I have been a wrestling fan since 2003. I didn’t get the chance to watch WCW (World Championship Wrestling) as it went out of business in 2002. I only used to watch WWE during the ruthless aggression era. My favorite wrestlers were Goldberg, Stone Cold, The Rock, Brock Lesner, and Kane.
But after Brock Lesnar and Goldberg left WWE after Wrestlemania 20, I lost most of my interest. I never used to see smaller guys like Eddie Gurrero, Chris Beniot as main event attraction. Also, I never liked John Cena. WWE became very complacent, their matches became dull and slow. I was looking for alternative wrestling shows.
So when I was channel surfing in 2007, I saw TNA (Total Nonstop Wrestling) in a tv channel. They had great fast moving actions, the wrestlers were very athletic, but I wasn’t impressed. Why? Because their presentation looked cheap and low budget. They had such a small audience that it looked like a minor league company compared to the 15-20 thousand capacity arenas WWE were using. I thought they would move to bigger arenas but they never did.
Their company name also didn’t sound good or classy, Total Nonstop Action sounds like a 11 year child named the company. Their ring was octagonal, which looked absolutely weird. One of their championship had the name “X-division Championship”. Some of the wrestlers looked like truck drivers who came to wrestle for some extra cash. Their promos were absolutely horrible. Nothing sounded and looked classy, everything looked like garbage to casual fans like me.
TNA had the chance, but their low budget presentation couldn’t capitalize on it. They had top guys like Sting, Scott Steiner, AJ Styles. Former WWE World Champions like Jeff Hardy, Booker T, Kurt Angle went to TNA but they couldn’t capitalize. Legends like Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Mick Foley, Eric Bischoff went there, but they didn’t use those opportunities. They did not invest more money in better production quality, bigger arenas, better storylines.
The biggest mistake of TNA was hiring too many lower card WWE wrestlers and making them their World Champion. Another one of their problems was that they used to do too much shoot promos, talked about WWE a LOT. That made them look very cheap instead of a legit wrestling company, it looked like that some WWE wrestlers mainly went there to complain about the WWE management and their politics. WWE never took TNA seriously, they never mentioned or acknowledged that such a company even exists.
TNA was a great company, many great wrestlers such as AJ Styles, Samoan Joe, Bobby Roode came out of it. But as they did not capitalized on the great opportunities, now they are non- existent.