By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

In a new interview, TNA star Bully Ray defended TNA's decision to spoil Thursday's big angle centered on Bully putting Dixie Carter through a table.

"When you watch other TV shows whether they are soap operas or reality TV, many TV shows show you what's coming the following week, and you always want to encourage the highest amount of people to watch your product, so I have no problem with it," Bully told the v2 Wrestling Podcast.

[ LINK: Bully's full interview HERE ]

Caldwell's Analysis: This comment pretty much captures 10+ years of TNA's identity crisis. It's not a soap opera or a reality show; it's a wrestling show simulating sports. Therefore, in the real-time universe that Impact exists, next week's show has not happened yet. It doesn't matter if 2 percent or 25 percent know that next week's show has already been taped, it's about creating a universe where what's happening from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. EST on Thursday night on Spike TV is really happening live at this very moment and wrestlers are really competing to win matches and titles. You compare the inconsistent, identity-less, stuck-in-a-different-era TNA product to what New Japan is producing right now with the G1 Climax tournament simulating sports at its highest, most-entertaining level maximizing their control of stories, outcomes, and journeys, and it's just completely night and day. If TNA actually took the time to build a consistent product based on an entertaining simulation of sports via the pro wrestling genre where the audience can emotionally invest in the stories, outcomes, characters, and journeys, that is how you maximize viewership. Amazingly, the company wrote the template for the U.S. TV market with Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle building to Lockdown 2008, yet went completely away from it shortly thereafter.

[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

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