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TNA News
CALDWELL'S QUICK TAKE: A band-aid won't do it - TNA needs to completely overhaul the PPV product Sep 20, 2009 - 10:35:58 PM
TNA bringing in Ed Ferrara to edit TNA head writer Vince Russo is a band-aid on a larger problem. TNA completely needs to overhaul their PPV product. There's just no other way around it.
A.J. Styles winning the TNA World Title was a happy ending and a satisfying conclusion for the few, the proud, the TNA hardcores who bought tonight's PPV. However, it will mask the major problems on the rest of the PPV.
Where does TNA start with the overhaul? I said this is a Quick Take, so I'll hit the highpoints.
(1) Get Don West back on commentary. Taz is just too much about putting himself over and re-living what happened in ECW 10-15 years ago on commentary. (Then again, that's an industry-wide problem in WWE and TNA of re-living what happened in wrestling 10-15 years ago, but it happens on every show in TNA.) Taz could be better utilized elsewhere in TNA as a coach rather than cracking jokes for three hours because he's "free of the magic headsets."
(2) Put a ban on insider terminology. It's distracting, it doesn't fit the context of the storylines presented, and it's not cool. It's just not. It doesn't make TNA seem any hipper or cooler to act like they're reviewing the product when they're supposed to be telling the audience a story about what's going on inside the ring.
(3) Get rid of the "hardcore" bag of tricks for one month. Just one month. Team 3D, Steiner & Booker, Mick Foley, Kevin Nash, and Abyss might be incapable of having anything other than a bag of tricks match that's just as groan-inducing as the previous month's, but it's embarrassing to trot out the played-out Suicide character in a Falls Count Anywhere match, a boring Lethal Lockdown match with no clear explanation of alliances, and a 1999-era WCW taser-with-smoke match on one show. Might as well trot out Scott Hall if TNA is going to dip into the 1999 bag of tricks complete with taser accessory.
4) Get out of Orlando. The look, the set-up, the lighting, the audience sitting on their hands because they've seen everything TNA could possibly throw at them to draw a reaction, and the whole atmosphere just feels stale. It's old. To newer fans who haven't watched every TNA PPV for the past four years, it just looks minor league.
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