• Wrestling News & Wrestling Rumors – WWE & TNA

Introduction:

Some have argued that WCW was never meant to die and had an unfathomable amount of tools at hand to succeed. A billionaire with deep pockets and a fondness for wrestling, some of the biggest names to ever grace the squared (and 6 sided) circle, and a deep rooted history dating back to the NWA. Several years later an upstart promotion called NWA-TNA (referred to as TNA throughout this series) began running shows, yet found itself in a race that had started decades ago and finished a year earlier. In comparison, TNA was never supposed to live.

It’s nothing new to mention that the peak of modern wrestling’s interest was during the Monday Night Wars between Vince McMahon’s WWE and the Eric Bischoff run WCW, but after the latter was bargained off to the prior, having died a slow, strange and fascinating death, the pro wrestling landscape changed, fans moved on, ‘grew out’ of wrestling and many fringe viewers never made the transition once the War was won. With no competition, a new corporate structure and a contemporary “creative” system, WWE moved away from the attitude era, and to many hardcore fans was showing signs of blandness, repetitiveness and a less cutting edge product. Ratings were down, mega star talent was thin and wrestling as a mainstream pop culture juggernaut was generally forgotten. What on earth made WWE midcard and last chance WCW main eventer Jeff Jarrett and his “wrasslin” father Jerry, think they could pose a threat to Vince McMahon’s monopoly, in an industry that was losing domestic interest? In fact what even made them think they could pull off a long running ‘Indy fed’, after so many pop up and die on a monthly basis? This is not the death of WCW, the rise and fall of ECW nor the triumph and tragedy of any other wrestling promotion. This is the mere story of survival, the survival of TNA Wrestling, a story that has yet to have an ending.

(Wrasslin – “A generally older school professional wrestling product that isn’t afraid to call itself wrestling, as opposed to sports entertainment and is more about in-ring drama than soap opera storylines and Hollywood. Said in a Southern twang referring to its non New York roots.”)

The War Was Won but There Was Still Smoke

When the white flag was raised and King Vincent Kennedy McMahon the 2nd stood victorious in battle over the fallen WCW, which had been a victim of its own political civil war for a number of years, a huge void was left in the wrestling kingdom. So many soldiers had put their life on the line and so much blood was shed that there was an emptiness in the air. A small band of prisoners of war joined forces with the rebel soldiers of ECW and a few WWE traitors out for treason, and started an invasion, but ultimately the only ones left standing were prince Hunter and the Billion Dollar Princess Stephanie, as King Vince and his round table of merry investors laughed with over flowing goblets of tape libraries. WCW was buried, all but for the royal blood line of Booker T, and all became quiet in the Kingdom, almost too quiet.

(“Blood was shed” not only refers to a metaphor of war, but in the clutches of the Monday Night Wars and Attitude Era, wrestlers Owen Hart, Rick Rude, Brian Pillman, The Renegade, Louie Spiccoli, Yokozuna, Big Dick Dudley and Davey Boy Smith all lost their lives, with stars like Hawk, Crash Holly, Miss Elizabeth, The Wall, Curt Hennig and Pitbull Anthony not far behind.)

Medieval pageantry and morbid death lists aside WWE was king. It was the absolute number one wrestling promotion in the world bar none. Say the word wrestling to anyone in the US and Europe at the time and the first thing they’d reply is WWE (well probably WWF, but you get the point). It was and still is a genre and brand in and of itself. The Hoover Company sells vacuum cleaners, but a good percentage of people go to buy a “hoover” whether it’s made by hoover or not. The brand has taken over the dictionary term. Similarly most wrestling fans ask people if they watch or like WWE, not pro wrestling. Sure you can take 0.0001% of its market share by running a garbage show with short fat men dressed as Kane in a barn somewhere in Leatherface country (did that Chainsaw really spin?), but becoming a legitimate threat? You’d have to be a wrestling ring short of a turnbuckle to think you’d have a chance. That being said, in the crazy world of pro wrestling there were actually a number of rings short of turnbuckles and some didn’t even have canvas. In fact two promotions tried to fill the emptiness left behind by the Monday Night Wars, just prior to TNA’s innovation of Pay Per View and entry in to the market place.

Modern wrestling has always been based around weekly television programming. A promotion aims to write compelling drama through storylines on TV that culminates in matches on Pay Per View. In other words fans get hooked on the TV shows and feel compelled to buy the PPV to see the big pay off, which in its basic form involves wanting to see a babyface (good guy) that has had the odds stacked against them throughout the month, beat a heel (bad guy) at the event. It obviously gets a lot more complex, but the idea is to entice the viewers in to paying for the PPV. The TV show following the PPV hypes it as a historic event, shows some still images and then builds towards the next event over the coming month. If you missed the PPV then you missed out on an amazing match, but it’s ok because you can purchase the replay, the DVD or save up for the next one knowing you were a fool to skip it. What, the WWE is coming to town? Then you better buy a ticket because Raw was amazing and that PPV blew you away. Well in theory.

Before the PPV and TV synergy became the basic model of a national and global wrestling company, wrestling would be shown on local stations and in the same fashion (more emphasis on squash matches and post/pre match promos) would hype the local show and entice fans to buy tickets and attend the events, where the real main event caliber bouts would take place. Today there are other successful models such as Ring of Honor that’s main revenue comes from DVD sales rather than PPV, although they are testing the waters in the PPV and TV direction. Using the internet is the next medium to crack and is done by smaller promoters like Sheldon Goldberg to increase awareness of their Indy dates. The point being, up until 2002 wrestling promoting had a tried and tested formula that made Vince McMahon very wealthy and at “one point” the WCW branch of Turner as well. TV that features a few matches and storylines that builds towards a pay per view. Simple!

Two promotions that hoped to capitalize on the death of WCW and give fans still left in no man’s land an alternative to the WWE were upstarts Xtreme/Xciting/X-Factor or just X Wrestling Federation (XWF) and World Wrestling All-Stars (WWA), one which was desperately trying to get a viable TV deal to eventually promote PPV and one that somehow fluked a PPV deal but had no TV to promote it. The only thing these companies had were the proverbial stars left on the plate from WCW’s buyout by McMahon and in most cases there was a reason why none of them were signed by WWE. If WWE didn’t feel business could be made with them, then how can you compete against the WWE with said wrestlers? And if it wasn’t talent they were lacking in then maybe, just maybe they had bad attitudes, were un-liked politically, or had issues of “Wellness.”

Names like Buff Bagwell, Eddie Guerrero, Brian Christopher, Lex Luger, Juventud, Perry Saturn, Scott Steiner, Road Warrior Hawk and Curt Hennig in hindsight and in some cases pre-sight were not wrestlers that fit the model employee description and when XWF consisted of Hulk Hogan, Jimmy Hart, the Nasty Boys (oh look it’s the Celebrity Championship Wrestling crew) and “Scheme” Gene Okerlund then you can tell, despite the name recognition and star power that there was something wrong with the picture and they’d have a ridiculously steep, icy and tall mountain to climb in order to pose a threat to McMahon, or even get their name out there for that matter.

Wrestling and all businesses need competition. It brings the best out in everyone, encourages radical and innovative ideas and results in a much better experience for the consumer. The Monday Night Wars produced the best wrestling television to date and the ratings reflected that, as on Monday March 8, 1999, wrestling fans tuned in to Raw and Nitro (Raw’s 6.4 to Nitro’s 4.4), posting a record combined rating of 10.8 – meaning 10.8 percent of America were watching wrestling that night! Who has came along since the NWO, Steve Austin and The Rock and still had the same impact? Nobody, not even John Cena. Why? Because there hasn’t been any major competition (amongst other reasons) and it’s the fans that have suffered.

Everyone uses McDonalds as an example in business. If McDonald’s didn’t have Burger King then we may have never experienced the McRib or the Prem. Grilled Chicken Ranch BLT Sandwich. We’d still have just a plain old hamburger. It’s still a burger, but without competition Ronald McDonald would never have had to create a new congealed concoction of meat for us to enjoy. If Raw never had Nitro then we may still have had Max Moon from outer Space or Mantaur the human bull man, instead of DX or Mick Foley.

In 2008 WWE’s age guidance rating went to a PG, meaning it was now100 percent suitable for children. Do you think if WCW was still around and the NWO had debuted just two months before that WWE would have changed their age rating?

Ok there are various business reasons why WWE may have taken that route, including getting more profitable advertisers to purchase ads during the show and to go along with new revenue streams like the children’s version of the WWE magazine. On the other hand one theory is that writing a compelling TV product towards children is a lot easier and a lazy way to book a product with no competitors. Even a washed up movie star like Freddy Prinze Jr. with no knowledge of the inner workings of wrestling can write for children. (Yes the forgotten husband of Buffy writes wrestling). The point being, WWE would have never alienated their 18 to 34 demographic if there were mainstream competition battling them for ratings and buyrates. Mick Foley reiterates in an edition of Fighting Spirit Magazine. “I saw some things on WWE TV that would never have been allowed to air, had there been competition.”

Being a child during the Attitude Era I can say that whether it was aimed at children or not (Sable revealing her breasts on global TV means it definitely wasn’t) I still watched it, so did all of my friends and I happily purchased children’s sticker books and action figures to boot. Whether the product is aimed at children or not, children will still immerse themselves in wrestling. No doubt there were complaints, and having to explain to my mother that Mae Young got her puppies out was emotionally scarring, but wrestling’s middle finger to the rest of the world is what helped it catch fire in the first place, ECW being partly responsible for that.

So as of March 26, 2001, WWE was the only global and nationally run professional wrestling company in the world and two misfit promotions wanted to fill the void left by World Championship Wrestling and ECW. Did they do it?

World Wrestling All-Stars:

World Wrestling All-Stars was the brain child of wealthy Australian music manager and concert promoter Andrew McManus (not related to British wrestler Mick McManus) and his big companies “i-generation” and “Andrew McManus Presents”, the latter which is hugely successful in promoting and running all sorts of music related events. AMP is responsible for some of the top known acts around the world making appearances in the continent and a few million here and there for Snoop Dogg or to set up the world’s largest annual Reggae festival “Raggamuffin” doesn’t mean squat, because the man knows the music industry and what sells in Australia. However he did not know wrestling, and because of this it bit him in his “acres.”

(Acres – “Australian slang for male testicles.”)

When an outsider or a fan with little real knowledge about wrestling brings up in conversation that they want to start promoting shows to anyone that is in, or knows about the business the first thing they’ll hear is. “You must be joking,” followed by a laugh and a sleazy grin. If the person laughing is kind, they might mention that you’ll lose all of your money. If not, they might try and get in on the show and take some of the money that you’ll eventually lose.

To put it bluntly there isn’t money to be made in wrestling unless you are extremely wealthy, extremely good at math, know the ins and outs of the wrestling business, but stopped being a fan years ago so as not to be awe struck by the wrestlers, and have a ten tone of luck on your side at the same time. This isn’t mentioning the legal issues, licenses and insurance.

Think you’re going to blow them away with a 50 foot exploding cage match? Think again, your building has a legal height limit of 10 feet. Oh and there’s the 15 wrestlers you booked. Five will no show without prior warning, three will have “injuries” or “family emergencies” two will run off with your prepaid flight and accommodation money, two will be in no shape to wrestle and one will jump off your entrance set like Jeff Hardy in the first match, peaking the crowd so the main event gets a few coughs and a luke warm clap. This is of course if you aren’t an asshole and don’t pay them to begin with, but instead go in to hiding, leaving the hardworking talent that did show up penniless.

There are certain types of people that promote wrestling. Some who foolishly see it on TV or live and think there is lots of money in it, only to lose it all in a similar fashion as above. Some who are rich to begin with and just want to play booker, and others that are such big fans that they hire all the big names they can think of because they are awesome and go out of their way to please them.

Despite these last few paragraphs being a caricature of the wrestling business (there are many respectable wrestlers and promoters), Andrew McManus was a mixture of somebody that foolishly saw it on TV and live thinking there was money to be made, who was already wealthy to begin with, and because of his lack of knowledge went out and hired all the big names he could, going out of his way to please them, pay them loads and listen to their selfish ideas. It doesn’t sound like a good combination of qualities to succeed.

WWA’s plan was to utilize big names that for whatever reason weren’t under contract to WWE and use them to sell the product and test the waters in Australia and other countries that weren’t used to mainstream wrestling live, before airing nationally, then globally on PPV and brining the company to the US to compete with McMahon. Like a lot of plans it looked good on paper, but in execution it didn’t play out too well. McManus basically took his i-Generation Superstars of Wrestling idea from several months earlier and…wait, I who? Exactly, that show tried to tour Australia but failed miserably with a PPV main event of Curt Hennig against Dennis Rodman! McManus wasn’t that stupid this time around and recognized that he needed a little help, but still didn’t get far with a PPV concept that had no TV to promote it.

“I think he’ll be the first to admit that Superstars of Wrestling was kind of an embarrassment. He realized how difficult this business is to be in if you don’t know anything. It’s not something you can just come in and pick up and make money off of,” Jeremy Borash told the DDT Digest at the time.

(i-Generation Superstars of Wrestling aired one PPV in December, 2000, from Sydney, Australia and was promoted as “Rodman Down Under.” Stealing ideas from a dying company seemed to kill it off prematurely).

Despite this, McManus was slightly smarter than credit is given, he did now have the brains to realize that he at least needed a wrestling guy to share responsibilities, help sign talent and book the shows. And he knew that WCW had several sell out tours of the country so there was at least some money to be made with the former WCW stars. In light of this he went out and recruited Jeremy Borash, a relatively new kid on the block who only really had a cup of coffee as a writer in WCW and was more known as a radio show host than anything else. Still, he was seasoned enough to know what wrestling is and was bursting with enthusiasm for the new venture. It’s always good to have new blood with new ideas in wrestling, because the business only thrives on originality, not the same old same old as many fans later experienced with WWE and prior with WCW. Did being brought in at the death of WCW make Borash want to change the business or had he honed his skills and learned from the worst at the worst possible time? A student is only as good as their teacher after all. Would the future TNA announcer prove his worth?

It turns out McManus had a lucky escape. He initially tried to get Vince Russo himself on board, who was too busy hiding in shame from adding the finishing touches to WCW’s demise, so was referred to his student Borash, who with no surprise would later show some Vince Russo-esque booking himself. At the time some insiders went as far as to say Russo was using Borash as a puppet and was booking the shows himself through Borash.

The first thing on the to-do list was to hire talent and they obviously snapped up a lot of the remaining names that were left out in the cold by WWE. If you want to create an initial buzz and sell the company to any big-wigs then you need recognizable stars, no matter how crazy their personal lives are, if they were likely to politick or if their talent had waned over the years. In theory new stars can be created later, you just have to make sure you keep everyone in check and don’t get hijacked by selfish money hungry talent in the mean-time.

Initially the roster had names from luchadore favorites Juventud Guerrera and Psicosis, to midcard acts like Konnan, Buff Bagwell and Stevie Ray, to former WWE stars like Gangrel and Road Dogg to former World Champions like Jeff Jarrett and Bret Hart. But if you pull down the visor you’ll realize that Jarrett left WWE on bad terms and wasn’t welcome back, Road Dogg and Buff Bagwell were fired for personal reasons and guys like Gangrel were dropped in favor of younger and more impressive stars like Edge and Christian. There’s no need to even mention Bret Hart’s beef with WWE and the Hitman wrestling was out of the question having only just recovered from a debilitating stroke due to a stray kick from Goldberg. It was however a solid crop of names to begin with.

Star power or no star power WWA had a huge feat in front of them. They’d set up a solid 2 month tour that would see 6 dates in Australia and 8 dates in the United Kingdom before airing a live PPV from Las Vegas, Nevada in the US. Thankfully the foreign market for wrestling was still under saturated, so the mere mentioned of a few former WWE or WCW stars was enough to sell a respectable amount of tickets. With WCW only recently going under and WWE only visiting the UK and AU sparingly at this point, there was actually a lot of interest in seeing a Jeff Jarrett, a legend such as Bret Hart and some solid work from the cruiserweights and undercard.

Advertising was local and targeted, and the first show took place in front of a few thousand people in Perth, Australia on October 19, 2001, overall being deemed a success, showing the promotion could be sustainable in the long run at its current level. Matches were not 5 stars by any stretch of the imagination and generally remained fairly short in length, but it showed promise and the live crowd were in to it. The main event saw the future founder of TNA Jeff Jarrett lose to former WWE star Road Dogg for the uncrowned WWA championship.

Jeff was considered a very important part of the company in terms of his name power and his wrestling knowledge, having grown up in a wrestling family. So early on he was given the role of “wrestling executive.” This basically meant he advised McManus about the wrestling side of things and the way a wrestling company should be ran. Borash (himself not a grizzled veteran), Jarrett and a lot of other people were allowed to “chip in” with ideas and McManus being so green to the business allowed wrestlers to politick for their own benefit. He generally went along with what people said; as long as it was spun in such a way that he thought it would make him money.

The second WWA show on October 21st, 2001 saw the same roster and a few random storylines to entertain the fans between wrestling. One was the odd feud between Jerry Lawler and Stevie Ray (Booker T’s brother) that saw “the King” interrupted as he was about to encourage some hotties to reveal their puppies.

The card featured Juventud Guererra & Psychosis defeat Lenny & Lodi in an exciting lightweight match, Norman Smiley beat Devon “Crowbar” Storm in a hardcore match featuring a table spot (to the crowd’s delight), Road Dogg (who had his title vacated so it could be re-crowned in a tournament on the debut PPV) defeat Konnan in a solid Dog Collar match, ECW’s Danny Doring & Adaira defeat Gangrel & Luna, Jerry Lawler won with help from his ladies against Stevie Ray, and a main event of Jarrett losing to an unsurprisingly boring Buff Bagwell, who showed no interest in being there. Jarrett was suffering from a big name that really didn’t care about the company and this wouldn’t be the only time it happened. Bagwell was hated during his short time in the WWE and his childish antics just didn’t cut it beyond the fustercluck of WCW’s lockerroom. Shortly before he was released he got his mother to phone the WWE office saying he couldn’t make it because he had a tummy bug!

In a smart move that could have potentially built up wrestling’s base in Australia for years to come, rookie giant Nathan Jones (who would later crack under the pressure of WWE), was put over Disco Inferno and was continually pushed as a major force in the promotion. The only problem being that he was a proverbial “green giant” and had barely graduated from wrestling school. Still it showed WWA were thinking ahead, despite all of their current problems.

Also on the show was a visibly ill Bret Hart, who’d recently been put out of action in WCW when Goldberg mistakenly kicked his head off causing a stroke. He let everyone know he was the commissioner and despite his weak walk to the ring and painful to watch speaking issues Hart got the best reaction of the night proving that his $250,000 guaranteed contract was worth every penny!?. In fact many of the top guys made money in that range, although Savage, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash would demand more when the time came. It’s kind of a theme in their careers, and who can blame them?

Again the event drew a good few thousand at the gate and profit would easily be made if they kept going at the same pace. The shows were good and could have been a lot worse, and they still would have been lapped up by the foreign fans who just wanted to see big stars wrestle, no matter how long or technically engaging the matches actually were.

The next few events contained similar matches and the same crop of talent, which is fine for a tour (WWE often repeats matches on their house shows), but where they’d really have to keep the critics happy would be their first PPV, aptly named the Inception.

Taped on November 26, 2001 and shown first on PPV in New Zealand before airing in the US in January, the show was made a mockery of by critics.

It was determined that although the roster had names and talent it still needed some more star power if it were to succeed in the long-term and have an impact when it debuted in the US, else it may come off as just a watered down imitation of mainstream wrestling. One such star that was in negotiation with the company was Randy Savage, a wrestler that’s best days were behind him even before he debuted in WCW in 1994. He was slow, old looking, and bloated, but had an undeniable reaction from the fans and could not be ignored. For the better of the promotion Jarrett agreed to get him on board. He as well as anybody knew that Savage was a marquee name (backed up by the fact that Savage appeared in TNA years later), but if he knew that the Macho Man would be gunning for his own position he may have kyboshed the idea in its infancy.

Savage knew his future in the industry at a national money making level was going downhill at a rapid rate. With no WCW around to leech off there was nowhere for him to go other than the endless cycle of conventions and signings that in the end could not afford to pay him. WWE was never an option as Vince McMahon has a mysterious deep seeded hatred for the man that until this day keeps him from appearing in video games, DVDs and other aspects of the WWE product. Rumors are rife (the internet is your friend), but neither man has commented to explain what happened between them.

Thus Savage grabbed on with all of his mite and tried to get a substantial pay day as well as power in the new company, to at least prolong his lofty income and career status. Jarrett, who was only really looking out for the promotion’s best interest was worried by this, and according to his father Jerry’s published diary was getting blanked by the foolish McManus for several days, whilst Savage had his wicked way. It was this that distanced Jeff from the company and helped him put most of his focus in to the planning of his own wrestling promotion, of which we are now all familiar with. Total Nonstop Action.