World Order, that Hogan could lead WCW to the top of the professional wrestling mountain.

All of which leads to one simple conclusion; the name Hulk Hogan may be more synonymous with professional wrestling, but the name alone isn’t enough to turn around the fortunes of a company.

Instead, it takes a great idea, be it Hulkamania or the New World order, played out by Hogan and friends, to achieve results.

So whilst The Hulkster may not yet have done for TNA what he did for the WWF/E and later WCW in the past, if the company can just get away from this whole played-out evil-stable idea, come up with something fresh and exciting and give it to Hogan, they may well end up achieving what you have to believe they set out to do when they held that Hogan press conference on October 27th 2009; compete, and eventually take over, the pro wrestling landscape.

And here’s hoping they do, because as the epic Monday Night Wars of the late 1990s proved, when two companies are firing on all cylinders, it makes a very interesting and exciting time for us fans.