TNA News & Notes from the 8/16 Observer

[Enigma 0]

While not announced officially, several sources have confirmed that TNA has made the decision to cease weekly PPV shows and 9/8 will be the final one.

 

As noted from the start of doing weekly television, this was the only feasible decision. The company had fallen to about 6,000 buys per week on PPV before getting on Fox Sports Net. The decision was to wait about eight weeks to see if the new TV show increased buys. After ten weeks, there is no indication that aside from one or two shows, the normal levels of buys had changed at all, and the money losses were probably hovering on $100,000 per week.

 

The decision at this point is do to monthly three-hour shows on Sunday evenings, similar to WWE and Pride, starting in November. The final show at the Asylum in Nashville, at this point, is 9/8. Starting on 9/14, the Orlando tapings will be moved from Thursdays to Tuesdays, to give them more time to edit the post-produce the show for Friday. There will be taped best-of PPV shows airing on 9/15, 9/22 and 9/29, but as of the end of September, TNA won’t have Wednesday night PPVs, and won’t be doing any PPV shows in October. The idea is to have a 7-to-10 week build for the first Sunday show.

 

Since WWE is the powerhouse and has its dates locked up months in advance, it will become a game between Pride and TNA to get dates locked up first. On months that WWE does two PPV shows, those two companies would have to fight over the remaining two dates. While Pride is far bigger, and does slightly better on PPV in the U.S., TNA is more organized long-term. The idea at this point is to charge $29.95 per show, which I think may be a little on the high side, at least to start out. The plan is to upgrade the shows, running them in mid-sized arenas (5,000-to-7,000 seats) throughout the country. Most likely, that will change when they find they can't sell tickets. The original TNA PPV show plan was similar, but after only being able to sell about 100 tickets for the debut show in Huntsville, AL, they moved to Nashville as a permanent home, at the 9,000-seat Municipal Auditorium. When they couldn’t sell tickets there, they moved to the 1,300-seat Fairgrounds, where they usually come close to filling the building with free tickets, as paid is usually hovering around 300 to 400.

 

At press time, no wrestlers had been told of the changes, which will cut their pay down as they will be working five or six shows per month instead of nine or ten, after getting only four dates in October after seven in September. There are even rumors of further cutbacks to where they would tape two shows every other Tuesday at some point, which would also be cost effective but would leave a lot of the wrestlers with three dates per month. If the budget for the monthly show is increased from about $100,000 for the current weekly shows to $150,000 for a monthly show, and the number of buys only stays the same (and I think it will increase significantly), the savings to the company would be $225,000 per month. Instead of maybe $300,000 per month in losses, the losses would be $73,000 (and again, that's saying the buys are only 6,000 for a monthly show, and I'd expect them to be far more than that).

 

Most TNA wrestlers, aside from the bigger names, earn $300-to-$500 per show. With the expansion in dates, that means generally $2,700-to-$4,500 per month, which for the $500 guys that also get weekend independents, is a decent living, and the bigger names like Raven, Dusty Rhodes ($1,500 per show), America’s Most Wanted, and A.J. Styles were doing quite well. This cuts the numbers down to $1,500-to-$1,800 per month for prelim guys (and a further cutback could put those numbers as low as $900 or less per month), which is not a living unless they get independent dates, and $2,500-to-$3,000 (and even $1,500 with a further cutback). There is talk about running Wednesday night house shows for at least some of the guys to help morale and keep them from being cut so much on pay, but others think this company trying to run Wednesday house shows and PPV shows in mid-sized arenas will flop so badly it could be the psychological blow that will endanger them from continuing farther, similar to how the XWF money backers largely gave up on the product after dropping big money running some house shows, and those shows in 2002 in the Midwest with the Road Warriors and Roddy Piper, drew better than TNA shows would probably be expected to do. There is also fear as to what will happen in Orlando once the fall starts and crowds at Universal drop 80% on weekday nights from their current levels. The feeling is about 75% of the TNA crowds is tourists looking for a park attraction and the rest are the weekly wrestling fans from the area.

 

Going to 5,000-to-7,000 seat arenas, and different cities, will increase costs somewhat. With major monthly shows, they can hype them better, and also should bring in outside headliners. They could probably do shows like that on a $150,000 budget, and maybe a little less. At $29.95, they can break even for the night on 10,000 to 11,500 buys, which is hardly an unreasonable number. As noted before, taking into account the costs of still doing weekly television, as a company, they aren’t going to do well on less than 27,000 buys. If they can hit that number regularly with four weeks of build-up is not impossible if the company gets at least some buzz. At this point, there is talk of Fox Sports Net moving the show from Friday at 3 p.m. to a Sunday morning time slot. No decision has been made, but the slot talked about is 11 a.m., which would go head-to-head with WWE Experience on Spike TV. That wouldn't be the worst idea, because nobody watches Experience, and it would look good if the company could come close to, or even beat a WWE show on Spike, head-to-head while on the weaker FSN. That gives them something to brag about, and if they can dual evenly in the slot with WWE, and I'd think they might be able to, it might also help their chances to get the necessary time slot upgrade, because in this day and age, Sunday morning isn’t it either. The negative, for Sunday morning, is come September, once the NFL starts, the show would be bucking NFL football on the West Coast, and football is the only thing that historically is proven to bite a chunk out of wrestling ratings.

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It is now August and there is no end in sight to the DirecTV stalemate. Nobody knows exactly what has kept the deal from being put back together, but it costs the company roughly 18-25% in buys every week, although the addition of Dish Network should probably come close to balancing out the loss. There has been a lot of heat on Frank Romano in the office for his inability to get the deal done, as even if DirecTV offers less favorable terms, TNA needs DirecTV far more than DirecTV needs TNA.

 

The business relationship with AAA and Antonio Pena fell apart. As noted here for months, it had been hanging by a thread, particularly when Armando Quintero had to book minis independently at the last minute for the anniversary show after AAA screwed up. No reason was given for the break-up other than the general impossibility of doing business with Pena, and his frequent promises to come to Nashville or Orlando to talk about projects, but coming up with reasons that he cant come, or sometimes, not even bothering doing even that when he doesn’t come. They were talking about a joint PPV in San Diego when he stopped coming. The sides were supposed to trade talent, but TNA was bringing in Pena's guys at good money, while the only guy Pena would book was Abyss. Someone close to the situation believes Pena did this on purpose, as he didn’t want a repeat of the mid-90s, where he developed a whole crew of superstars, and then they started to get over in the U.S., and he lost the top ones. Even though TNA hasn’t used Hector Garza, suddenly Garza decided he could make better money and be paid on time and didn’t feel like being under Pena's thumb and quit. With Latin Lover threatening to leave and Heavy Metal also making noises, Pena didn’t want to send guys to get a taste of better money, so just stopped doing business. Jeff Jarrett and Dutch Mantel at first wanted to go to CMLL, which has better wrestlers overall and far more depth than AAA, but Mike Tenay advised them against doing so, saying they would just wind up with the same problems, and they could book the biggest name talent in Mexico on their own since the highest paid guys now are independents. On 8/11, they will debut the original La Parka under his name L.A. Park (to avoid legal action from Pena who owns the rights to the Parka name). Strangely, they are billing the original Psicosis under that name, even though Pena owns the rights to that gimmick as well and uses a different wrestler under that name, and Psicosis wrestles in Mexico as Nicho de Millionaire. At this point, the company is not booking Hector Garza until he can offer proof that he is legally out of his AAA contract, as they aren’t looking for legal problems from Pena. They are also going to start using Super Crazy when his paperwork gets down, and plans are to use El Hijo del Santo for major shows as an attraction and Perro Aguayo, Jr.'s name has also been bandied about.

 

Nigel McGuiness is scheduled to debut in an X division gauntlet match on 8/11 since the title was declared vacant since Frankie Kazarian and Michael Shane came down tied in the Ultimate X match. McGuiness is much taller than the X guys, and he's a real talent doing the European style, and is better off working as a heavyweight.

 

They are really trying to push Monty Brown and Jeff Hardy as the top stars in the company aside from Jeff Jarrett. Brown, because he played in the NFL, is able to get on a lot of sports shows that won’t book the "no-name" wrestlers, and this past week was on both "Best Damn Sports Show Period" and "Cold Pizza." He's starting to get a little star aura, which few of the guys in the company have, even though they are far better in the ring.

 

Vince Russo announced the championship committee idea, with Terry Funk and Larry Zbyszko, as noted from the original idea. They decided to put Harley Race in the third spot, to keep the Dusty Rhodes vs. Russo feud, which takes up far too much air time and goes nowhere, alive. Rhodes is expected to feud with Scott D'Amore, probably as part of continuing an AMW vs. Team Canada program, using the U.S. flag and Canadian flag as props.

 

The mystery "coming soon" guy is a heel D-Lo Brown returning.

 

Although TNA constantly, for whatever reason, pushes the idea that Vince Russo has no involvement in creative and that it's all Jeff Jarrett and Dutch Mantel, that isn’t the case. There are certain things on the show which are uniquely Russo, and upon further look, it comes out that in almost all cases, they are. The case in point was the interview Monty Brown did a few weeks back talking about not being interested in wrestling anymore because all he cares about is his baby daughter. That was totally scripted by Russo, with the idea that Brown goes home, and somehow returns as a crazed mad man.

 

Brian Kendrick (Spanky) was backstage at the show on 8/5 in Orlando. He was asked to debut on 8/11 for the X gauntlet, but couldn’t do so because of Zero-One commitments.

[Mole 0]

How much longer can TNA last by loosing that much money every week?

[Guest Donners]

Not long, which is obviously why they're making such drastic changes. I really don't see a significant chance of them working, though.

[Guest MikeSC]

Wow. How far off were PWTorch.com et al?

 

6,000 buys a week? Jesus, they're down to "Heroes of Wrestling" levels of interest.

-=Mike

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

The difference being that almost everybody on the "Heroes of Wrestling" card at least helped sell out a big arena show in their career before. TNA? Not a single person on the active roster can say such a thing.

 

Plus, Jake Roberts > Jeff Jarrett. In EVERY...SINGLE...WAY.

[Silence 0]

Plus, Jake Roberts > Jeff Jarrett. In EVERY...SINGLE...WAY.

Well, Jake's drunk "Deeeeee, Deeeeee, Teeeeee..........." promo at least seemed more entertaining than Jarrett's "Ah'm the World Heavyweight Champion, no one can dethrone the King of the Mountain, blah blah blah" promos he's been doing for a while now.

[Guest Staravenger]

Plus, Jake Roberts > Jeff Jarrett. In EVERY...SINGLE...WAY.

Well, Jake's drunk "Deeeeee, Deeeeee, Teeeeee..........." promo at least seemed more entertaining than Jarrett's "Ah'm the World Heavyweight Champion, no one can dethrone the King of the Mountain, blah blah blah" promos he's been doing for a while now.

Well, entertaining in a bad way. Jarrett never has had good mike skills. Maybe in WCW when it was a cesspool of crap, but not during his WWF days and in TNA.

 

Jake Roberts in 1999 though was horrible. But in his prime, probably the best at in ring psychology, the best at cutting promos as either a heel or face, and could make anyone look good...except the horrible feud with Rick Rude. Damn they had some bad matches.

[Silence 0]

Well, entertaining in a bad way.

Yeah. Although it did get people to talking nonetheless, whereas Jarrett constantly having the TNA World Heavyweight title (is that what they're calling it now since they're no longer a part of the NWA?) is repetitive and boring.

 

Jake using his snake as a penis though was almost vomit-inducing.

[Mecha Mummy 0]

The idea at this point is to charge $29.95 per show, which I think may be a little on the high side, at least to start out.

 

Yeahhhhhh, no. Does TNA honestly think they can charge anywhere near what WWE's charging?

[Guest Donners]

They can't really afford to charge much less, considering attractiveness to carriers and the amount of money they need.

[Magus 0]

They are really trying to push Monty Brown and Jeff Hardy as the top stars in the company aside from Jeff Jarrett. Brown, because he played in the NFL, is able to get on a lot of sports shows that won’t book the "no-name" wrestlers, and this past week was on both "Best Damn Sports Show Period" and "Cold Pizza." He's starting to get a little star aura, which few of the guys in the company have, even though they are far better in the ring.

this is what gets me. Hardy's okay as long as he doesn't get too lazy, and Monty's being pushed too soon into the main event. as for Jarrett, the company will always be in a rut until he takes himself off TV. and while Monty can get onto a few sports shows, that doesn't prove that Hardy and Jarrett can CARRY A PROMOTION ON THEIR BACKS. its just not happening.

 

There's too many well-qualified guys in TNA that can carry the main event for TNA to focus on these three as the top stars.

 

and if its true that Vince Russo is getting to put in stupid ideas like D'Lo going crazy, they're in deep shit.

[Guest MikeSC]

They can't really afford to charge much less, considering attractiveness to carriers and the amount of money they need.

They can only get 6,000 people to pay $10. Do they think they can get THAT many to pay $30?

-=Mike

[Astro101 0]

Only if they build it up right.

[Guest MikeSC]

Only if they build it up right.

So, that's a no.

-=Mike

...How many matches have they build up well? Do you have fingers left over if you count them on one hand?

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

The only truly well-built matches in TNA that I can think of have been:

 

-AMW/New Church blowoff

-Raven/Jarrett

-AMW/XXX blowoff

-World X-Cup event

 

So that's 4 things that have gotten a build worth a damn in TNA. And even then, the World X-Cup build-up sucked, but I included it because they built it up constantly.

 

TNA doesn't know how to build to something, and this is because of conflicting idealologies on the booking committee. Mantel is an old-school booker that likes to slow down and simplify terrible SE angles, Russo is a "deliver now, but keep it going" SE booker, and Jarrett is an "I'm the only important one here" booker.

 

Until TNA can get somebody to supercede all of them, and make them all go into the proper categories of booking (Mantel for pacing of a feud, Russo for what happens when, and Jarrett should be kicked off indefinitely)? The booking will continue to suck.

[Guest Harry, Archie and Gus]

Everytime I read a new TV report of TNA I hope things turned out good. I go a month or two, maybe three, without seeing the product, buy some tapes, and always I am disappointed.

 

Is there really anything good about TNA aside from some underutilized incredibly talented undercard wrestlers, and AJ Styles.

 

If this promotion could just ban Vince Russo, Dusty Rhodes, Irish Pat Kenny, Konnan, Don West and Scott D'Amore from being on in front of the cameras it would be a good start.

 

Pre-taping the promos might be a good second step.

 

I'd also like to see Brian James takeover Don West's place as color commentator.

 

But honestly, is there really anything good about TNA?

[Guest whitemilesdavis]

Just the potential of the roster. Really, that's the only thing keeping me interested, is that at any point, someone could whip out a great match.

[Astro101 0]

I dunno, I think TNA can build up matches right if they actually have a ppv to build up to. Like, if they set a date, they can start planning right. Now they just kinda go whatever to their angles with no big date in mind to build it up to.

[Guest MikeSC]

I dunno, I think TNA can build up matches right if they actually have a ppv to build up to. Like, if they set a date, they can start planning right. Now they just kinda go whatever to their angles with no big date in mind to build it up to.

Russo has shown NO ability to book an angle for more than a month --- and Mantel's booking has shown itself to be unmitigated crap since he arrived.

 

I have no reason to believe they CAN do it.

-=Mike

[Guest whitemilesdavis]

You're right Mike, they can't. They need a major booking change, no question. The talent on that roster is unbelievable, but they're still not putting on consistant shows. So, who's fault is that?

[Guest Dynamite Kido]

You're right Mike, they can't. They need a major booking change, no question. The talent on that roster is unbelievable, but they're still not putting on consistant shows. So, who's fault is that?

Exactly. I would have to say you can't look any further than management/booking. There is no reason why they can't put on consistantly good shows. It's the stupid ass booking that keeps juggling up things for no good reason, and management is cool with it. They pushed AJ to the title twice only to have JJ win it from Truth so that they could have a "star" with the title for Impact. Now, they have Impact and JJ hasn't come close once to losing the title. Not only that but consistant pushes for 3LK(now not Killings.....just BG and fucking Konnan), Monte Brown(the guy that could have great potential for the company if they would just push him slowly), Jeff Hardy(aka the new guy that did nothing for a title shot......gets just that), the stupid David Young 93 loss gimmick, and hosts of other shit that nobody could give a didley shit about. They need to realize what talent is good for them to keep and who they can release and not think twice about(at least to save some bank).