WWE ‘wants to kill off AEW by the end of current TV deal’

[garynysmon]

5 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

I think losing Ace Austin and Josh are examples of people who were perfectly happy in their spots who didn’t want to work in association/for WWE. 
 

TNA hasn’t been my jam since AJ left really, but I’d still dip in and out and follow results. But I think Anthem have done a pretty bad job of making them viable and have no interest in a company that feels like another WWE outlet, even if they don’t own them. Just makes me sad how it scrapped its way through all this time and now WWE are trying to eradicate any goodwill it had.

Well, I’m not too sure that Josh Alexander and/or Ace Austin would be opposed to working for WWE really. It was simply that the whole vibe of the company changed.

My point is that TNA feels much more transactional now than it did under Scott D’amore, in that some (not all) top talents would sign new deals with Impact even knowing they could almost certainly get much better paying offers with WWE/AEW.

I accept that the ‘friends and family’ style of running a locker room has its limits, but it worked for me and did provide some hope.

I don’t get that feeling any more. It feels explicitly like a place to work and get noticed by the big two and that ‘us against the world’ vibe has largely gone away.

From a business standpoint you can’t knock Anthem for going down this road. They’re filling up half decent arenas now, whereas getting 1,000 people into any show was considered a big win in the Impact days.

But my overriding feeling is that its a very soft fanbase now. All they need is to lose Joe Hendry (inevitable), Santana (very likely) and the Hardys over the coming months and I don’t think there’s much left.

I almost feel bad being so down on TNA given there’s a lot of talent still there that I like, but its hard to hitch your wagon to something that is essentially NXT mark II and that almost everyone you like will leave at click of WWE’s fingers.

 

[DavidB6937]

22 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

He says as he’s advertised for this weeks NXT. He’s had 20 matches in TNA, 8 in WWE this year. Those are matches not in ring segments but that’s almost 50%. I think that’s pretty high.

As someone who pretty much just watches NXT and TNA at the moment (Raw and Smackdown are far too long and shit), I'm commenting as a viewer rather than just relying on stats to try and make it look like the big bad WWE have shat all over TNA and stripped them of everything.

They simply haven't.

If someone's calling Joe Hendry "basically an NXT wrestler" at this point, that's not the way they've treated him on TV.

His last involvement was appearing out of a fridge and then having a match with Charlie Dempsey.

If they wanted to make him an NXT guy, they've done a pretty rubbish job so far.

[Devon Malcolm]

4 hours ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

He says as he’s advertised for this weeks NXT. He’s had 20 matches in TNA, 8 in WWE this year. Those are matches not in ring segments but that’s almost 50%.

Some Steiner Maths here!

[LaGoosh]

And they spell disaster for TNA at Sacrifice.