The following commentary is in response to two articles that were posted in Saturday's Dot Net Mailbag entitled "Two readers gush over TNA." Send all feedback to dotnetjason@gmail.com

During my times as a wrestling fan I have read some perplexing articles, opinions and reviews but none have confused me more than those who insist that the TNA product is somehow worthwhile or relevant. In recent times I have seen no evidence from TNA that this is the case but perhaps I am simply watching different shows to those who have fallen in love with TNA and its product.

I should, I suppose, start by saying that I want to like TNA and that over the past five-years I have given the company more chances than they deserved. I would tune into occasional Impacts, scan recaps of their shows and watch their pay-per-view output and would constantly find myself frustrated, bored or indifferent. The past tense here is telling, because with their live HD debut TNA finally produced the straw that broke the camels back, after five years of seemingly constant attempts to alienate me as a viewer they were successful. Never before have I witnessed a show so poorly constructed and written or one that lacked any sense of identity or logic.

The formation of the Main Event Mafia has won rave reviews from some corners and I will admit that on paper this is an intriguing group with some potential. However, as is often the case with TNA, that theoretical potential doesn’t translate to anything real or truly effective. What purpose does this group really serve and just why has this group, who have all hated each other at some point now banded together as a unit?

The magic non-explanation for all of this has been ‘respect’. They want respect, demand respect, have earned respect and they aren’t getting it, so they’ve banded together. But why? What is it this group really hopes to achieve together that they weren’t achieving separately? For months now these men have been getting the better of the younger members of the roster and having the last laugh at their expense. There was no sense that they were under threat or in any need to join together because not one of them was prepared to give (and I steal a line from Mick Foley here) the likes of Samoa Joe and AJ Styles an inch. There was no threat to them and there was no sense that their supposed enemies were banding together against them so their formation has no drive or purpose behind it, beyond Vince Russo having an unhealthy obsession with stable wars.

Perhaps what TNA should have done was actually put these established stars under pressure and shown that they were outclassed and out gunned by the new generation and that the only way they could hope to survive and ‘protect their spots’ was to band together. Demonstrated that they were putting their own petty differences aside for their joint greater good. Of course this would have meant that Samoa Joe and AJ Styles would both need to have been booked as semi-competent rather than bumbling idiots who no one really wants to like or get behind.

It also would have meant that rather than mentioning them every now and again on television the Motor City Machine Guns would have needed some kind of consistent and logical television presence that didn’t involve them relentlessly jobbing to everyone on the roster. Taking this route might also have made it much clearer who we were supposed to like and dislike in this mess of a feud, because God knows it hasn’t been clear up until now. I’ve had no motivation to like or support Samoa Joe or AJ Styles for months, both men have in fact been booked as complete assholes, so what possible reason would I have for liking them?

More pressingly than that though actually building a storyline rather than trying to work the audience would have avoided these irritating debates about working house shows. Am I really supposed to hate Sting because he is financially secure enough not to need to work TNA house shows? I’m supposed to boo him because he spends time with his children? And I’m supposed to feel sorry for AJ Styles because he has the apparently unpleasant duty of wrestling in front of TNA fans more often than Sting?

Of course this is the problem with TNA, they aren’t interested in building storylines or creating compelling characters, they want to work their audience. How often does Mike Tenay use variations on the phrase, ‘they’ve got real heat’? And how often does TNA set up and execute nonsensical turns just because they can? Kevin Nash’s heel turn last month was a poorly executed mess that existed simply to try and work the audience rather than tell a story or develop a character. What Vince Russo and the rest of TNA fail to understand is that the vast majority of their audience has seen all of this before and has grown tired of it and want something different, and that by shoving down our throats that something is ‘real’ you’re merely implying that nothing else is.

If we’re led to believe that the ‘heat’ between AJ Styles and Sting for example is ‘real’ then what does that mean for the rivalry between Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutt? Since no one has told us this is ‘real’ are we to believe that it is a complete work of fiction? If that’s the case why does the audience care about it? When you insist on presenting one aspect, feud or rivalry as real you denote everything else as fiction and breakdown the relationship between you and your audience. Vince McMahon for better or worse understand this, he understands that you have to present everything as real within the confines of the WWE universe nothing is more or less real, Vince Russo and his TNA cohorts still have not grasped this lesson despite being taught it in WCW.

We must also, I feel turn our attention to the wrestling content of TNA in comparison to the WWE.

Long ago Vince McMahon vanquished the word wrestling from his broadcasts and replaced it with Sports Entertainment and wrestlers became Superstars. Now Sports Entertainment has simply become Entertainment and Superstars, Entertainers. There is very little logical defence to these decisions but in the grand scheme they’re meaningless because as much as Vince may shy away from describing his product as wrestling that’s what it is and he knows it. He may want to dress it up differently but he still at least has the decency to let his Superstars or Entertainers wrestle. In contrast TNA doesn’t.

The lack of faith and confidence that TNA have in their roster is truly awe-inspiring. No one can wrestle in TNA, they’re not allowed instead a hundred and one inane gimmicks must be added to every match the company promotes. Apparently two men wrestling is not enough to excite viewers anymore, it has to be a Last Man Standing Burning Cage Street Fight instead. And on the rare occasions that TNA does allow a straight up match to occur then one of three things will happen.

1. It will be so short that the entrances of the wrestlers involved take longer than the match itself.

2. The match will be riddled with interference, ref bumps and anything else TNA creative can pull from their hats to make it ‘more exciting.’

3. The post-match happenings will overshadow the match itself and it will be completely forgotten that there was a match in the first place.

And of course there’s the times when TNA combines all three of those events and the times when all three are combined with an over the top and meaningless gimmick.

The wrestling in the WWE may not be the most ground breaking or consistently exciting in the world but at least its wrestling and at least they have enough faith in their stars to hold the audiences attention in the ring without the aid of constant run-ins, gimmicks and ref bumps.

However what makes TNA truly infuriating is that they don’t realize they have a problem. They don’t realize that what they’re doing isn’t working. No one within the company seems to have stumbled upon the fact that this growing company has shown no consistent or real sign of growth in years. The television ratings have been static and its hard to imagine that their pay-per-view buys have drastically improved in recent times either. No one within the company seems to accept or acknowledge that simply allowing Vince Russo to turn TNA into his greatest hits collection and rebook every angle he ran in the WWF and WCW is not the way forward. Nor do they seem to realize that WCW didn’t become a success because it snapped up the WWF’s top stars but because it used those stars in a new way to create compelling and exciting television.

TNA is stuck in a perpetual and never ending '90s loop and its going nowhere.

I watched WCW and the WWF in the '90s, I have absolutely no interest in re-watching that exact same product now in TNA and judging by their ratings neither do the vast majority of wrestling fans. The wrestling audience is crying out for a new direction and a new style, just like we were in the early-'90s. Back then WCW and ECW came to everyone’s rescue but it no longer looks as if TNA and ‘lets go back to the '70s’ ROH will be this generations answer to those companies.

The wrestling business is looking backwards for answers when it should be looking forward and as long as we continue to indulge them when they do it, as far too many people do with TNA then they’ll continue to do it. We have to break the cycle because its becoming increasingly obvious that no one within the industry is willing to do it. That means we have to stop praising TNA for the potential of their roster and get real. It’s no longer 1999 and the product that TNA is churning out, just like the product the WWE is churning out is no longer acceptable. It’s stale, dated and increasingly out of touch with reality. No amount of never realized potential can make up for that and it never will.

Alex Roberts

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