Wishing Death on TNA

It probably sucks to be working at a company where no matter what you do you'll go unappreciated by the masses. No matter what you and others say a vocal minority will yell "THIS IS GARBAGE." You worked hard to finally shake past mistakes and you're doing some of the best work of your life but people still shoot you down at every opportunity. They make up rumors about you and when you show proof of the contrary they just call you a liar.

That's what I imagine it's like working for TNA. Every month since Dixie Carter bought the majority of TNA from Jeff and Jerry Jarret it's been reported that TNA is anywhere from hours to days to months. Yet, here we are. TNA has held on for 13 years and as I write this someone is probably reporting that TNA has died again.

I don't get it honestly. It's okay to not like a wrestling promotion. There's stuff I'm not exactly fond of and won't watch. What I don't get is wishing that a company you don't like will go out of business. People actively want TNA dead. There are people who would like nothing more than the
to see TNA go out of business.

I like to contribute some of this to WWE. Not directly, but it's because these people know nothing but WWE. To them wrestling means WWE only. They're the same people that wish death on Ring of Honor as well. These people worship WWE for better and for worse. WWE could do a three hour show of just HHH talking and they would eat it up. WWE is everything to them. These are the people who called Kevin Steen and Samoa Joe guys who would never amount to anything and die penniless in smaller companies. Yet, when Kevin Steen faces off with Samoa Joe in WWE it's the biggest thing for wrestling in the last decade. It's like Pokemon fans hating Digimon for being something slightly different.

There's no shortage of people wishing death on TNA. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and everywhere else that you look. It's not even hidden. It's no secret that people want to see demise. Every time someone like Dave Meltzer speculates bad things about TNA people pull out the streamers and start to celebrate in the end zone long before it's over. I know it may sound bitter or something, but TNA doesn't pay me. I'm just saying that if TNA does go out of business, that's bad for business. Not just TNA but the wrestling business as a whole. Let's look at the facts. If TNA ends tomorrow that's 32 wrestlers flooding into the market. This isn't the NFL where teams have 52 man rosters. This is 32 wrestlers who have been on TV and doing international shows for the last decade. They're a lot more popular and promoters will spend the money to bring them in and sacrifice other less popular talents pushing them out of a job. Remember when TNA started pulling in more than 300,000 viewers again and WWE had to up their product value because people were switching over. You'll start getting your bad WWE products again. John Cena vs Randy Orton 567 for the WWE Championship coming your way if TNA dies.

I get it. The Monday Night Wars were two billionaires throwing punches hoping to knock each other out. The fans were conditioned to hate the competition and that still carries on today. You're either a WWE fan, a TNA fan, a ROH fan or some other promotion. There's people who believe that you can't enjoy one promotion more than the others without wishing death on them. People don't realize that the more wrestling there is the better it is. Competition forces all the promotions to step up their game. Despite Vince McMahon saying "I don't see TNA as competition, they're a wrestling promotion. We're sports entertainment," the fact that he stayed on that topic for almost ten minutes trying to convince people shows that they are competition. They may not address TNA or watch every week but they know when Samoa Joe or AJ Styles is a free agent, you make an offer.

If you were a real wrestling fan you would realize that any promotion going out of business is a sad day. But, despite reports of their demise don't expect TNA to fall over dead anytime soon. For 13 years they've survived constant rumors of death. The grave for TNA has been dug since day 1 and since day 2 people have been trying to push them in.

At this point, it's just putting nails into an empty coffin.

You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet
Follow @OriginalKingD