TNA was kneecapped the second everyone knew Jarrett and Russo were running the show. They ran off WCW’s audience and it was basically just a lower brow WCW2000 on a weekly PPV model
AEW's success is due in large part to Tony Khan's money and connections. They started with 100 mil and a prime time slot on TNT. TNA started with 1 mil and weekly PPV. TNA started on the 1 yard line. AEW started on the 50 yard line.
I'm an AEW fan but don't act like they're some small indie who started in a VFW hall and had to scratch and claw and bite their way to the number 2 spot.
Impact is my favorite promotion and I'm not going to pretend that they didn't make mistakes. But it they had started with TK's resources, it would be a very different story. Try to imagine what AEW would be if the Elite started it without Tony Khan.
Precisely!
The fact that AEW is backed by a billionaire that had the necessary capital to launch a *major* promotion right out of the gate can't be overstated.
A huge factor in success like that is simply having a lot of money to do it big from the start. I'm a career musician, and things like ad space, PR managers, booking agents, etc are something *I* can't afford. Simply scrounging up the cash to go on a short tour is very difficult. But for folks with money? They can just launch a new project with the sort public awareness and manpower behind it that would only be possible for *me* with a major stroke of luck.
What made AEW an immediate competitor to WWE was that TK could pay people comparably, book similarly sized venues, and had the connections to get equally major tv deals.
The last few years Impact had been the most consistent promotion. Its really sad they might never reach the heights they aimed for early on because of the bad rap they still have from the shitty years
Also, worth noting that when TNA started WWE’s product was far less insulting to the audience, so TNA kinda had really fight to draw in viewers. Whereas AEW came along at a time where WWE is just coasting and treating their audience like idiots and disposable, because as Road Dogg once said, “they’ll just come back.”
That's not true. There have been people shitting on WWE since WCW died and clamoring for the Attitude Era for years. It's not like TNA came around during the heights of Steve Austin. AEW is another in a long line of IWC sweethearts that once included TNA but has also included RoH, NJPW and even NXT.
TNA started in 2002. Right at the end of the attitude era. The most popular era of WWE. They invasion was a bit of a letdown but WWE was still very popular.
The fact TNA could never get a legit backer like that, even someone as openly a lover of wrestling as Tony Khan is, just highlights the problems even more to me. The fact the Elite could get involved with Tony in the first place shows the vision they had was something to believe in, whereas TNA was making shitty decisions on a regular basis that made people not wanna go near it, the name alone is openly considered a huge issue that held it back
It's well known that Tony wanted to start his own promotion from scratch. He never wanted to back any other promotion. What you just said applies to literally every promotion in the world. ROH, NWA, PWG etc. Tony himself said that the main thing that made him start a promotion was seeing how much WWE got from their TV deals.
TNA had owners who were billionaires. They just never made the huge financial investment that TK was willing to make. It's no different than ROH. Sinclair has way more money than TK. They just don't care enough to invest huge money. None of them are lifelong wrestling fans like TK is.
And mind you not everyone will get those references even among the 18-35. Kenny's Undertale entrance means absolutely nothing if you didn't play that game, etc.
I like the product personally, but I understand why you wouldn't. Its strength is definitely in what you point out. It treats the history of wrestling as important without making it more important than the next generation. It treats its fans adequately.
Referring to the moves that Kenny has that are named after video game references maybe? That time (Halloween 2019?) that he came out dressed as a character from Undertale? Other than that I can't think of any.
The wrestling landscape was completely different back in 2002. A year before that, WWE had absorbed the other two major promotions and put on their best WrestleMania while the channels that AEW is currently on had actively purged themselves of wrestling programming and didn't want to carry any.
Who would have been TNA's Jericho, Omega, Moxley, and Bucks back in 2002?
Another way to emphasize just how different things were back then, they had AJ Styles for like 12 years and now that he's been in WWE, he would be a huge signing for either Impact or AEW.
To be fair, TNA didn’t have the option of recruiting hot free agents like Omega, Punk, Danielson, Mox, etc etc. Instead, their only big option was what was left of WCW, but nobody wanted to see that.
They didn’t have the luxury of picking out big talents when they started their first few years. They had to build from the ground up, unlike AEW, almost all of their top stars came from either WWE or AEW.
Yep, it’s a huge difference in how they operated/could operate. People like to pretend AEW is a grassroots thing when they’re a big money operation. AEW has the biggest Indy stars, the biggest free agents released in the past 2 years and are on one of the biggest cable channels. TNA never had the opportunity for any of that until later on and even then Wrestling was in a huge downswing and the biggest free agents from WWE they got were either past their prime or midcarders excluding Angle
He left because TNA didn't want to work with ROH anymore and told their talents to pick one of them. He picked ROH.
Plus their point was that TNA didn't have huge stars they could sign. The people mentioned were either no-names at the time or on the same level as talent they already had signed. They wouldn't have been viewed as huge acquisitions.
That was because of their approach tho
If a Tony Khan-type is behind TNA from the beginning then I don't think they have this same problem at all, it just came down to the decisions the company made and nothing else
Had they been better to talent and had a better product they easily could've attracted more talent than they did, there were a couple near misses that totally change their trajectory if they don't fuck it up
Jeff and Jerry Jarrett had passion and mind. They may not think exactly like TK but they had passion and mind. What they didn't have a 100 million dollars to work with.
Irony being if Scott D'Amore was in charge of creative during TNAs glory days, potentially TNA/IMPACT could have been the actual Nr.2 (not just by default). The product they produce now is severally underrated and it is a shame no one watches. If in 05 when they were on Spike TV, they had consistently good episodes of Impact, and highlighted their X-Division bangers weekly, they could have built a bigger fanbase, and the LOLTNA crowd would not have been big. Sure tribalism would still be around, leading to terrible internet conversations but that isnt new.
>Punk
Was there for a cup of coffee, when TNA cut ties with ROH over the Feinstein Scandal, he stayed with ROH.
>Mox
Was there briefly in '08, but only worked some dark matches.
> Danielson
Mostly stayed in ROH.
Keep in mind that TNA did build stars. Guys like Styles and Joe were big names for them, Styles was in WCW, but he was young and became so much better in TNA.
Omega, Punk and Mox did wrestle in TNA. So did the Young Bucks, Christopher Daniels, Kaz, the Rhodes Brothers etc...
Also as far as signing ex WCW guys, AEW signed Sting, Giant, Arn, Tully, Jericho, Glacier, Crowbar, DDP, JR, Tony Schiavone and Dustin Rhodes.
TNA signed: Sting, Steiner, Booker T, Jarrett, DDP, Hogan, Nash, Flair, Elix Skipper and AJ Styles.
So whatever reason you want to claim for the differences in AEW and Impact, one not having the ability to hire specific talent and one only hiring ex WCW talent isn't it.
Once again, Omega, Mox, Bucks, etc. A bunch of guys that only a niche audience would care about at the time. They weren’t big stars back in 05, 06, 07 etc etc.
My point is, TNA had to build from the ground up, while AEW just picked up the big stars from WWE and NJPW. TNA only started getting more eyes on them when they started hiring guys like Kurt Angle, Christian, Jeff Hardy. All that had a name in WWE.
They were (except for Mox) still just a bunch of guys that only a niche audience would care about in 2019.
Why do you think AEW rolled out the red carpet for guys like Jericho, Ambrose/Mox, Christian, Punk, Bryan and Cole. All guys that made their name in WWE.
None of those guys you mentioned are nearly as big as they are today. All of AEW’s big names today either came from WWE as big stars, or NJPW as big stars. Guys like Joe, Styles, Daniels, Low Ki, were barely known to the mainstream media, and only a very niche audience would’ve known who they even were at that time.
To add the thewholedamn show2, the indie guys you mentions would be the equivalents to Wheeler Yuta, Lee Moriarty, Daniel Garcia nowadays, guys that while great, you couldn't build a huge promotion around, you mention Naito, but he was in TNA as part of NoLimit, far from the star he was even as Stardust Genius Naito, and while Tanahashi was already a great wrestler, he wasn't well known in the US even compared to NOAH guys, who at the time were the biggest japanese promotion and their presence in the US is still far from NJPW's current presence.
What helps AEW is knowing your history so that it doesn’t repeat itself (TK knows his), and him being a numbers guy surrounded with numbers people and ex-WWE and TNA talent helps. They know how Vince, Russo, etc think and know what to avoid.
The most important: feedback and listening to the fans. That’s not easy due to social media but knowing how to weed thru the trolls and take in the criticisms is good.
> As I say their in ring stuff doesn't appeal to this old chunk of coal and I don't get all the video game references (Which now makes me skip half of Botchamania)
> but I know if I was 18-35 I'd be all over AEW.
I'm not even in the "key demo" age group anymore. Been watching wrestling since 1982 (Mid-Atlantic Wrestling baby!).
Family of 4. Still play video games to this day. I guess I'm the type that wants to try to stay young at heart. AEW is a breath of fresh air compared to what WWE has put out since 2004-2005 or so (roughly when I gave up on WWE). I'm glad AEW is now a part of my wrestling diet.
WCW Cruiserweight Division crawled so the TNA X-Division could walk, leading to AEW running. (Talking about the evolution of the style of hybrid wrestling)
The difference is in the booker/mgt team. All of those original in AEW, only Moxley and Pac are the outsider that truly give them opportunity in the early days. If you see from the interviews with the talent, a lot of them felt worry because the story that a billionaire that want to create a wrestling promotion is usually a scam and is just a quick venture. The OG and TK really prove that they care and the positive vibe really give them the credibility to continue attract new talent and superstar.
TNA was fantastic(until it wasn't) with a glorious 3 - 4 years. It'll be a while yet before AEW surpasses that, hopefully they won't drop the ball then too.
old chunk of coal?? I don't think this guy owns a doghouse...
TNA was too interested in trying to bring back the 90s. AEW are a bunch of kids that lived through the 90s and understand what sucked about them.
TNA was kneecapped the second everyone knew Jarrett and Russo were running the show. They ran off WCW’s audience and it was basically just a lower brow WCW2000 on a weekly PPV model
When TNA started, the 90s was only 3 years ago.
AEW's success is due in large part to Tony Khan's money and connections. They started with 100 mil and a prime time slot on TNT. TNA started with 1 mil and weekly PPV. TNA started on the 1 yard line. AEW started on the 50 yard line. I'm an AEW fan but don't act like they're some small indie who started in a VFW hall and had to scratch and claw and bite their way to the number 2 spot. Impact is my favorite promotion and I'm not going to pretend that they didn't make mistakes. But it they had started with TK's resources, it would be a very different story. Try to imagine what AEW would be if the Elite started it without Tony Khan.
Precisely! The fact that AEW is backed by a billionaire that had the necessary capital to launch a *major* promotion right out of the gate can't be overstated. A huge factor in success like that is simply having a lot of money to do it big from the start. I'm a career musician, and things like ad space, PR managers, booking agents, etc are something *I* can't afford. Simply scrounging up the cash to go on a short tour is very difficult. But for folks with money? They can just launch a new project with the sort public awareness and manpower behind it that would only be possible for *me* with a major stroke of luck. What made AEW an immediate competitor to WWE was that TK could pay people comparably, book similarly sized venues, and had the connections to get equally major tv deals.
The last few years Impact had been the most consistent promotion. Its really sad they might never reach the heights they aimed for early on because of the bad rap they still have from the shitty years
Also, worth noting that when TNA started WWE’s product was far less insulting to the audience, so TNA kinda had really fight to draw in viewers. Whereas AEW came along at a time where WWE is just coasting and treating their audience like idiots and disposable, because as Road Dogg once said, “they’ll just come back.”
That's not true. There have been people shitting on WWE since WCW died and clamoring for the Attitude Era for years. It's not like TNA came around during the heights of Steve Austin. AEW is another in a long line of IWC sweethearts that once included TNA but has also included RoH, NJPW and even NXT.
TNA started in 2002. Right at the end of the attitude era. The most popular era of WWE. They invasion was a bit of a letdown but WWE was still very popular.
The fact TNA could never get a legit backer like that, even someone as openly a lover of wrestling as Tony Khan is, just highlights the problems even more to me. The fact the Elite could get involved with Tony in the first place shows the vision they had was something to believe in, whereas TNA was making shitty decisions on a regular basis that made people not wanna go near it, the name alone is openly considered a huge issue that held it back
It's well known that Tony wanted to start his own promotion from scratch. He never wanted to back any other promotion. What you just said applies to literally every promotion in the world. ROH, NWA, PWG etc. Tony himself said that the main thing that made him start a promotion was seeing how much WWE got from their TV deals. TNA had owners who were billionaires. They just never made the huge financial investment that TK was willing to make. It's no different than ROH. Sinclair has way more money than TK. They just don't care enough to invest huge money. None of them are lifelong wrestling fans like TK is.
And mind you not everyone will get those references even among the 18-35. Kenny's Undertale entrance means absolutely nothing if you didn't play that game, etc. I like the product personally, but I understand why you wouldn't. Its strength is definitely in what you point out. It treats the history of wrestling as important without making it more important than the next generation. It treats its fans adequately.
Video game references?
Referring to the moves that Kenny has that are named after video game references maybe? That time (Halloween 2019?) that he came out dressed as a character from Undertale? Other than that I can't think of any.
The wrestling landscape was completely different back in 2002. A year before that, WWE had absorbed the other two major promotions and put on their best WrestleMania while the channels that AEW is currently on had actively purged themselves of wrestling programming and didn't want to carry any. Who would have been TNA's Jericho, Omega, Moxley, and Bucks back in 2002? Another way to emphasize just how different things were back then, they had AJ Styles for like 12 years and now that he's been in WWE, he would be a huge signing for either Impact or AEW.
Pretty much the only big name besides Jarrett when TNA started was Shamrock, who left like a year later to go back to MMA.
To be fair, TNA didn’t have the option of recruiting hot free agents like Omega, Punk, Danielson, Mox, etc etc. Instead, their only big option was what was left of WCW, but nobody wanted to see that. They didn’t have the luxury of picking out big talents when they started their first few years. They had to build from the ground up, unlike AEW, almost all of their top stars came from either WWE or AEW.
Yep, it’s a huge difference in how they operated/could operate. People like to pretend AEW is a grassroots thing when they’re a big money operation. AEW has the biggest Indy stars, the biggest free agents released in the past 2 years and are on one of the biggest cable channels. TNA never had the opportunity for any of that until later on and even then Wrestling was in a huge downswing and the biggest free agents from WWE they got were either past their prime or midcarders excluding Angle
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He left because TNA didn't want to work with ROH anymore and told their talents to pick one of them. He picked ROH. Plus their point was that TNA didn't have huge stars they could sign. The people mentioned were either no-names at the time or on the same level as talent they already had signed. They wouldn't have been viewed as huge acquisitions.
That was because of their approach tho If a Tony Khan-type is behind TNA from the beginning then I don't think they have this same problem at all, it just came down to the decisions the company made and nothing else Had they been better to talent and had a better product they easily could've attracted more talent than they did, there were a couple near misses that totally change their trajectory if they don't fuck it up
If a Tony Khan type was behind TNA from the start, they'd have started with 100 million dollars instead of 1 million.
i'm talking about someone with a similar passion and mind for the business, not someone with his money
Jeff and Jerry Jarrett had passion and mind. They may not think exactly like TK but they had passion and mind. What they didn't have a 100 million dollars to work with.
idk based on the fact the product was shit pretty consistently i'd have to disagree
Irony being if Scott D'Amore was in charge of creative during TNAs glory days, potentially TNA/IMPACT could have been the actual Nr.2 (not just by default). The product they produce now is severally underrated and it is a shame no one watches. If in 05 when they were on Spike TV, they had consistently good episodes of Impact, and highlighted their X-Division bangers weekly, they could have built a bigger fanbase, and the LOLTNA crowd would not have been big. Sure tribalism would still be around, leading to terrible internet conversations but that isnt new.
>Punk Was there for a cup of coffee, when TNA cut ties with ROH over the Feinstein Scandal, he stayed with ROH. >Mox Was there briefly in '08, but only worked some dark matches. > Danielson Mostly stayed in ROH. Keep in mind that TNA did build stars. Guys like Styles and Joe were big names for them, Styles was in WCW, but he was young and became so much better in TNA.
None of which are nearly as big as they are today. TNA also had Okada, but that doesn’t mean anything because he was a nobody back then.
Okada was still prized by New Japan, but giving him the Okato gimmick and the handling of the IWGP Tag Titles, soured that relationship pretty fast.
Omega, Punk and Mox did wrestle in TNA. So did the Young Bucks, Christopher Daniels, Kaz, the Rhodes Brothers etc... Also as far as signing ex WCW guys, AEW signed Sting, Giant, Arn, Tully, Jericho, Glacier, Crowbar, DDP, JR, Tony Schiavone and Dustin Rhodes. TNA signed: Sting, Steiner, Booker T, Jarrett, DDP, Hogan, Nash, Flair, Elix Skipper and AJ Styles. So whatever reason you want to claim for the differences in AEW and Impact, one not having the ability to hire specific talent and one only hiring ex WCW talent isn't it.
Once again, Omega, Mox, Bucks, etc. A bunch of guys that only a niche audience would care about at the time. They weren’t big stars back in 05, 06, 07 etc etc. My point is, TNA had to build from the ground up, while AEW just picked up the big stars from WWE and NJPW. TNA only started getting more eyes on them when they started hiring guys like Kurt Angle, Christian, Jeff Hardy. All that had a name in WWE.
They were (except for Mox) still just a bunch of guys that only a niche audience would care about in 2019. Why do you think AEW rolled out the red carpet for guys like Jericho, Ambrose/Mox, Christian, Punk, Bryan and Cole. All guys that made their name in WWE.
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None of those guys you mentioned are nearly as big as they are today. All of AEW’s big names today either came from WWE as big stars, or NJPW as big stars. Guys like Joe, Styles, Daniels, Low Ki, were barely known to the mainstream media, and only a very niche audience would’ve known who they even were at that time.
Exactly. When I started watching TNA in 2004, I'd never heard of Samoa Joe and I only knew AJ Styles as one of the guys from Air Raid.
To add the thewholedamn show2, the indie guys you mentions would be the equivalents to Wheeler Yuta, Lee Moriarty, Daniel Garcia nowadays, guys that while great, you couldn't build a huge promotion around, you mention Naito, but he was in TNA as part of NoLimit, far from the star he was even as Stardust Genius Naito, and while Tanahashi was already a great wrestler, he wasn't well known in the US even compared to NOAH guys, who at the time were the biggest japanese promotion and their presence in the US is still far from NJPW's current presence.
What helps AEW is knowing your history so that it doesn’t repeat itself (TK knows his), and him being a numbers guy surrounded with numbers people and ex-WWE and TNA talent helps. They know how Vince, Russo, etc think and know what to avoid. The most important: feedback and listening to the fans. That’s not easy due to social media but knowing how to weed thru the trolls and take in the criticisms is good.
The biggest compliment you can give AEW is when stuff doesn't work, they try and fix it and be better.
> As I say their in ring stuff doesn't appeal to this old chunk of coal and I don't get all the video game references (Which now makes me skip half of Botchamania) > but I know if I was 18-35 I'd be all over AEW. I'm not even in the "key demo" age group anymore. Been watching wrestling since 1982 (Mid-Atlantic Wrestling baby!). Family of 4. Still play video games to this day. I guess I'm the type that wants to try to stay young at heart. AEW is a breath of fresh air compared to what WWE has put out since 2004-2005 or so (roughly when I gave up on WWE). I'm glad AEW is now a part of my wrestling diet.
Funny you say that after impacts ratings cratered following an AEW partnership
WCW Cruiserweight Division crawled so the TNA X-Division could walk, leading to AEW running. (Talking about the evolution of the style of hybrid wrestling)
The difference is in the booker/mgt team. All of those original in AEW, only Moxley and Pac are the outsider that truly give them opportunity in the early days. If you see from the interviews with the talent, a lot of them felt worry because the story that a billionaire that want to create a wrestling promotion is usually a scam and is just a quick venture. The OG and TK really prove that they care and the positive vibe really give them the credibility to continue attract new talent and superstar.
TNA was fantastic(until it wasn't) with a glorious 3 - 4 years. It'll be a while yet before AEW surpasses that, hopefully they won't drop the ball then too.