The Impact Crater 12.13.07

Posted by Ryan Byers on 12.14.2007

Plenty of bitchin' 'bout briefcases, plus a fan asks me how I would book the typical episode of Impact, and I respond in far more detail than I thought was possible.

Quick & Dirty Results

Segment #1: Kurt Angle/Christian Interview Segment
Segment #2: Scott Steiner def. Chris Daniels, Road Dogg, & "Canadian Pygmy" Petey Williams in a match in which the four guys who had the briefcases from the stupid f'ing "Feast or Fired" match fought and the winner got to either keep his briefcase, take somebody else's briefcase, or take $50,000. I hate this show.
Segment #3: Frankie Kazarian def. Rebboj
Segment #4: Talia Madison & Angel Williams def. Jackie Moore & Traci Brooks
Segment #5: Jim Michtell/Abyss Interview Segment
Segment #6: Booker T. def. Chris Harris
Segment #7: Jay Lethal def. Johnny Devine in a lumberjacks with straps match
Segment #8: Kurt Angle & Bobby Roode def. Christian in a handicap match

The Main Stuff

Angle Numero Uno: Everybody Hates Christian

The main storyline on Impact this week involved Christian's continued rivalry with Kurt Angle and Bobby Roode. He may also be feuding with AJ Styles and Travis Tomko. We don't know. That's never really been made clear.

TNA continued to make one of the mistakes that cropped up last week in regards to the angle, as they are running it despite the fact that they have not and perhaps will not turn Christian face. It looked like the company was going to head that way at the beginning of the episode, but then he decided to take a cheap shot at the fans during his show-opening promo and was soundly booed throughout the rest of the segment, even when he was trading verbal barbs with Angle and Roode. The rest of the show saw Christian strike out repeatedly as he attempted to recruit various babyfaces to team with him in a main event against the two aforementioned men. Ultimately, Christian – who was still a full on heel – had to go out in the last match of the evening and wrestle two other heels in a bout that I can't imagine anybody caring about. Wrestling at its root is good vs. evil, and anybody who tells you that "shades of gray" work in the sport in the twenty-first century is full of it. Though there are periodic face vs. face matches that do well, ninety percent of the financially successful matches in the history of professional wrestling have had a clear cut face and a clear cut heel, and none of them have featured two heels going at it. Tonight's live audience made it clear that this week's main event was not going to be any exception to the general rule. Though they reacted to big moves, they weren't in to Christian as a face, and, as a result, they were less in to Angle and Roode as heels. I'd imagine that the reaction of home viewers throughout the country was roughly the same.

What is particularly frustrating about this situation is that they had a perfect opportunity to get Christian a babyface partner for the evening and completely blew it. Prior to the main event, Booker T. had been involved in a segment with Bobby Roode in which Roode had made derogatory comments about Booker's wife, calling her a prostitute and threatening to assault her. After that segment, it would have been simple to have the Book cut a promo in which he states that he will team with Christian, not because he likes what Cage stands for but because this is his first opportunity to get his hands on Roode and defend Sharmell's honor. This would have put at least one clear-cut babyface in to the match and given the crowd SOMETHING to react to positively.

Despite all of this, I would assume that the plan going forward is to eventually make Christian in to a good guy. As far as planting the seeds for that turn, I'd say TNA met with mixed results this evening. On one hand, he did play the underdog role well against Roode and Angle in the main event. If the announcers and other wrestlers play up the guts that he exhibited in that match, it could go along way in to making him in to something special in the fans' eyes. On the other hand, almost half of Cage's camera time this evening involved other faces on the roster reminding crowds that he was scum. If the promotion keeps heading down that road, it will be almost impossible to turn Christian in to an effective face, no matter how many times they have him defy the odds in the ring.

Angle Numero Dos: Pay Per Views? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Pay Per Views!

TNA's next pay per view event is taking place on January 6. You certainly wouldn't know it by watching this episode of Impact, though, as the only mentions of the show were made in fifteen second bumpers after commercial breaks. We also have absolutely ZERO matches announced for the PPV, which I believe is called Final Resolution.

There are three episodes of Impact airing between now and the pay per view. There have certainly been cards put together and built up in that amount of time. However, this is a time of year in which TNA cannot afford to waste any week of Impact, because with the holiday season upon us there is always the possibility that ratings for the show will drop off over the next couple of weeks, even if the number did hold steady on Thanksgiving. If the viewership does drop off in the next couple of weeks, TNA will wind up with a significant portion of its fanbase that has not been exposed to any build whatsoever for the PPV. Given that next week's episode appears to be some sort of Christmas-related theme show with a ton of wacky multi-man gimmick matches, I fear that we won't have any pay per view bouts announced then either, leaving TNA with exactly TWO shows on which to promote Final Resolution.

As I've said many times before, pay per view is the primary source of revenue for the promotion. If they want to operate in the black, they need to start acting like it.

Angle Numero Tres: My Love/Hate Relationship with this Angle is in HATE Mode

I'm referring, of course, to the rivalry between the X Division and the Dudley Boys. As I have noted in prior editions of the Crater, some weeks I love the rivalry because there are great promos from Alex Shelley and Bubba Dudley. Some weeks I love it because there are excellent matches.

Other weeks, I can't stand it because it defies all common sense. This was one of this weeks. The advancement of the storyline came in the form of a lumberjack match between Johnny Devine and Jay Lethal in which the lumberjacks were all X Division members armed with leather straps. Nobody ever explained why this match was taking place. Not once. In fact, I can't even come up with a good reason for it happening. Usually lumberjack matches are used when one of the competitors has a history of running away from the other, and that has not been a part of this rivalry. In fact, in the two matches that I can remember which pitted Johnny Devine against Jay Lethal, Devine stayed in the match right up until the end and was the guy who was seen by the referee as winning the match for his team. You could attempt to argue that the match was signed by babyface commissioner Jim Cornette because he wanted to punish Devine for stealing the X Division Title belt, but, if that were the case, why would Cornette sanction last week's ladder match in which Devine could win possession of the belt? The only reason that Devine still has the damn thing is because Cornette continues to allow it, so that potential explanation doesn't hold much water either.

Putting aside the lack of reason for the match, the psychology was completely backwards, which has been a recurring theme in this feud. Every X Division guy on the outside was acting as a face, even the men who are normally heels. I didn't take a head count, but this meant that there were approximately eight good guys repeatedly surrounding and whipping one bad guy. Yes, once again, the HEEL had to fight back against odds that were stacked against him, and, once again, this resulted in an audience who couldn't have cared less. Though this was stupid when it was going on during the match, it got even dumber after the bell, when the supposed faces all entered the ring and commenced to BEAT DOWN JOHNNY DEVINE, a wrestler who had already been laid out and decisively pinned with his opponent's finisher. The Dudley Boys, who are also heels, then had to run down to ringside and MAKE A SAVE. I have never seen a wrestling promotion that has such a poor grasp on what is supposed to constitute a babyface and what is supposed to constitute a heel.

The only good thing about the segment is that Johnny Devine didn't have the X Division belt with him. It was almost as though he realized that he was going to be outnumbered and didn't want to risk the good guys taking his prize back from him. It would have been nice if the announcers picked up on this at some point, but it remained a fun little "Hidden Highlight" of sorts. Unfortunately, all of the Hidden Highlights in the world can't help you when the major points of your angle are ridiculous.

Bitchin' 'Bout Briefcases

Astute readers may have noticed that I didn't comment on the fallout from the "Feast or Fired" battle royale in last week's column. This was not because I forgot, and it was not because I was engaging in a form of silent protest. (I prefer to protest things loudly.) It was because I had already read the spoilers for this week's episode of Impact and came to the conclusion that it would probably be better to discuss the two weeks of the angle in one shot, so that the idiocy could be fully reflected upon.

At the last pay per view, four men walked out of the Feast or Fired match with briefcases, three of which contained shots at various titles and one of which contained a pink slip. We were initially promised that the cases would be opened on the PPV, but they were not. We were then promised that the cases would be opened on last week's episode of Impact, but they were not. At that point I was hoping that the promotion would turn this in to a running gag and delay the opening of the cases until the week Impact gets cancelled, but that was not to be. They were opened this week.

But, because this is TNA, we couldn't just open the cases. Oh no. A whole bunch of insane b.s. had to happen first. The Road Dogg, Scott Steiner, Petey Williams, and Low Ki were the guys who walked out of the PPV with the cases. On last week's show, Low Ki's tag team partner Christopher Daniels got angry with him and challenged him to a match for his briefcase. Daniels won that contest, which, for no adequately explored reason, featured Elix Skipper as the special guest referee. According to Bryan Alvarez at Figure Four Online, the Daniels vs. Ki match was booked because Low Ki has legitimately quit TNA. Think about that one for a second. TNA booked a match in which one of the "winners" was supposed to get fired. After that match, one of the winners is actually released. What would you do in this situation, reader? Hell, what would any sane person do? I think the answer to both questions is that you would rewrite your angle so that the individual who actually quit would receive the pink slip and then be gone in storyline as well. That's not good enough for TNA, though. They couldn't go in this direction because they want to run a storyline in which a wrestler is fired. The problem with storylines in which wrestlers are fired is that these wrestlers almost without exception come back to the promotion in some way within a matter of weeks. This undermines the promotion's credibility, meaning that fans will eventually stop believing them when they make promises. If fans stop believing promotions when they make promises, they often stop buying pay per views in which stipulation matches are involved, because the stipulations are perceived as meaningless. This was a poor move. Period.

So, with Ki out of the Haliburton club and Daniels in, we moved on to this week's show. Again, we couldn't just have the briefcases opened. First we had to have a match in which the four case holders fought each other, with the winner getting the right to either keep his case, switch his case with somebody else's, or opt out of this case madness entirely and take a check for $50,0000. As with the lumberjack match, we were given no reason for this contest taking place. We weren't told that it was something TNA management recently thought would be a good idea. We weren't told that it was something TNA management had been planning since before the battle royale. We weren't told that it was an idea that one of the wrestlers had. It just happened with no rhyme or reason behind it. Ultimately, Scott Steiner wound up pinning Petey Williams (don't forget that detail . . . we'll come back to it) and opted not to take the money. Instead, he decided to switch his briefcase with Petey's. Though I think any real human being in this situation would have taken the guaranteed cash over a 25% chance of being fired, I'll forgive that lapse in logic because the initial Feast or Fired match was premised on guys fighting so that they could have their chances of being fired raise from 0% to 25%.

TNA then opened the briefcases. They could not open them all at the same time, however. They had to space these segments out, putting at least fifteen minutes between each one. I suppose that's a good idea if you believe this stipulation will actually lead to viewers tuning in, though I don't know how somebody could come to that conclusion. Anyway, the segments in which the contents of the briefcases were opened were ridiculous. The Impact Zone suddenly transformed from a sound stage in which a wrestling show takes place in to the set of Let's Make a Deal. The lighting went down, cheesy music was played, and at one point there was a clock ticking in the background when Scott Steiner had to make a decision. Jeremy Borash and all four wrestlers completely dropped their regular characters, with Borash acting like Monty Hall and the wrestlers acting like a set of geeks who got pulled out of a studio audience to possibly win a new dinette set. If TNA was trying to parody game shows, this probably would have been hilarious. However, from watching it, it was perfectly clear that TNA was not attempting to parody anything. They really thought that they could turn this angle in to a legitimate game show which their fans would get in to, despite the fact that everybody watching the show knows that the results have been scripted well in advance. The more I think about this mess, the more I want to amend my ballot in 411 Wrestling's Year End Awards and put it at the top of my list for "Worst Promo or Skit of 2007."

Petey Williams was the first one to have his case opened. Believe it or not, when Petey's case was opened, he had a shot at the Heavyweight Championship of the World. There are a few problems with this. First of all, I want to make it clear that I like Petey Williams as an in-ring performer. Unfortunately for him, he's been a persona non grata on television for the last several months, and, when he has been on TV, he's been portrayed as either a jobber or a comedy character who does an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. This means that we have a comedy jobber who won a World Title match in what came off as a comedy segment. I do not see this going well for Petey's career, and I do not see it going well for TNA if they attempt to build an episode of Impact or, god forbid, a pay per view around this nonsense. It's also worth noting that your new contender for the TNA Heavyweight Title was PINNED clean as a sheet literally minutes before he won this honor, so they really hammered home his status as a job guy who won't actually be walking away with the belt.

After Petey's big score, when the announcers or the pre-commercial bumpers were hyping up the reamaining case opening segments, the big hook that they used was "Somebody will be fired tonight! Tune in to see who will be fired!" This was so completely backwards. Unless I'm missing something, the best outcome for somebody in the Feast or Fired match is getting a World Title shot. The worst outcome for somebody in the Feast or Fired match is getting fired. This means that TNA showed us the BEST outcome FIRST and the WORST outcome LAST. Has there ever been a televised competition in which this has happened? When they air the Miss America pageant on television, do they line up the ten finalist and announce the winner first before going backwards all the way to the woman who came in dead last? No, because doing things that way would devalue the actual prize, which is exactly what TNA did with a shot at its World Heavyweight Title here.

I can see a few people writing in and trying to defend this by saying something to the effect of, "Well, Ryan, what you don't get is that if this were real the briefcases would be obtained and opened randomly. All TNA was doing was making this look like a legitimate random drawing. You like realism, don't you?"

To that, I say the following: This is professional wrestling. Professional wrestling is NOT real. There are several examples of situations in the pseudo-sport in which supposedly random storyline events are booked in a manner that makes them look anything but random. Think back to War Games matches. In those bouts, there would be a coin toss to determine which team would have a one man advantage during the opening portion of the contest. Those coin tosses, supposedly random events, were ALWAYS won by the heels. Think back to Battle Bowl. Though supposedly tag teams were selected at random for that event, there always seemed to be an unusually high number of pairings that would advance storylines and an inordinately high percentage of regular tag team partners who wound up against each other and rivals who wound up teaming. Realism in booking these supposedly "random" events was thrown out the window because the setup which appeared less random a.) didn't strain the credibility too much and b.) told a better story. This is the route that TNA should have taken if they were committed to doing the Feast or Fired match.

I've now been ripping this insipid angle apart for what WordPerfect tells me is two and a half pages. Single spaced. I suppose that I should attempt to find something positive about it so that I don't go to bed completely angry. Well . . .

Um . . . .

Yeah . . . . .

I've got it!

Because the New Age Outlaws were involved in the segments, Roxxi LaVeaux was at ringside. I'm a HUGE Roxxi fan from her time on the indies and am glad to see that she is picking up easy paychecks. Keep that money rolling in, Nikki!

And the Rest . . .

~ This Hermie Sadler guy is already a better announcer than Don West, Michael Cole, Jonathan Coachman, and Todd Grisham. We need to get him out of NASCAR and in to this gig full-time.

~ According to Don West and Mike Tenay, Johnny Stamboli's character is supposed to be "Black Reign's worst nightmare." If I were a professional wrestler, my worst nightmare would also be having partner who lost all the time.

~ I enjoy the fact that, in storyline terms, Kevin Nash apparently comes to the Impact Zone for no reason other than to take naps.

~ The Abyss/Jim Mitchell/Ricky Banderas segment got so much time tonight that I feel like I should do a longer writeup on it, but I just can't bring myself to. It's all derivative of things we've seen before and that I've written about before, so what's the point of rehashing old issues?

~ I guess Samoa Joe's new gimmick involves him having Tourette's. At least Dustin Rhodes is backstage to give him pointers.

Overall

I will say one good thing about this week's episode of Impact. For all fo the ranting that I did above, at least the show was not so crammed with angles that the two hour show felt like it lasted three or even four hours, which has been the case some weeks. There was so much going on in the briefcase and Christian stories that these angles ate up the vast majority of the TV time and blocked out the seemingly hundreds of mini-angles that usually make Impact feel like two episodes crammed in to one. With that said, I still can't bring myself to give the show anything but a solid thumbs down. (You're shocked.) Though on a certain level I do respect TNA for trying something different with it's Let's Make a Deal knockoff, it wound up not working, as is usually the case when a professional wrestling show tries to shoehorn itself in to a genre of programming in which it does not belong. In the other main angle, I do appreciate the fact that they're finally making Bobby Roode out to be a legitimate main event threat, but the muddied waters of Christian's heel/face status made the storyline too difficult to get invested in. This episode was also weakened by the fact that I can't even tell you there was a particularly good match on the card. In most of the weeks since the expansion to two hours, there's a fun main event match no matter how horrid the booking leading up to it may be. This week, though the handicap match was decent given the amount of time the wrestlers had, it was several notches below the average TNA main event and incapable of redeeming the show in any way.

Reader Feedback

Take it away, Ryan S.:

Byers, I haven't written in awhile, but I've keeping up with the Crater religiously. Week in and week out it's one of the best reviews.

You seem to have a good mind for what a pro wrestling show should be and what good storytelling is and it leads to making money. And I hate to ask you to fantasy book, but how would you book a typical episode of Impact?

Keep up the good work.

Well, I started to respond to Ryan's e-mail. I wrote a little . . . and I wrote a little more . . . and I wrote a little more. Before I knew it I had three-and-a-half pages on the topic, which is definitely more than I had planned for at the outset. However, I'm not going to let it go to waste.
As far as my ideas on booking Impact are concerned, I'm not going to spend to spend too much time delving in particular feuds that I'd like to see, because the specifics of those rivalries would take several pages each. If you'd like to see the structure of a several month, main event level feud that I'd put together, you can click here for an older edition of the Crater in which I fantasy booked the feud between Kurt Angle and Samoa Joe, almost from the beginning.

What I will do is talk about changes that I feel need to be made to the structure of episodes and the general booking philosophy of the promotion. First of all, as everybody's good friend Larry Csonka has mentioned on numerous occasions, Impact could use more actual wrestling action. I'm not somebody who wants to see all matches all the time – particularly on a free TV show – but I think that in order to be a true alternative to WWE and to live up to their "We are Wrestling" slogan, Impact needs either more matches or the same number of matches with more time dedicated to them. When they actually do give a match time on the show, it is usually excellent because, as has been noted in many places, they have one of the more talented rosters in the history of pro wrestling.

However, in putting more wrestling on the show, you have to be sure to not give away too much. If audiences can get everything they need in terms of bell-to-bell action on your free shows, they suddenly don't have an incentive to buy your pay per views. There is a delicate balance that must be struck. As a general rule, I would like to see an average episode of Impact have a main event that lasts between fifteen and twenty minutes, two undercard matches that are in the ten minute range, and three or four five minute matches. That's at least forty-five minutes of first run in-ring action, which is more than Raw, Smackdown, or Impact currently provide on a regular basis. It's also worth noting that the outline I gave would be for the typical episode. I recognize that, in order to maintain fan interest in the show and in order to keep the network happy, it may be necessary to give away a twenty-five or thirty minute match away on free television every two months or so.

In addition to tweaking the amount of wrestling, certain types of matches need to be booked on Impact. There are some matches that, despite the fact that they will be good, probably won't draw in too many pay per view buyers. For example, things like six or eight man tags or four corners matches traditionally don't fare as well on PPV as do singles matches, so I would like to see more of these multi-man matches as television main events. (Which, to be fair, is something that TNA has actually been doing in recent weeks. Unfortunately, they've also been booking convoluted multi-man matches as their PPV main events.) If a singles match is going to be the TV main event, it should involve at least one participant who is over to the point that he would keep viewers tuned in to a free show but not so over that people would pay to see him. A good recent example of this sort of match is the Frankie Kazarian vs. Kurt Angle title bout, with Kazarian obviously not being a strong enough title contender to put at the top of a PPV but being a good enough wrestler to generate buzz amongst fans. These sorts of title contenders could periodically be created through tournaments or battle royales for shots at the belt, as using that sort of device combined with a couple of key singles wins can turn a regular midcarder in to somebody who's over enough for a free TV crack at the belt.

Another big weakness of TNA – one that has been present almost since the beginning of the promotion – is that it has few to no memorable moments. If you paid me to put together a highlight reel of the most exciting moments of WWE television over the past five years, I could probably have a list of clips ready to go within twenty minutes. If you paid me to put together a highlight reel of the most exciting moments of TNA over the past five years, I'd come up with the Elix Skipper cagewalk rana, the Abyss beatdown in which he bladed his arms, and that'd be about the end of it. I'm sure I could come up with more if I did research, but I can't come up with memorable TNA moments off of the top of my head like I can with WWE moments. That's particularly depressing when you consider the fact that, for the past year and a half, I've religiously reviewed Impact, not only watching the show but also writing about it for roughly two hours a week. Meanwhile, I probably only watch about 75% of the television product WWE produces.

There are two reasons why matches and angles in TNA fail to make an "Impact" for lack of a better term. The first is that, when something ostensibly important happens, it almost never gets shown again after the first occurrence. Contrast this to WWE, where a major angle from the top of Raw is usually played again in the second hour and is then replayed again on ECW and again on Smackdown and again at the top of the next episode of Raw. Major PPV angles are played at least twice on both Raw and Smackdown. This lets fans know what is important and burns it in their minds. As such, I would like to see more replays and recap segments on Impact. The second reason I can't remember anything related to TNA is that, quite frankly, there are too many angles occurring on any given episode. Not every match on a pay per view needs to have a storyline behind it. If I were booking Impact, the average episode would see no more than four storylines advanced. There would be two major storylines which are advanced on every episode and four less important storylines, two of which are advanced on alternating weeks. This allows a sufficient amount of the PPV card to have a backstory but prevents the TV show from feeling crowded and allows the angles that do happen to be emphasized more.

The type of angles booked are almost as important as the number of angles booked. There are currently two companies in the United States that do an exemplary job of using storylines on free television shows to convince fans to pay for larger events: WWE and UFC. WWE and UFC's most successful PPV shows of the last several years have all centered around the same basic premise. It involves two men who have a simple, easy to relate to reason that they either dislike each other or consider themselves to be the better athlete. While that story develops, both guys win matches. (Or rather they ideally win matches . . . UFC being a legitimate sport sometimes prevents this.) The men then fight each other in order to either to settle their grudge or determine who's a better performer. That is the basic structure that has lead to the highest PPV buyrates of 2006 and 2007, not convoluted stories involving men who stalk other men's sons because there may or may not have been a situation in which the stalker's wife was slapped by the stalkee's father while the stalker also has an on-again, off-again relationship with a man posing as a therapist, who just happens to be a dead ringer for Kenny Rogers. You'll note that if there is one storyline on Impact which has received critical acclaim over the last several months, it's Gail Kim vs. The Amazing Kong, which very closely follows the WWE/UFC structure I outlined above and has very little relationship to the typical TNA silliness.

The last topic that I'd like to cover is the talent utilized by TNA. I've said on many occasions that, unlike several fans on the internet, I don't want to see the company's "homegrown talent" pushed over the "WWE rejects" in every situation. You can book storylines involving former WWE guys that are just as compelling as storylines involving former indy guys, as evidenced by the fact that the most exciting feud in all of TNA in 2007 was the Steiner Brothers vs. The Dudley Boys. However, I think that you have to be smart about how you mix the two types of guys. First of all, I would never run a main event based on a feud that has already been done before in WWE. I've on several occasions mentioned my disdain for the Kurt Angle vs. Christian stories that TNA has run, because that feud would've been a midcard at best storyline on Smackdown just a couple of years ago. Putting it on as TNA's primary feud pretty clearly sends the message to new fans that the promotion's main event is no better than WWE's midcard. If that's the case, it by default means that WWE main eventers are better than TNA main eventers, which reduces fans' incentive to buy shows featuring the TNA main eventers.

When a former WWE guy makes his debut in TNA, the top TNA wrestlers need to be portrayed as on the same level as the debutante. We don't need promos which include the line "Who the hell are you?" as were recently delivered by Booker T. and Rikishi. What we need are former WWE guys portraying their new TNA foes as on their level, saying things like "I watched a lot of you when I was working for the competition. You're very good, but I think I'm better . . . and I want to prove it." There's a reason why the initial Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle match drew the highest buyrate in the history of the promotion. It wasn't because Kurt showed up on Impact and called Joe a fatty incapable of holding his jock. It was because Kurt showed up and was immediately fighting Joe tooth and nail, with both guys being portrayed as on the same level. I don't necessarily think that the TNA guy should always go over when the feud concludes, but he should always be portrayed as somebody who rivals the WWE signee's ability.

Another key step in making sure that "TNA Originals" are seen as viable contenders is bringing back true enhancement talent, which I think has been missing from wrestling for far too long. TNA is based in Florida, and Florida is rife with independent talent that could act as job guys. After a good crop of them is recruited (more likely than not working on a pay-per-appearance basis as opposed to being contracted), they would be used in the five minute long matches that I described in my outline above. Using jobbers lets fans know that wrestlers who are being pushed actually are better fighters than a random man off the street, and it also allows wrestlers to establish their finishing moves as being devastating, which in turn adds more drama when those moves are utilized in competitive matches.

The other big talent issue relates to another oft-discussed topic on wrestling messageboards: The X Division. I agree with many individuals that the division needs to be rebuilt and segregated from the heavyweight division. The reason for this is twofold. The primary reason for doing this is that it helps differentiate the TNA product from the WWE product, which is necessary because fans won't tune in to watch a second-rate version of something that already exists. The second reason is that, if the two TNA singles titles are portrayed as being on the same level, it gives the company twice the opportunity to produce a feud that will truly captivate viewers. If for some reason fans aren't buying in to a World Title feud, a stronger X Division feud could help compensate, and vice versa.

The key to rebuilding the X Division lies in a move that I don't think would be too popular: You need to fire virtually everybody currently associated with the division. I'm not kidding. Jay Lethal, Sonjay Dutt, Christopher Daniels, Elix Skipper, Johnny Devine, Petey Williams, they (and a few others) all need to go. That's not because I dislike them as performers. It's because they've been portrayed as second rate wrestlers and/or comedians by the promotion for so long that establishing a new crop of wrestlers as legitimate superstars would be much easier than undoing the damage that has been done to the current X'ers and then building them up further. I'd like to see a six month to one year long program implemented in which the current X guys are slowly phased out and a new guard is integrated in to the promotion. There are plenty of wrestlers on the indy scene who can work the necessary style. It's just a matter of getting them under contract. Some of the current X Division wrestlers could be rehired a couple of years down the road when some of the jobber stench has come off of them.

Prior to concluding, I want to make one preemptive strike against people who will likely attempt to call me out on what they perceive to be an inconsistency in the above writing. You'll notice that, in the section about the X Division, I mentioned that TNA needs to distinguish themselves from the WWE product, whereas in other parts of the piece I noted WWE tactics that TNA should copy. Before anybody attempts to call me out as being self-contradictory, it is the WWE's promotional tactics (along with the promotional tactics of UFC) that TNA should emulate. They should do this because those tactics are proven successes. While adopting these tactics, they should still strive to provide unique content in terms of angles and in-ring product that sets them apart from their competitors.

And that'll do it. The sad thing is that I could probably write much more if I felt particularly motivated, but those are what I consider to be the key points. Any comments or criticisms are welcome, either by using the "comment" link below or by shooting me an e-mail.

I hope that everybody enjoys their weekends.