Dot Net reader Christopher Wells Graham attended Sunday's Bound For Glory pay-per-view and filed the following report.

I was in attendance last night's “TNA Bound For Glory” and would like to share with you my live thoughts. Before I get going let me tell you that this is not going to be a match for match breakdown criticizing or praising work rate. I want to take my experience to look at this as someone who works in TV Production here in Hollywood. I'm not going to lay out my full resume but I have been on the set of $150 million movies but mostly I make my living working on TV shows that have aired on various American broadcast and cable networks. I have been a life long wrestling fan and have followed TNA through the majority of their seven years of existence going back to the days in Nashville. This is a look at the what I experienced as a fan but also my experience as someone who works in TV.

First off I wanted to address the venue. TNA hit a home run choosing this venue. For those of you who don't know The Bren Event Center in Irvine is where the University of California Irvine's basketball team plays and was a perfect choice for TNA. TNA needs to remember they're still a very small company drawing only a 1.0 to a 1.3 TV rating. Although you may look at this venue, that only sits around 5,500 people, as being minor league, for TNA in their current state it was perfect. Although I'm not going to try to guess the attendance I would say the venue was 80 percent to 85 percent full. There was not a bad seat in the house.

So no matter if you bought a cheap ticket or floor seats you got your money's worth. In the future TNA should always try to find a venue around this size to run their Pay Per Views. Nothing looks worse then watching a small crowd in a super huge arena. If I was sampling this for the first time last night I would have said this looked like a big deal. Keep in mind that WCW in the early 90s, even until their success in the late 90s, ran small to medium sized venues. Most of those shows were held in small sub 10,000 seat venues and most of the time they looked full. Remember when it comes to TV perception is everything and TNA did a very good job in Irvine.

Let's take a look at the set up. Because the venue was small TNA's set looked large and impressive. Now having attended 3 “Wrestlemanias” I can't say the set held a candle to anything that WWE did at their big show, but it did looked as good as any setup I had seen at any “Monday Night Raw” I've attended, which I mean as a complement. Nice looking entrance with a large easy to see video screen. Plus, as I said, there wasn't a bad seat in the house so no matter where you sat you could see everything and you were fairly close to the action. I got my ticket only last Monday but I ended up sitting near the center of the ring on the opposite side of the hard camera.

Now lets talk about the atmosphere which was a huge part of the overall fun of this show. The arena was pretty full and wanted to see the action. They popped for just about everything and matches that may have just seemed awful on TV, live felt just fine. I will say this if this is their big show of the year they should try to expand the show to four hours. That will help make it seem special and give it a big show atmosphere. Then you can give the more important matches a bit more time. If you're not going to do that then try to cut at least one match out of the show. Not every belt needed to be defended and some probably shouldn't have been. But this was a hot crowd that built through the show.

On a small note I wanted to complement the boys for being very personable after the show. I ran into several performers while I waited for the parking lot to clear up and they were all very personable, willing to shake your hand, and talk with you even though I hardly had a voice. Although a minor thing it's nice to know they care and don't brush you off like you're some low life. So good job on that and it was nice to meet the TNA wrestlers and management I got a chance to talk with.

I do have a few criticisms but they are overall minor. First off was the pyro. I understand the need to use pyro in modern wrestling. It makes your production look big but one lagging problem all night that I'm sure showed up on TV was the smoke that was left behind. If I hadn't had a cold I probably would have had a pretty bad headache from the lingering smoke. You need to find a way to vent that stuff out of a building especially a small building like in Irvine.

If it means renting some kind of exhaust system that would suck the smoke out of the venue then do it. It often felt to me like I was in a garage that the car was left on and I did hear plenty of people around me complain about this through the show. Also if you're going to do an angle during a match that takes one of the wrestlers out of action for a few minutes make it clear what it is. It made absolutely no sense live when Tara all of a sudden was involved in that fight with Kim Couture. Then when Tara went away I was scratching my head as to what exactly happened.

I want to talk about briefly about one thing that is directed towards the wrestlers themselves. It is about your overall looks and presentation coming out to the ring. For the most part I thought everyone came to the ring looking extremely well. They had gear fitting to there gimmicks and it looked big league. But one thing that stood out to me was when Sting came to the ring in a very nice old school robe. In fact one really nice thing TNA did is they had several of Sting's classic robes set up for you to look at in the arena. They weren't behind glass so if you even wanted to touch them you could.

Now this is not directed at everyone but one performer stood out to me was Hernandez. Over the past few months TNA has done an very good job of repackaging Hernandez, which I have liked. But you have him on TV for two months looking unique wearing new gear then all of a sudden he is back to looking like LAX Hernandez. If you want to make him a singles star he needs to stand out. Right now he looks like a guy buying tickets. The look works for Homicide but if Hernandez is going to be a break out star he needs to distance himself from his LAX Days. If a wrestler today wants to stand out it may not be a bad idea to invest in some of those old school robes like what Sting wore. Not many do it today and it would make a wrestler look unique.

Also I wanted to talk briefly about the push of Amazing Red. I'm just fine with them putting him with Don West and giving him a push. What I don't get is four weeks ago Red, in the current TNA, was a glorified jobber. And now he is being pushed as a champion? They needed to take a bit more time to explain this to the people watching at home. Yes, I know he won a match to face Samoa Joe and then he beat Joe. But If you want to grow to be true competition to WWE, TNA needs to pay extremely close attention to the details. You can't afford to do anything that doesn't make sense. Plus with your shows being taped you have the luxury of being able to explain such things in packages or pre-tapes. Thats more about TNA booking and not the live event I attended last night.

Overall this was an excellent show and if you're interested in buying the replay or DVD you won't be disappointed. Did it live up to any of the “Wrestlemanias” I've been to? No! But you have to remember when I've walked into a “Wrestlemania” I'm also living through the eyes of a younger version of myself who dreamed long hours of some day getting to be at the event. “TNA's Bound for Glory” was an extremely fun show and a step in the right direction.

TNA needs to start running more shows outside of the Impact Zone. If you want to increase PPV buys you need to make them feel unique from your TV product. Take more shows on the road but be smart about it. Like I said earlier run venues around the size of the one in Irvine and you should be just fine. Take at least eight PPV's a year on the road to start. Hopefully then the more you do that the more word will come out about your product and you will be then able to run those larger buildings that WWE runs. But its taking the baby steps now that is vital for your expansion. Or you're just going to lose too much money.

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