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GUEST EDITORIAL
By Chad Hogan
PWTorch.com reader

In response to yesterday's Guest Editorial, it looks like bashing Vince Russo is once again the trend around these parts. You know, the dirt sheets. Anytime anything is wrong in TNA, let's blame Russo!

However, what Mr. Thatcher failed to realize in his well-written editorial was that Russo is hardly to blame for some of TNA's misgivings. Two examples are the X Division and Knockouts Division, which aren't Russo's entities to begin with. He has a large hand in the creativity of the show, yes, but he isn't the head booker. That was Dutch Mantell's job, and look where he is now. Russo had to hold on to the product during the summer while Carter found new talent.

And find them she did! Bringing back Ed Ferrara is a great move. It will only help Russo's qualities while Ed weeds out his negatives. Dixie Carter is doing an admirable job laying down the law (minus Kurt Angle), and what most of us "smarts" don't seem to realize is that this is a "television" industry first, and a wrestling industry second.

If you want to see the long matches and ring psychology that the old-school fans appreciate, you have to go to the live events and (sometimes) order the pay-per-views.

Watching the "free" television product they greatfully give us, in these post-WCW-days, is a god-send! Critiquing it and threatening to not watch the "free" television product and therefore, minimize your daily wrestling intake (assuming you are a true fan) is just doing yourself an unjustice and hurting the industry.

It is through the hard times that we, wrestling fans, have to stick by our sport. All you TNA haters will be the first ones whining and complaining if they ever go out of business. I'm not trying to be a TNA or a Russo mark, but these two guys have 15+ years experience writing for television. Russo and Ferrara are more qualified then all of the writers combined in WWE.

Keller's Reply: Some fans seem to think, like you do, that speaking out against what you believe to be lousy booking that fails to take advantage of the sacrifices and hard work of wrestlers is somehow being disloyal to wrestling. What's disloyal to pro wrestling and the pro wrestlers you admire and follow is to blindly applaud any booking, no matter how inefficient or destructive it's proven to be over time. Of course wrestling fans would lament the loss of TNA should it go under, and those who speak out against the ridiculous pattern of Russo making the same mistakes over and over again are the ones who can be proud that they spoke out against the mistakes they believed were being made.

Second, TNA is not a TV business first and a pro wrestling company second. They are one in the same. And the notion that TNA can survive as a TV industry without figuring out how to make money on PPV and house shows is a risky one and unnecessarily. The two should go hand in hand. The premise that a pro wrestling company needs to somehow direct its TV product away from what happens between the ropes and that matches need to be kept super-short is assuming wrongly that there isn't a huge number of people out there who want to see a compelling, athletic, believable simulated fight between two personalities - one they want to see win and the other they want to see lose. If a promoter or booker can't hold an audience by booking wrestlers to wrestle on a wrestling TV show, they're failing at their jobs. Of course there should be a mix of promos and angles, humor and seriousness, but all in the right place and right quantity.

On last week's Impact, for instance, Mick Foley was teaming with Abyss for the first time in a tag team title shot. Not once on the show did Foley address the title opportunity, but instead was focused on the destruction of a caricature. By the time the match took began, fans hadn't been conditioned to care at all about the tag titles or what was at stake in the match. They had been conditioned to believe Foley cared more about a framed caricature of he and Jeremy Borash than the tag team titles. That mixing two tones (lite comedy and a tag team title match) in a way that clash and undercut each other. And worse, it made the brutal attack on Abyss later seem jarringly out of sync with the tone Foley set earlier with the lite comedy with Borash regarding the caricature.

But the main point I want to make is that speaking out as a fan against what you believe to be lousy booking is the best way you can show loyalty to the industry and the wrestlers. Applauding bad booking or turning a blind eye to it doesn't do anyone any good as it could lead to a bad booking philosophy continuing until the finances run out.

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[Vince Russo photo credit Wade Keller (c) PWTorch]

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