Source: The Ross Report
On yesterday’s latest episode of The Ross Report podcast Hall of Famer Jim Ross offered additional thoughts on his comments from last week regarding the basic Orlando audience for TNA’s iMPACT Wrestling. Highlights of the comments from Ross are noted below and I encourage you to download and listen to the entire podcast by clicking here. Enjoy!
Major creative changes are needed immediately. That’s my opinion. There’s too much “WWE Light” going on and an apparent lack of thought being devoted to the logic of many of the iMPACT storylines. In my opinion. I’m not blaming their talents, but upper management in iMPACT has to realize that what they arw doing isn’t resonating with their fan base and certainly isn’t drawing any new fans to the show – or at least hat’s my observation.
Plus, to save cash taping in front of the same basic group of fans is the proverbial kiss of death. You can’t make it good. The same fans come every time you open the doors to tape – they seen it all they’ve experienced it all and they don’t care. It’s just a place to go. It’s almost habitual. These fans are not emotionally invested in the product as their actions and lack of passion at TNA’s last pay-per-view would indicate. That’s what I heard, that’s what I saw! I felt bad for some of the wrestlers who actually had some damn good matches – they got little to no response from the Orlando soundstage crowd. I felt bad for the guys. Busting their ass, physical, bleeding, doing all they could to get an emotion out of the crowd and nothing. The crowd gave them nothing.
It would seem that impact nearing a crossroads in as much as their TV deal with Spike ends this fall. And that’s just a few months away and the company has zero momentum and therefore zero leverage in their negotiations. That’s not good. When one gets themselves into a “We’ll take what you offer” scenario, then it’s a dangerous position to be in. Now don’t get me wrong. I am not an iMPACT hater by any means and I want them to succeed and prosper. But until TNA decides to change their creative approach, it’s almost as if they’ve given up. And they know that their end is near and inevitable. And boy that last statement, I hope that I am dead wrong with that assumption.
And here you have it, again… You can sence that Jim honestly wants them to succeed.
OK, you can ignore for a while what fans are constantly saying. But when you have one of the greatest minds in wrestling commenting week after week on the same topic – guys at TNA should definitely listen! He couldn’t say it better – I feel sorry for those wrestlers, they deserve better!
It would be great if Jim Ross could be persuaded to become a paid consultant for the company. I think they need a guy like him working through the backstage structure of the company immediately.
That would be really great, but I think this is not likely to happen. By the way, they already had Bischoff, I thought he would make a difference… Is there someone elso who would be a big contribution to the bettermet of TNA in your opinion? Some years ago many people were talking about Paul Heyman, but he is now with WWE if I’m correct.
Yes, Heyman is in WWE and I don’t think he has a desire to go anywhere. I think he would have been the real game changer, but they missed their opportunity with him. Honestly, I think that Bischoff could be the change agent if he’s given the right type of power. During his recent stint with the company, he was executing producing the television show – not working contracts, managing creative, or anything like he used to do in WCW. I would give Bischoff the keys and let him run with it – the guys “gets” wrestling TV shows. And then have Jeff Jarrett come in and run the back office and I think you’ll have a good promotion. I just think Dixie – no matter how much I like her (I’m certainly not a hater) – is in over her head.
Yes, I also think that Bischoff would be the game changer, and I have stated this many times. But as you said, they didn’t give him that power. Maybe because the real big change demands real big money which they don’t have…
But the thing is that they have access to more money than even Vince has – they have Dixie’s Dad who is a billionaire that could buy and sell the entire WWE several times over. For Dixie, it’s a matter of figuring out how to unlock that money and have it poured into her company.
I would take JR’s opinion on TNA more seriously, but he said last time that TNA needs to focus on or hire new talent. Anyone who watches TNA knows that’s what they have been doing. That proves that he’s not watching the product. It puts him in the same category as the rest of the TNA haters. As far as the Impact Zone goes, everyone knows the crowds there usually suck. That’s why they are going to NY and PA this summer. TNA just changed their creative team not to long ago. So JR is basically advising them to do the same thing that they’ve done in the past. They brought in Bischoff when Russo was there. Then they brought in Pichard. That didn’t work out.
I probably would have stayed away from Prichard. I didn’t think that he had the right “it” to make anything significant happen. Ross claims to not be an iMPACT hater, though you make a good point that he’s been making suggestions that have already been in motion for the last few months. I think one thing that Ross can’t get off of his mind is the fact that EY is the champion and that EY’s story mirrors that of Daniel Bryan so closely (in reality, Bryan’s story is the one that is mimicking EY’s, but everyone – even Ross – thinks that WWE did that storyline first).
Being that I am not a regular TNA viewer, I’m sincerely curious to understand how Daniel Bryan’s run to the top is mimicking Eric Young’s.
Without going into too much detail, everything about EY’s current program has roots that date back years. His push to be the best, but not being taken seriously, being stuck in different storyline ruts that – once broken – make the smarks happy, the look, etc.
I didn’t hear JR’s commentary from this week, but even if JR does not watch the TNA product full-time, it doesn’t dismiss his overall belief that TNA is in dire need of help. That doesn’t put JR in the same category as the “haters.” And while I didn’t listen to JR’s commentary from this week, I did listen to him discuss TNA, last Friday, on the PWTorch Livecast, in which he stated that any real fan of wrestling is rooting for TNA, and all promotions, to succeed because having them around improves the long-term health of the industry.
On the same PWTorch Livecast, Ross didn’t talk about TNA needing new talent. He said they need to change up the creative process (which they have done repeatedly already) in a big way. He’s right… whether it was Russo, Prichard, Lagana or Russo again now (who is believed to be contributing as a consultant), the long-term vision of TNA is just not working. It doesn’t take a hater to point that out. JR is certainly not one of them, and neither am I.
On the topic of haters – I don’t think people who offer constructive criticism of TNA are haters. I do, however, think that people who condemn TNA for doing things that WWE regularly does are brainwashed hypocrites. For example, people lambaste TNA for not paying hospital costs for their injured performers. Well, WWE doesn’t do that either because both companies don’t actually “employ” their talents – they’re all independent contractors.
Similarly, Colt Cabana recently mentioned on his podcast that WWE hasn’t paid him a dime for being used in their WWE Encyclopedia. If that was Jesse Neal complaining, every “newz” website would report it like it meant something. And on the same topic – almost no one outside of the indy-focused and TNA-focused sites reported that TJ Perkins/Manik openly admitted that he gets paid whether he works or not and that he’s never missed a paycheck, had a paycheck bounce, or had any issues with his compensation. He even noted that he makes enough money where he can spend it on silly things like buying high-end, expensive sneakers that he doesn’t even need.
No coverage of that information even though it deals with the same topic (WWE paying their people vs. TNA paying their people).