Impact wrestling thread - It's a Don West tribute thread now!

[IANdrewDiceClay]

The reason they keep moving timeslots is to get better ratings, though. They keep moving time slots because they want to do better than what they are doing. It never works. The thing with TNA at the minute is, they have absolutely no momentum or buzz about them. Cutting the pay-per-views might be the reason for that. The audience these days are conditioned to see a build to something. And with 4 pay-per-views a year (and only one left in the next 6 months), there isn't anything to look forward to. I get nobody buys their pay-per-views, but the build up demands twists and turns, and you just dont get that when you have 4 PPVs a year.In other news, did about here about the RVD thing? He was supposed to return to TNA. They'd agreed a deal with him, and then Bruce Prichard stopped answering his phone calls and WWF snapped him up. Bruce Prichard has to be the shittest talent relations bloke in the world.

Edited June 20, 2013 by IANdrewDiceClay

[pgi86]

The Big O (yes, the guy from Zack Ryder's show) will be on Gut Check tonight. No word on his opponent.

[King Pitcos]

Do TNA make a loss on every pay-per-view? I can't think of why they cut them otherwise. The four aren't doing much better buywise than the twelve, are they?

[IANdrewDiceClay]

They lost a shit load on pay-per-view over the years. Its ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands for each PPV. TNA's owners have to split to price of a usual 6,000 buy between them and the pay-per-view company, among other expenses. And they dont have any significant merch or any gate from the Impact Zone. And zero international buys. They had to drop them eventually, but most of us on here just assumed they'd knock it down to 8 or 6. 8 would have been a good number. But 4 PPVs a year just murders the weekly TV build. It was fine in the 80s and early 90s when the focus was house show business. But not now. Doing some TV specials would be better than what they currently are.

Edited June 20, 2013 by IANdrewDiceClay

[robbo9292]

The reason they keep moving timeslots is to get better ratings, though. They keep moving time slots because they want to do better than what they are doing. It never works. The thing with TNA at the minute is, they have absolutely no momentum or buzz about them. Cutting the pay-per-views might be the reason for that. The audience these days are conditioned to see a build to something. And with 4 pay-per-views a year (and only one left in the next 6 months), there isn't anything to look forward to. I get nobody buys their pay-per-views, but the build up demands twists and turns, and you just dont get that when you have 4 PPVs a year.In other news, did about here about the RVD thing? He was supposed to return to TNA. They'd agreed a deal with him, and then Bruce Prichard stopped answering his phone calls and WWF snapped him up. Bruce Prichard has to be the shittest talent relations bloke in the world.

Damn those Pandas

They lost a shit load on pay-per-view over the years. Its ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands for each PPV. TNA's owners have to split to price of a usual 6,000 buy between them and the pay-per-view company, among other expenses. And they dont have any significant merch or any gate from the Impact Zone. And zero international buys. They had to drop them eventually, but most of us on here just assumed they'd knock it down to 8 or 6. 8 would have been a good number. But 4 PPVs a year just murders the weekly TV build. It was fine in the 80s and early 90s when the focus was house show business. But not now. Doing some TV specials would be better than what they currently are.

Well they do have the PPV specials which are to be purchased in America (yet we still get for free on tv) but nothings been seen of them in a while, i guess mainly as they filmed them in advance and didn't think about that

[Vamp]

Those specials aren't there for their storylines though, they're just random things. They don't help give them direction.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

That women's pay-per-view was the weirdest thing ever. They could barely get anyone to work it. Awesome Kong, Amber O'Neil, Daffney, Traci Brooks and Angelina Love told them where to go. I've never known a promotion to be in a position where they are scrambling at the last minute for women wrestlers. What an odd situation.

[Sexy Dad]

Didn't Daffney still go along to watch it though? Peculiar.Yeah I'm kind of wishing they'd kept more real pay per views now. This slow build towards matches that nobody really cares about is making for really boring TV.

[Captain Wolf]

As much as I'd like Steiner, and wouldn't argue with Double J for the MEM, him coming up in the other thread has got me dreaming about Monty Brown coming back. I don't even necessarily want to see him wrestle matches, just do The Pounce while the commentators go mental.

[Loki]

4 is too few. 12 was too much, but 4 is too few. Why 4? Bizarre. One every 2 months would be perfect for me, with the odd tv special.Ian, the other reason they're no real buzz is that mid to upper part of the roster has been the same for about 3 years now. They've rotated in some Knockouts, some x div guys, made some tag teams, but everyone else has wrestled each other a million times.They need some new blood, and need to let Angle, Hardy and some others go back to WWE.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Its not every two months, though. January, March, June and now October and then January again. Its 4 months between Slammiversary and Bound For Glory. There's long periods of nothing happening because there isn't anything to build to. How many times has Impact ended with a beat down and the heels standing tall? Or Brooke standing there with a look of confusion. TNA's PPVs for the longest time were the most redundant things, because there was usually a terrible main event and daft finishes cluttering up the undercard. But in 2012, most of the events delivered. Between Storm, Roode, Aries and Hardy the main events were usually great and the X Division and tag matches were pretty good as well. Last years formula was matches and angles leading to bouts on PPV that you knew were going to be good.Wrestling really needs those three hour PPVs. Even if its 6 a year. Because WWE dominates so much of the market share, the fans today are conditioned to the fast paced format that wrestling has had since 1995. Henry started a feud with Cena the other day. The fans now know we'll see it next month. If that happened with only 4 PPVs, the momentum would probably be gone by the time October roles around.But its either that or TNA not being on the road. They cant afford to do both. If these events were profitable, TNA would still be doing 12 a year.

Edited June 20, 2013 by IANdrewDiceClay

[garynysmon]

Do we see Matt Striker turning up in TNA anytime soon then? Just been released by WWE.

Its not every two months, though. January, March, June and now October and then January again. Its 4 months between Slammiversary and Bound For Glory. There's long periods of nothing happening because there isn't anything to build to. How many times has Impact ended with a beat down and the heels standing tall? Or Brooke standing there with a look of confusion. TNA's PPVs for the longest time were the most redundant things, because there was usually a terrible main event and daft finishes cluttering up the undercard. But in 2012, most of the events delivered. Between Storm, Roode, Aries and Hardy the main events were usually great and the X Division and tag matches were pretty good as well. Last years formula was matches and angles leading to bouts on PPV that you knew were going to be good.Wrestling really needs those three hour PPVs. Even if its 6 a year. Because WWE dominates so much of the market share, the fans today are conditioned to the fast paced format that wrestling has had since 1995. Henry started a feud with Cena the other day. The fans now know we'll see it next month. If that happened with only 4 PPVs, the momentum would probably be gone by the time October roles around.But its either that or TNA not being on the road. They cant afford to do both. If these events were profitable, TNA would still be doing 12 a year.

Is that necessarily a bad thing though? Yes, wrestling has changed but not for the better in many cases. When WWF had 4 (and later 5) PPV's a year, the matches were generally much hotter than they are today.I think it's more to do with TNA's stale roster than any issues to do with the number of PPV's. With only 2 real hours of TV a week, it's not feasible to have a huge roster. But all that means is the same faces every week, you can't really chop and change. Edited June 20, 2013 by garynysmon

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Is that necessarily a bad thing though? Yes, wrestling has changed but not for the better in many cases. When WWF had 4 (and later 5) PPV's a year, the matches were generally much hotter than they are today.

That isn't true at all. When WWF was last doing 4 or 5 pay-per-views a year they were going to 2000 seat buildings and you could see the basketball nets in the background. The crowds weren't hot back then at all. Crowds are much more excited about the live experience than they were back in the pre-Monday Night Wars era.I dont see the logic in that at all. If you have a stale roster (which they do and have had since about 2011), having 4 PPVs a year makes it much worse, because you have to rely on them to do something on TV every week with no supercard in sight to have any blow off. Last year they had the same old faces they've always had but they rebooted a lot of them. Samoa Joe was back on form, they hadn't murdered James Storms career yet, AJ Styles and Kurt Angle formed a team which freshened up the top of the card, Aries got elevated. How good would Roode's title reign have been last year if it was filled with TV matches against Mr Kennedy and Crimson while he feuded with Sting for 4 months waiting for the next PPV. Edited June 21, 2013 by IANdrewDiceClay

[King Pitcos]

Is that necessarily a bad thing though? Yes, wrestling has changed but not for the better in many cases. When WWF had 4 (and later 5) PPV's a year, the matches were generally much hotter than they are today.

Ian's already pointed out one of the problems with that, but the other is that in the days when WWF were doing 4 or 5 PPVs a year, the best you were getting on telly was IRS vs Jim Powers or something. PPVs having two proper wrestlers fighting each other seemed like a big deal because you rarely/never saw that on TV. PPVs were massively different from the weekly shows then. Nowadays, apart from the main event (and sometimes even including it), you're seeing exactly the same matches on PPV as you've seen on Raw and Smackdown for the last year. And the PPV matches last the same amount of time and have the same amount of build-up (none) as the TV ones. Reducing PPVs but still doing fifty-odd weeks of TV where your main stars wrestle each other doesn't help. The point of PPV is to make it seem bigger than the weekly TV shows. Reducing the number of PPVs can do that, but if you've still had to do all your main matchups to fill TV time, it won't.

[FLips]

I absolutely detest the slow game TNA plays with storylines. All the way through this episode they were hyping the Main Event Mafia, and it was obvious that Sting and Angle would be two members. All they needed to do was have a surprise 3rd come out, even if it was Magnus or Joe or even Chavo, but nope. Angle comes out and that's that. They hyped the appearance of someone we already knew was a member as if it was going to be a surprise. Shit.They did the same with Aces and 8s for the most part, just slowly coasted revealing nobody or nobodies.