Thinking about the past wars between WCW/WWF, and the more recent disagreements between WWE/TNA, I feel sometimes that wrestling fans are used as expendable pawns in these promotional games ... a bit like the children of divorce. Though one would assume that parents will always put the best interests of the child first, it does seem prevalent that kids are often used as leverage or bargaining chips when a relationship breaks down. Before I go on, in using this analogy I am in no way understating the experiences of people whose parents divorced in real life. My parents are still together, I had a stable upbringing and my occasionally twisted, cantankerous outlook on life is more a product of illness and happiness, both of which were my fault entirely.
Thanks to McMahon’s decision to keep their name out of his broadcasts, the current main culprit of profiting from the company divide is TNA. Christian, Rhino, the Dudley’s, Kevin Nash, Jeff Jarrett and Kip/BG have all benefited from re-associating themselves with their previous contractors and, to a certain extent, they are more than entitled to do so. Whether WWE fans feel it is the cheapest pop/heat to attain or not, it is undeniable that, as integral parts of the identities to which they are trying to realign (specifically ECW or DX), they have that right. What is more of a concern is, for example, someone like Kip (can I just call him Billy Gunn?) whose entire run in TNA seems to have revolved around harking back to his WWE tenure (firstly his name, then the Outlaws and now DX) and he is in danger of getting through his TNA career without being given a single seminal idea that could potentially restart the push of a decent worker.
It is little surprise that the most notable acrimonious defector in TNA is Kurt Angle, primarily because he is the biggest name to have gone south and the best wrestler to switch in either direction since Bret Hart went to WCW in 1997. Kurt certainly has given a fair amount of ammunition to those fans that choose to believe he has resorted to making noise because he’s stopped making sense but there is one specific reference that stands out above all others. During his debut promo on Impact, Angle made a pointed remark about the TNA audience being “the best fans in the world”. A fairly insignificant cheap pop for the benefit of the crowd you might think but not when placed in context to what he has been saying in interviews recently. Kurt seems quite put out by WWE fans regarding their concern over his well-being and has only just stopped short of accusing them of turning their backs on him because of his switch to TNA and not genuinely being worried about his health. Granted, there is no legal requirement for either Kurt or TNA to provide documented evidence of his good health but the ambivalence of any statement in relation to the company’s drug testing policy has to be taken as a reasonable foundation for anxiety. It should be said however that at this time I personally see no reason to believe that Kurt is mentally unstable (although anybody who describes Kip/BG as “awesome” and believes them to be the real stars of DX should probably buy several rolls of rubber wallpaper, fairly quickly).
It could be claimed that, in using tactics intended to annoy a rival company, one side is playing to their own fans rather than against them. Let’s face it, I assume no TNA fans are saying “I wish TNA would leave the WWE alone, it’s not fair to antagonise them”. With the WWE’s marketing machinery being more aggressive than TNA’s I’m sure their fans would be quite glad to see the big dog being poked with a sharp stick every now and then for no better reason than they’re sick of seeing WWE take the larger share of wrestling’s limited mainstream interest. But there is a more underlying problem at work. As more and more airtime is devoted to storylines and segments that involve referencing the WWE by name, less effort is going into generating booking ideas that come solely from a TNA perspective, something that is vital in creating a product that is self sufficient and not constantly perceiving itself as the wrestling ‘alternative’. More than that, if every ex-WWE free agent that resurfaces in TNA enters at or near the main event level then the instances of their home-grown talent breaking through the cross-promotional glass ceiling will decrease the longer the rivalry persists.
As you would expect, TNA is not alone in this practice. The WWE has been as guilty of playing the ‘Alpha female’ role in the past, though it has been a while since they felt the need to do so in an open forum. The only examples I can recall of disgruntled ex-employees bad-mouthing the opposition on WWE programming goes all the way back to 1998 when XPac joined HHH in forming the repopulated DX and a year earlier in 1997 when a returning Jeff Jarrett vented his spleen at his former WCW overseers only to kill any interest in his surprise reappearance by going on and on for way too long and boring the shit out of everyone in attendance. But as any good cat-skinner will tell you, there’s more than one way to get the job done. In 2001 when Vince bought WCW, you could have assumed there would no longer be a reason to bury the opposition to make his promotion look good but that’s exactly what he did with the ‘Invasion’ angle. The way in which the storyline was booked from the start made it appear as though McMahon didn’t seem keen on presenting his old adversary as equal competition and ultimately he took the cheap way out putting his company and his ego way over both WCW and ECW leaving a lot of wrestling fans wondering how and why he screwed up the most unmissable ‘inter-promotional’ opportunity in history just to add another step to his swagger.
Since then, the WWE’s audience manipulation has been mostly covert. The copyrighted name restrictions placed upon the Dudley’s and the New Age Outlaws when they moved to TNA could be perceived as nothing more than trying to spoil the importance for a different group of wrestling fans. Of course, equally there is no reason why Vince should hand over the lineage the WWE has invested time and money into if TNA is going to use that history whilst still claiming to be about ‘wrestling’ and not involved with something as base and beneath them as ‘entertainment’. If anything the WWE is guilty of going too far the other way. In refusing to acknowledge TNA as opposition (in any capacity) the WWE is requiring fans to pretend that new talent like the recently signed Monty Brown has been at home alphabetising his cd collection for the last four years and has broken into the wrestling scene direct from his stint in the National Football League playing for the Bills and latterly the Patriots. When it comes to this decision the fans are not even an issue. If McMahon felt he could get any mainstream or meaningful wrestling publicity from Brown’s jump then he would be the first and loudest voice proclaiming the capture of one of TNA’s brightest stars in the hope that it hurt TNA, even if it didn’t benefit WWE.
If anyone is expecting me at this point to bring up the subject of the recent ‘anonymous’ phone calls leading to TNA house shows being cancelled in Connecticut, think again. I am far from anything approximating sensible journalism but if I intend to make assertions based on such flimsy reasoning as ‘well it all sounds a bit funny, no?’ then I might as well report my script as missing because I’ve lost the plot. However bad the current skirmishes get in the foreseeable future (I really can’t bring myself to call it a war yet) we can take some solace from the fact that it has some way to go before it gets as bad as it was during the Monday night wars between 1995 and 2001. Whilst the ‘Billionaire Ted’ skits and Bischoff challenging Vince to a match at a WCW PPV can be seen as low but harmless publicity stunts, giving away the pre-taped result of the Rock/Mankind WWF Raw title match on Nitro was about as sneakily destructive a move as you could get and fortunately only resulted in the ratings going up for that encounter. The less obvious archetype of emotional manipulation comes from the aftermath of the 1997 Bret Hart Montreal screwjob. In truth it is slightly redundant to apportion blame now, especially seeing as Bret himself recently stated that if he were currently active then he would be prepared to engage McMahon/HBK in a storyline based on the incident, but it should be noted that in the weeks after the event the WWF’s repeated claims that Bret was responsible for the decision bordered on attempted brainwashing.
In the end, I guess the focus of promotional conflict should be on the real victims, the fans. Companies can sling mud at eachother but ultimately it’s only the fans that get hurt. Actually, that’s total crap. The last time I checked the vast majority of wrestling fans are vindictive, over-opinionated armchair critics with a penchant for the biased and an unshakeable superiority complex. Myself included. If it’s not WWE fans laughing at TNA’s predominantly under 1.0 rating then it’s TNA fans revelling in the joy of another ex-WWE wrestler calling Vince McMahon an asshole. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure how much of a drawback it is being a child of divorce. With one parent not talking to their rival and the other taking every opportunity to make themselves seem better in comparison, it is more likely that we’ll get twice the attention, double the presents and they’ll compete against eachother to see who can provide us with the best gift. Divorce is awesome. I wonder if I could split my parents up?
Lee
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