I purposely did not write a column last week because I wanted to spend more time doing a little bit of research on my topic (absolutely none of which I present in this particular article, so eat it). The topic that I have to talk about this week is the internet wrestling scene’s coverage of Total Nonstop Action. This may be a little bit different than what you’re used to with my remarks about the internet wrestling scene and how I like or dislike this group of people.
What bothers me the most about the internet reporters’ coverage of the TNA promotion is that they are covering it as though it is WWE. They look at TNA’s pay-per-view main events and immediately compare them to a WrestleMania or SummerSlam main event. Well that’s just dumb, folks. The only promotion that you could compare main events with is maybe the old ECW or WCW in the early 1990’s. That’s about as far as you’re going to get if you want to compare TNA with another wrestling promotion that competed on a national level.
The problem, as I see it, are that there are three different types of internet wrestling reporter types. You have the young kid who is just so damn excited that he’s on a wrestling website that he doesn’t know what to do with himself (we’ve affectionately called these people the “kiddies” in years past). This is a kid who has grown up on a steady diet of World Wrestling Entertainment with the occasional mixture of Vince Russo “Crash TV” during the final years of WCW. This is the kid who argues with his friends over the validity of the term “sports entertainment” and – most importantly – this is the kid who spends a bunch of his money (or his parents’ money) on buying WWE merchandise.
Unfortunately, this kid doesn’t have the wherewithal to make a relevant comment about the business side of TNA, but he goes ahead and does so anyway. This kid doesn’t have the mental acumen to understand the difference between holding a pay-per-view show once a month as compared to 15 or 18 times per year. Frankly, this kid is a fan and he’s online because who isn’t online these days? And you know what? Good for this kid! I don’t hate on these younger folks – hell, we were all younger folks at one point, right?
The second type of internet wrestling reporter is the over-intellectual – think the exact opposite of the kiddie. This is the guy (doesn’t matter the age) that looks at a match and completely destroys it because it’s not Steamboat vs. Savage from two decades ago. This is also the guy that says Sting can’t hold a light to any of the WWE main eventer’s asses because he’s old and they’re mostly young. This guy criticizes the decision to keep Impact on Thursday nights because he believes real competition only exists in a head-to-head format (he learned this from WCW’s Nitro).
You may find this guy sitting a WWE live event and completely bashing it because Rey Mysterio isn’t in the main event against Lance Storm every night. He doesn’t like the idea of TNA having Kurt Angle work in a match against Christian because it’s too “WWE-ish” and he thinks that the only good TNA match is AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe since they are both non-WWE guys.
I don’t hate on this guy either. This is the guy that I want to hire for my websites because he eventually pushes out a gem! But they are few and far in-between…
Then you have the third guy (and, by the way, I am guilty on being the second type of person and the third type of person on certain occasions). This is the guy who is in it for the money. The internet wrestling scene is crowded with bozos like this guy. He’s the one who posts the “common sense news” at 652 websites and then puts two or three links in his posts to his website. Usually, these links have to deal with half-naked women or someone being fired (* NO LIE *). And, about 99.5% of the time, this guy is full of shit.
What I can’t stand about this guy is that he will go out there and say something like “Sting to Lose TNA Title TONIGHT!” in his headline, only to have his “news report” be that Sting is wrestling against someone on Impact tonight. What a stupid ass…
On a rare occasion, you may encounter a 4th type of person though they are not too common any more. This is the guy who is a wrestling fan but has some smarts to him. This is the guy who can look at a wrestling match as a fan and then use some of his real world knowledge to assess what little (or vast) knowledge he has of a promotion. These are the true diamonds on the internet and I’m glad that we have a few of them right here at TBLWrestling.com. You won’t find this 4th type of person looking at a TNA pay-per-view and comparing it to a WWE event. They know that would be ridiculous. You also won’t find this person overly criticizing every last aspect of TNA because he knows that this is still a growing company.
You may, however, find this guy actually enjoying an Impact show because it is so different than a WWE show. You may find this guy ordering a TNA pay-per-view because it offers something new for him to watch. Hell, you may find this guy writing on a website about how the TNA product IS different than the WWE product!
But when the dust settles and you’re going on your daily or weekly browse through the internet think to yourself – which type of guy are you? Do you only like the big flashy WWE show? Do you only care about elements of the business that you deem to be worthwhile to cover? Or are you someone out there who is just interested in bringing hits to your website so your Google Ads get displayed more? Or…are you the rare 4th person who is online as a wrestling fan – no matter what anyone thinks?
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