For almost half a decade WWE has ruled the world of pro wrestling with an iron fist. Vince McMahon has seen organizations come and go year after without any threat whatsoever. From the large Ted Turner owned wCw (with a nearly limitless checking account) to the small yet heartfelt ECW, Vince has beaten them all with brains and luck. Now with TNA failing to catch major league attention I must wonder if WWE has finally clinched their top throne in the wrestling bizz for life.
I'm sure that we all had high hopes with TNA. They had high-risk wrestling, talented veterans in the locker room, and Vince Russo as their main mind. Sadly, though, nothing is working with TNA. They aren't drawing as much attention as before even with cable slot on FSN. Big name stars such as Nash, Hall, Raven, DDP, etc. are still holding ground and dominating T.V time, but their overall use is simply to push up younger talent and sell a few more t-shirts. Bookings seem to be going stale and storylines are simple and/or mind crippling. A downward spiral is sure to come even though many (including me) thought that TNA would be the saving grace for the 21st century of wrestling. And even when TNA was surging with fans and hopefuls were thinking that they would finally be able to topple WWE, Vince never flinched. Vince stuck to his guns like he has year after year. He followed the plan of bringing in steroid pulsing monsters to paint the WWE wrestling canvas and strayed away from using cruiserweights like TNA. While TNA was strengthening their roster by acquiring young luchadors from Mexico, WWE was busy with their motto of boobs and biceps. Why the hell does WWE stay so calm though? Is the company just that egotistical to think that they can do no harm and nobody can touch them in the wrestling world? The WWE has surely done everything to prove that they are that damn good. They have survived through every era in wrestling. From the Monday night wars with wCw to the bloodthirsty extremists of ECW, they've beaten them all. Buts who's to say that if another major wrestling promotion were to burst upon the scene that there ego's would hold up?
There’s no arguing that the Attitude Era was the peak of WWF's success back in the day. Faces like Steve Austin and The Rock saved WWF from sudden doom when they went head to head with wCw. Yet with all the big city names in the WWF, they still didn't dominate wCw. By no means can you even say that WWF was better than wCw at that time. wCw was crushing WWF at that time in the television ratings and it wasn't looking pretty for the WWF and the future of the Attitude Era. In fact, the only reason that WWF won the Monday Night War was because wrestling was all the company knew. wCw was owned by Ted Turner. Ted Turner, the same man who also owned CNN, TBS, TNN, and the Atlanta Braves of baseball. Vince only had his wrestling company at that time (and he got that from his daddy.) In the end Vince won because all he had was wrestling and he knew the business of wrestling like nobody else. wCw faltered because they didn't have the minds that WWF had from a wrestling stand-point. They were more concerned about the dollar bill than making their wrestlers happy and making star events that many would enjoy. They were a mess in the locker room. The final months of wCw were a blur of generic cards and messy plots. WWF took command by symbolizing everything they knew into a 2-hour show each and every week. They were truly smarter and conservative with their checkbook (something that would help them for years to come.)
ECW didn't stand a chance, however. No matter how smart Paul Heyman was, they didn't have the bank to contend with WWF. Back when ECW was just starting out I heard rumors that people would plunge off the second story of arena's and kill themselves while doing so. Yet there were no big name stars at that time so I didn't attempt to view the program. The main reason wCw made it big in the wrestling world was because they got the biggest name in the bizz at the time, Hulk Hogan. ECW was a farm team to wCw and WWF. They'd look at the ECW program every now and then to pick talent from the roster. That never killed ECW, but constant shuffles in the roster didn't help to make big name stars. We can easily say names like RVD, Tommy Dreamer, or Sabu when people ask whom the top ECW stars were back in the day, but casual fans didn't care about those names. wCw knew that when they started. They knew that the wrestling fans were mostly casual viewers who needed big stars to make them watch the program (remember that this was a time before the Internet was big.) Now we are able to catch matches from certain federations like Ring Of Honor, yet ECW couldn't get a major fan base because they weren't in the era of wrestling fans using the net and they didn't have any household wrestling stars to market to casual viewers. They were stuck with likely the best promotion of their time, yet they had no way to broaden it to make money.
TNA tried to do what ECW wasn't capable of doing. First, they're using the World Wide Web to their advantage. There was plenty of hype circulating throughout the wrestling world when TNA started to hit the scene with weekly shows on pay-per-views. Many wanted to see what all the talk was about and soon word of mouth got around that TNA was more action packed than WWE. Secondly, they were to lock many big name wrestlers in their cards. It started with guys such as Raven and accelerated into notables such as Sting, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Roddy Piper, DDP, etc. Most were past their prime and TNA didn't have to wallet to hold them to long-term deals, but they did everything they could to get casual fans into watching some of the most famous wrestlers in the U.S. What went wrong you ask? Wrestling has died as far as popularity is concerned. We are never going to see icons like Hogan again. We are never going to see a wrestling program be anywhere close to the Neilsen Top 20 ratings anymore. That means that if WWE is struggling in getting fans to watch, what makes TNA think they can do any better? In a way I believe that TNA need WWE to have success. If you make wrestling as a whole popular than you get more people watching both WWE and TNA. TNA doesn't have the money to gain any more success; WWE does. They can market wrestling into a new era of fans, yet they're not exciting enough. Yet TNA is more than exciting to many people, but they have no money to go any farther than WWE. It’s almost as if both federations are bringing the wrestling world down with them. WWE has money, but no vision to gain appeal anymore. TNA has the top tier vision, but no money. It's a sad fact for both WWE and TNA...
Is this the time that we must ask if WWE has won the wrestling war for good now? There seems to be nobody else to combat them anymore. No matter how much we hope and pray that TNA can be the saving grace for 21st century wrestling we've seen for almost two years now that they don't have what it takes in this day and ago to make a difference. Even with a better time slot on a better cable network they have nothing to drive them past WWE and there bank account. If TNA poses a threat than WWE will buy their talent like ECW. Vince has TNA at check and TNA is just looking for a safe move to get out of trouble. Only time will tell if WWE has won it all, and in the process, brought wrestling down forever!
Thanks for reading ...And That’s What I Think! I really wanted to bring you a column from a company standpoint just to show you how low I think wrestling has gone over the years. Hopefully this drought of bad product after bad product will end soon. In the mean time I'll try to bring you a new column every month. Thanks for reading and...And That's What I Think!
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