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Never mind wrestling companies, many fewer companies in general last as long as TNA/impact have.
 

Something I noticed as well when I was going to Scottish shows was how over TNA guys would be compared to wwe guys. They went mental for your James Storms etc as they had been watching them on free tv for years. Having sky sports to watch wwe was/is a proper luxury in a lotta places across Scotland and these guys where who got a lotta young people into wrestling. This was also a prevailing feature of many of the podcasts I did with up and comers up here, TNA was what they watched. TNA has left a lotta lol at them moments, but they have also done a lotta good and given happiness to people who don’t care about the behind the scenes and just seen wrestling and aspired to it  

Edited by Louch
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I'll always have a soft spot for Impact. The number of times I was able to go and watch the TV tapings at Universal when I was on holiday and see huge names there.. it was just ridiculous really. Yeah I had to watch Eric Young wrestle three times once but I've also seen guys like Nash, Flair, Foley etc and others like AJ Styles, Samoa Joe.. and the company always knew how to treat the UK fans and worked really well with Challenge to make sure we felt on the same level as the US fans. That rarely happens so I really appreciated that. Borash was a real asset to them in many ways.

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38 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

I'll always have a soft spot for Impact. The number of times I was able to go and watch the TV tapings at Universal when I was on holiday and see huge names there.. it was just ridiculous really. Yeah I had to watch Eric Young wrestle three times once but I've also seen guys like Nash, Flair, Foley etc and others like AJ Styles, Samoa Joe.. and the company always knew how to treat the UK fans and worked really well with Challenge to make sure we felt on the same level as the US fans. That rarely happens so I really appreciated that. Borash was a real asset to them in many ways.

If you think about the talent that come through TNA in the period say 2005-2015 as opposed to the talent that came through WWE developmental, I'd argue TNA was the better proving ground that produced more top level talent.  TNA shows over here in the UK were generally more interesting than WWE in that period.

TNA was the main thing I watched for many years, and always enjoyed it.  Unlike most people, I love the Hogan/Monday wars era - I loved seeing The Band, and Hogan v Sting, and all the craziness.  It was the right blend of new, young talent, old grizled vets, general insanity, randomness.  Nash in the X Division was another highlight, it's rare for wrestling to be genuinely funny but that was.

TNA was a lot like WCW - nowhere near as polished as WWF/E but had that thing where it genuinely felt like part of a larger wrestling world - something AEW has inherited and taken to the next level.  But AEW isn't really like TNA much in other respects, the ring style is so different.

It may be a very different company now, but Slammiversary was a nice nod to its history, and the TNA brand that preceded Impact.  And I think it showed that the company still has value - if there was another money mark out there who wanted to get into wrestling, Impact is still a good purchase.

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13 minutes ago, Loki said:

TNA was a lot like WCW

This might as well be the title of the book. The shows were often enjoyable and crammed full of good matches from a "something for everyone" point of view, but over the course of its lifespan you've had to take the rough with the smooth - nonsensical booking, stories that went nowhere, unnecessary D list celebritity involvements, turns that made no sense, stupid gimmick matches, slapdash office management, schizophrenic identity. It was like WCW rebooted itself (several times over) and carried on.

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I just looked up the results from one of the shows I remember going to, as sometimes it feels like one of those mental hallucinations or something.

https://www.wrestleview.com/tna-wrestling-results/tna-impact-results/23456-impact-results-5-12-11/

The talent on that show:

Commentary: Mike Tenay and Taz

Eric Bischoff, Hulk Hogan, Jeff Jarrett, Karen Jarrett, Kurt Angle, Mickie James, Ms. Tessmacher, Madison Rayne, Tara, Ric Flair, Tommy Dreamer, AJ Styles, Sting, Beer Money, Matt Hardy, Chris Harris, Sangriento (Amazing Red apparently), Suicide, Mick Foley, Chyna, Mr Anderson, Abyss, Crimson, Samoa Joe, Douglas Williams, Magnus, Orlando Jordan, Anarquia, Eric Young , Shannon Moore, Jesse Neal, Robbie E, Kazarian, Daniels, Hernandez, Matt Morgan, Scott Steiner, Devon, The Pope, Bully Ray, Gunner.

Granted it was a show before a PPV I think but couldn't really ask for much more, especially considering it was free.

And yeah, definitely the WCW type comparisons are fair. I remember going to late WCW shows and then WWA ones and you'd have that sort of mix too, although obviously that was pretty much dying a death at that point. And to be fair, Jeremy Borash was there through all of it..

Managed to dig out some shitty old photos..

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Weird how for some of them it felt like the end of their career and yet plenty of them are still going in various companies.

Edited by DavidB6937
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2 hours ago, Loki said:

TNA was the main thing I watched for many years, and always enjoyed it.  Unlike most people, I love the Hogan/Monday wars era - I loved seeing The Band, and Hogan v Sting, and all the craziness.  It was the right blend of new, young talent, old grizled vets, general insanity, randomness.  Nash in the X Division was another highlight, it's rare for wrestling to be genuinely funny but that was.

Agreed. I didn't really start watching TNA properly until 2007, so didn't feel the same outrage that some did when they came in and undid some of the things that TNA fans loved the most.

2010 was pretty rough but the Hogan/Bischoff era was pretty good in 2011 and I'd count 2012/13 as my favourite TNA period. Slammiversary 2012 ranks within my top 5 Wrestling PPVs of all time, easily.

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Yeah whatever era/years had the blue ropes and Impact on the road was brilliant. Impact on Challenge at the time was the last I consistently watched a wrestling show on a fixed TV schedule. I miss that way more than anything AEW's done. 

Impact 2005-2012/13 still kicks the dirt out of any era of ECW or NXT. Just a gloriously mutant menagerie of sports entertainment's best and worst. 

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I got into TNA probably around when they started doing the monthly PPVs. We were only a couple of years or so removed from WCW folding so you had that mix of ex-WWE stars and ex-WCW stars where they won’t so close to state pension age. The mix of “established” guys like Jeff Jarrett, Raven with guys who hadn’t had much exposure outside of ROH and the Indies (Joe, Daniels, Styles, AMW, Monty Brown, etc) meant it had a little of its own identity as an alternative rather than “Let’s sign up every recently-released WWE star we can!” it morphed into. There was a solid, steady roster rather than week after week of, “We have a big surprise! It’s yet another former WWE mid-carder we’re hyping as a massive signing!” It just went from, let’s build a show with the guys we have to, let’s just keep pushing them down a step every time we sign someone like Al Snow.

Edited by Your Fight Site
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I really got into TNA in 2005/06. I'd read about Eric Young's paranoid gimmick, thought it sounded funny and then got hooked on the rest of the show. There was definitely some shite there but it did feel like it was going somewhere. You had the ex-WWE guys but it felt like the spotlight was on the younger guys who were doing stuff you couldn't see in WWE at the time, and the stories were generally logical.

Then Russo came back and killed my interest within the first week. I went from watching it every week to only watching it if there was nothing else on. I think the most entertaining thing was that Jim Cornette was the on air authority figure and must've been going crazy having to sell all the overbooked, non-sensical bollocks. I'm pretty sure I quit completely during the Aces and Eights storyline, which was fine at first, but then somehow became a vehicle for Brooke Hogan.

In general, TNA must be the only major wrestling promotion to bury itself at any opportunity. It was mad how many times they'd sign a big star and just.....reboot the company and build it all around them. Until, of course, a bigger star was available and they'd just repeat the same process. It made storylines impossible to follow.

I started watching again during the AEW crossover and I am enjoying it. It's just a simple, straight forward wrestling promotion. I do feel a bit bad for Scott D'Amore. He's done a great job both times he's been booking and it's a shame he got pushed out when they had the Spike deal.

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1 hour ago, unfitfinlay said:

started watching again during the AEW crossover and I am enjoying it. It's just a simple, straight forward wrestling promotion. I do feel a bit bad for Scott D'Amore. He's done a great job both times he's been booking and it's a shame he got pushed out when they had the Spike deal.

In a way Scott D'amore's perfect for the modern day Impact. He was closely enough involved that he still has the contacts to bring people in,  yet he wasn't prominent enough to be accused of carrying out some of the past crimes.

I'm probably wrong (and this is wrestling after all), but I can't recall many people hating his guts or being scathing about him tbh.

Edited by garynysmon
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The Wrestling Channel got me into Impact, and I kept watching regularly until probably 2010ish. There was some really great stuff in those years. You had Styles, Joe, Daniels, LAX and co giving the great matches, WWE signings like Christian and Angle that felt genuinely big, and Paparazzi Productions for the true star power.

There was a period in 05/06 where their monthly PPVs were consistently far better than WWE’s. Within that same time frame there was a summer where they didn’t have a TV deal in the US (I want to say between Fox Sports Net and Spike TV?) and they put Impact on their website every week. The episodes were an hour long and they were brilliant, week to week probably the best they’ve ever been during the time I watched.

Edited by HarmonicGenerator
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There was a guy who'd sell pirated VHS tapes of the weekly PPVs out of the basement of that shop on Church Street that sells the New Rock boots. We're pretty sure he once tried to sell some copies of our backyard nonsense that our mates gave to him under the most unimaginative title of "Backyard Raw", but were never going to pay him a tenner to find out. We also got some other tapes from there. A tape of Hiroyosho Tenzan in 6 man tags with Johnny Ace & Rob Van Dam, a tape of Hollywood Blondes PPV matches which was at least third hand as I only managed to watch it about 3 times before the quality degraded to the point that it was unwatchable, A couple of Starrcades, GAB 1989.

Anyway, I digress. The one we picked up was a best of the X-Division tape, which featured the tournament to crown the first X-Division champ, and some other great matches as well featuring the Flying Elvises and Triple X. It was great stuff, and when the weekly shows started turning up on the Wrestling Channel I became a regular viewer. Likewise when I turned up on Virgin One and Challenge. I remember watching an episode with my then housemate, who wasn't a fan of wrestling, and we ran a clock on how much wrestling an episode of Impact actually contained, and I don't think it was even 20 minutes. 

I was a very regular viewer during their time on Challenge. Went to a couple of their Manchester shows, which is how I met @air_raid. The first one we attended featured the (then) babyface British Invasion getting booed against heels Beer Money managed by Ric Flair. Doug Williams cut a really angry promo before the match and they actually decided to switch the heel/face roles for the night. The whole city then rang out with cried of "Beer!" "Money!" for the rest of the night. 

The next one we attended was Hogan's last match. They taped Roode Vs Samoa Joe for an episode of Xplosion. 

We also attended the Impact taping with the Garrett Bischoff heel turn, and The Dirty Heels (Austin Aries & Bobby Roode) winning the tag titles from Chavo Guerrero & Herbandez. The atmosphere was electric, and Roode/Aries were super over, to the point that they took the roof off of the arena after the 3 count. I remember how horribly it was edited for the broadcast, the camera angles and crowd sweetening they used killed any kind of semblance of the real atmosphere. My other lasting memory of the night was that it was the episode where Brooke Hogan convinces Hulk to give Bully Ray the next title shot at Lockdown, to which my reaction was "I guess we know who the leader of the Aces & Eights is now." I have a feeling we also had to sit through a 6-Man involving Mike Knox (aka Knux), Gallows, and D'Von against somebody. I gave up on them for a while after that.

I did enjoy what I've watched over the last few years but for some reason after seeing Josh Alexander's Road back to the title I feel like I'm just burned out on wrestling at the moment. I've not watched Impact or AEW for about a month now? If not longer. 

 

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We were spoiled by the tours. I went to 3/4 of the shows in 2008 and they were brilliant. The two nights in Liverpool were fantastic and the third in Coventry was very good albeit most matches were re-treads from the first two nights, although there was a cracking and unique Machine Guns vs Beer Money opener. If I'd known in advance how good the shows were going to be, I'd have booked the Monday off and gone to London on the Sunday night too.

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I first got into wrestling religiously around summer 2000 - so WCW and ECW were still around but both of them were on their arse and WWE absolutely nailed it that year. By the time TNA became a thing I was fully invested in constantly going online to find out the latest insider newz, trying to impress people on message boards about workrate and other nonsensical bollocks (so nothing's changed!). TNA coming into play during 2002 was fantastic in terms of opening your eyes up to another promotion and new performers, or performers you'd heard of previously that had found a home there. With the new performers, it opened your eyes up to where some of those people had come from in terms of other promotions like ROH and the like. 

Looking back it was actually a great time to be a fan - even with WCW and ECW closing, the madness of the ins and out of WWE and effectively being forced to look at other promotions you otherwise wouldn't have batted an eyelid over and being exposed to new stars etc - just as people were getting things like better internet connections too making everything more easily accessible - it was an interesting, newsworthy time if nothing else. There seemed to be pertinent news items taking place every day, particularly with TNA and constant speculation surrounding it. 

 

The quality of the wrestling and the creative across the landscape at that point will always be debatable, but in those days at least you had plenty to crow about. 

Edited by Fatty Facesitter
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