2013 Year in Review: TNA

[Big Red Machine]

TNA Wrestling looks a hell of a lot different right now than it did 365 days ago.

2013 has probably been the most tumultuous year in TNA history. Major changes in taping schedules, major departures both on TV and behind the scenes, abandoning of both titles and concepts... even rumors of imminent sale. TNA has pretty much seen it all this year. When you compare TNA to where it was at the beginning of the year last year, unfortunately, they seem to be in a much worse position. It has not been a good year for TNA.

That’s not to say that everything was bad. Both the TNA World Heavyweight Title and the TNA Knockouts Title have been made to look important throughout the year. Bully Ray has risen to main event status, Taryn Terrell and Gail Kim brought some spotlight back to women’s wrestling with their match at Slammiversary, and Mickie James’ “heel who thinks she is fooling everyone into thinking she is a babyface” character was one of the best things in wrestling all year. AJ Styles seemed to be going in an interesting new direction in the beginning of the year, Chris Sabin is back from two knee surgeries which have kept him out of action for most of the past two years, Dixie Carter is really coming into her own as a heel authority figure, and they seem to finally be trying to push Magnus. And the Aces & Eights storyline is FINALLY OVER!
But still, it has been a down year for TNA. The X-Division, Knockouts, and tag team divisions have all been neutered, either by depletion of talent, a lack of focus from the bookers making the titles into complete and total afterthoughts, or both. While the storylines may have changed, the product is essentially what it was at the beginning of the year: crap with occasional bright spot. The booking has been as non-sensical as ever and they have lost their developmental relationship with OVW, but the real story of 2013 will be the changes they made to tapings and PPVs and the major departures from the company that took place this past year.

Taking Impact on the road was always seen as the next big step for TNA. Last spring they started airing live each week from the Impact Zone, and now they were set to take the next big step and start broadcasting Impact from arenas all around the country. They were finally going to be a truly national promotion, just like WWE was (and it was pretty embarrassing that the much smaller ROH would tape shows from more locations)... and unlike the Impact Zone, they could actually start charging money for tickets, just like a real wrestling promotion!
They started off strongly, with their first show pulling in the second-highest domestic attendance figure in company history (second only to this year’s Lockdown, which was just a few days before). Unfortunately, the attendance would start to fall off after that, and what started out as a crowd of over 6,000 in Chicago would dwindle down to around 3,500 in the spring, to 3,000-2,500 in the summer, and finally a mere 1,500 for the last show on the road in the end of November. These disappointing attendance numbers (for a comparison, ROH’s all-time record crowd is 2,500… and that was before they were on most-national TV. TNA has been on national TV for eight years, and has names like Kurt Angle, Sting, and Hulk Hogan) and a lack of money caused the company to pull the plug on taping on the road and by the end of the year, they were back in an even smaller soundstage at Universal, taping three or four weeks of TV at a time.
One of the major reasons for the lack of money that caused them to stop going on the road was probably the biggest surprise announcement of the first eleven months of the year. In January, TNA unveiled their new PPV strategy, which cut them down form twelve live PPVs a year to just four PPVs at a slightly increased price. This strategy also included pre-taped (many months in advance) $15 themed PPVs available throughout the month of each month during which there would not be a PPV. Unfortunately for TNA, this strategy has been disastrous.
While the buyrates for the One Night Only PPVs haven’t come out, the quality of those shows has been so poor that it I hard to imagine that they got twice as many buys as the old monthly shows did (which is how much they would have needed to make up for the money lost by not running those PPVs). The Big Four PPVs this year for TNA have almost all pulled in worse buyrates than last year (Lockdown did about the same, but the other three all did worse). By my own estimation (see my article “The New TNA PPV Strategy and Why it is a Bad Idea, Part 2: Losing Money” for the math) this new strategy has cost TNA several hundred thousand dollars.

Despite TNA’s claims to the contrary, this loss of money seems to have led to a large amount of departures from the company. Among these were big names like Rob Van Dam, guys who TNA had a chance to make but completely missed the ball on (Matt Morgan and Pope), and important role-playing veterans like Doug Williams and Devon. Crimson, a man whom TNA had pegged to be their future, including starting him off with an eighteen month unbeaten streak, was released from the company. Two of the most important departures were those of Mickie James and Tara, removing two of the top three stars of the women’s division as well as one of the best acts in wrestling at the time (heel Mickie James).
One of the groups of departures that hurt the company was the releases of Alex Silva, Joey Ryan, Taeler Hendrix, and Christian York. These four represented almost all of the Gut Check contestants who had been signed to contracts. Gut Check was hyped as the way that TNA would find the stars of the future, but these releases were TNA admitting that they didn’t think any of these guys had that potential, admitting the concept a failure. After their releases, the concept was quietly killed off.
All of these departures were relatively minor, though, in comparison to these next six. The first I am going to cover here is Bruce Prichard, who entered the year as both head booker and VP of talent relations. He was gone by the end of July.
Then there Eric Bischoff and the Hogans. While some people thought their name recognition would be a benefit to TNA, that really hasn’t been the case, the ratings didn’t rise much (if at all) during the Hogan-Bischoff Era. Many fans were clamoring for these departures by the tape they happened because Hulk and Brooke were taking up WAY too much TV time, were terrible actors, and Hulk in particular would often badly bungle his words during his promos. These ranged from making his directives unclear (not good for an authority figure) to making it seem like he didn’t know the wrestlers’ nicknames (“Enigmatic Enigma,” anyone), mistakenly announcing title matches when their weren’t supposed to be (including with Sting, who was actually barred from having title matches at that point), and even mispronouncing the name of the stable he had been feuding with for over a year (“Aces of Eights”). People had just plain had enough of the Hogan’s on television, hogging TV time and the writers’ focus, for no real payoff.
But even the departures of Hogan and Bischoff would pale in comparison to the two men that TNA lost in December. Jeff Jarrett founded TNA. The first wrestler he ever signed to a TNA contract was AJ Styles. Both of them are now gone.
In AJ’s case, we knew it was a possibility. All the way back in September we heard that they were having problems working out a contract and that they had signed a short-term deal to buy them some more time to renegotiate, as well as to try to do a Summer of Punk angle with AJ attempting to the leave the company with the world title (in an ill-fated attempt to one-up WWE’s version of that angle back in 2011). The deadline came, though, and for the first time since he signed TNA’s first contract way back in 2002, AJ Styles was a free agent.
The dispute was over money. AJ thought that, as the face of the company, he deserved a raise. What TNA offered him, though, was about $150,000 LESS than what he had previously been making. So on December 17th AJ officially became a free agent and started taking indy bookings, but TNA offered AJ what he had originally asked for, and it looked like it was only a matter of time before AJ would come back home to TNA.
Then, on December 22nd, 2013, Jeff Jarrett resigned from TNA. From his own company. He was abandoning his baby. No single person has put more work into TNA Wrestling than Jeff Jarrett, and Jeff decided that he was tired of clashing with Dixie Carter and he was going to leave the company. It might just be a coincidence, but many have speculated that Jarrett’s resignation is the reason that TNA’ negotiations with AJ Styles suddenly fell apart and it appears that he will be wrestling regularly for Ring of Honor (among others)

No matter what the eventual fate of the company may be, 2013 will no doubt go down in history as one of the most important years in the history of TNA, and it will no doubt be defined by the losses of AJ Styles, Jeff Jarrett, and a whole boat-load of money.

[KILLdozer]

Where's our old friends that wanted to put it all on Hogan and or Bischoff?