Last Updated on: 7th May 2015, 10:21 am
Thankfully I don’t have to say this very often, but I do today.
I was wrong. Boy, was I ever wrong.
When TNA first announced that they were going to move Impact to Monday nights and compete against WWE, I honestlythoughtthat it would be a good thing. A good thing for TNA, a good thing for WWE and most of all, a good thing for the wrestling business and its fans. I thought that a little competition would make WWE try again. I thought that wanting to be that competition and finally getting the chance head to head would help TNA get their shit together and figure out what kind of product they’re supposed to be. I thought that eventually we might even see a bit of an upswing in fan interest.
Unfortunately, I thought wrong.
Two months, 1 timeslot change and a bunch of horrible ratings after it started, the war is over and TNA is heading back to Thursday nights starting May 13th.
So what happened? I’ve heard all kinds of theories, everything from they shouldn’t have started while WWE was in Wrestlemania mode and they should have started an hour earlier than Raw from the beginning instead of moving there after they got smoked a couple times to well, the problem is that they aren’t running live shows every week and they need to get out of the Impact Zone because it’s always the same, but I’ve come to the conclusion that time changes and different locations aren’t the issue. The problem is a lot simpler to boil down than every little thing you can pick apart. The problem is that when they moved Impact to Monday nights, they didn’t leave the stupidity behind.
More often than not, Impact is a directionless, nonsensical mess of retardedness that nobody but the most hardcore of wrestling fans could ever want to see, and even we don’t *want* to see it. We’re just so conditioned to watching everything no matter how good or bad it gets that we’re tuning in because it’s what we’ve always done. In fact, Impact is such a poor television show that even the people who try to watch everything don’t watch it. They’ve given up, much like the WCW and ECW fans gave up years ago when WWE didn’t give them what they wanted.
Moving to Monday nights could and should have been a new beginning for TNA. They could have used the amazing roster of wrestlers they have to establish themselves as a true alternative to WWE. RAW is where the Z-List celebrities and horrible comedy writing is, but if you’re looking for a wrestling program, here we are. But instead of taking a golden opportunity to put themselves on the map and create some buzz and momentum, TNA gave usthis,a show so stupid that I forgot to include some really horrible crap when I wrote about it. In the weeks that followed we got shows that were sometimes a little better and sometimes worse, and 1 really good one. But what we didn’t get was a reason to keep watching. Even after that one really good show was praised up and down, TNA went back to what they always go back to, writing inneffective television. And now they get to write it on Thursdays again, because as long as Impact is Impact in its current form, TNA won’t be competing with anybody.