Nash & Savage To TNA ??

[Guest Donners]

So you rate matches on how the crowd reacts? 

 

That's certainly a critical aspect, yes. If the live crowd is really hot for a match, I get drawn in as well. Balls Mahoney vs. Masato Tanaka at Hardcore Heaven 2000 is one of my all-time favourite matches, but in terms of actual wrestling it really isn't anything special. The crowd reaction made it that, making each near fall more believable and each move more painful.

 

 

I never said anything about the main event being "all about the wrestling". I simply stated the main event should be the "most important" part of the show. Thus, if guys like Nash and Savage come in and don't wrestle every week or dog it in the ring it makes the whole main event picture "less important" as they would be insulting the fans intelligence with their horrible performance.

 

Just recently we've had El Leon, ICP, Erik Watts, Dustin Rhodes and Don Callis in the main events. They didn't put on particularly good matches, but I didn't find that affected my attitude to main events of following shows. Hell, it's preferable to last year when they just brought in randoms like Dusty Rhodes, Rock & Roll Express, Legend and co to main event. For what it's worth, that was actually TNA's best period for buy-rates, IIRC...

 

 

Keep in mind that is a bad comparison, especially since the WWE has be weary as of late about the Bradshaw push too. Actually in TNA, what the crowd thinks really isn't all that important. What really matters is that MORE people are buying their shows, and honestly I doubt that Nash or Savage(neither of which were significant draws in their career) would really boost that, and the facts that they didn't help WCW that much in the ratings department(post nWo) futher proves my point.

 

Indeed, but WCW was a heck of a lot bigger than TNA. I daresay their relative impact on buys could be much higher in such a small promotion.

 

 

Or if they just tried and established their fanbase on workrate and being better than the WWE at "wrestling" then they will be fine.

 

In a perfect world, maybe. This isn't a perfect world. I think they have been trying for this in the last few months more than they ever have, but it's got them nowhere. It's probably a bad time to be doing that when Benoit and Eddie are the champions, but TNA's X division has been showing up WWE's cruiserweights for years. Again, that just hasn't been enough to ensure a big buy-rate. Besides, I'd much rather see Vader or Sting than Matt Stryker in TNA any day, and I know I'm not alone.

 

 

If you disagree with fans because of ringwork then look at ROH. You won't find bigger fanboys anywhere, hell the ROH fans are the ones that keep the organization alive.

 

Yeah, but they drew - what, 450 people to their last show? RoH has smaller costs and can afford to appeal to a niche audience, but TNA needs to appeal to a much wider group. Also, RoH depends mostly on video revenue, where people can buy it based on word-of-mouth and reviews that are available. For TNA, they depend mostly on Pay Per View revenue, which comes mostly from drawing people into buying it BEFORE the actual show - in which case "name" value is quite important.