By Richard Gardner, Torch specialist

While it would be grossly unfair to judge the new TNA regime on one Pay-Per-View and three television shows, the hope that the company will be able to challenge WWE is evaporating by the day. For all the talk of TNA offering an alternative, Bischoff being more creative than McMahon, and putting the focus on the younger wrestlers, TNA recreated the Montreal Screwjob on this week's edition of Impact.

Is there anything more passe than creating an angle based on something that occurred in another promotion twelve years ago? Well yes there is, and that is Sean Morley reprising the Val Venis gimmick. Morley spent his final weeks in WWE near the bottom of the card, yet he was inexplicably put over Christopher Daniels at Sunday's "Genesis" PPV. The crowd was livid, and with good reason. Daniels main evented the last PPV, yet he was booked to lose in the second match by a wrestler who represented everything the audience hates about sports entertainment.

Going to Impact, The Nasty Boys beat Eric Young and Kevin Nash on this week's Impact. The Nasty Boys have not been major stars since WCW's demise, but they were instantly pushed as challengers to Team 3D. Yet, this is not the most blatant example of Hulk Hogan using his power to get his friends a payday.

Bubba the Love Sponge, the shock jock radio host, has become a TNA backstage interviewer. Like those who have limited upside in the ring, it is difficult to see what benefit Bubba offers TNA. His crass and idiotic comments about Haiti only serve to ask the question about why he is in the company in the first place. Current estimates are that 110,000 people died in the earthquake, and his thoughts on foreign policy at this sensitive time are "f--- Haiti." TNA needs to distance the company from such an ill-informed, myopic individual.

Back to Thursday night. Kurt Angle's match at Genesis was sold on the premise that if he did not win, he would not get any more title shots in 2010 against A.J. Styles. That's not particularly hard to enforce, but that did not stop Hulk Hogan from over-ruling the stipulation and booking a rematch on Impact. Stipulations being ignored was a major fault with latter-day WCW, and is today with WWE. Why should fans spend money on a PPV stipulation match, when said stipulation is either over-ruled or ignored on subsequent television shows?

TNA used the match as an excuse for re-living 1997. Kurt Angle was excellent as always, but the whole scenario was completely illogical. The angle came across as a re-creation of a previous event, making it impossible for the audience to suspend their disbelief. The story was that Earl Hebner called for the bell when A.J. Styles had Angle in the anklelock. Angle lost his temper, much in the same way a Bret Hart did, spitting in Hulk Hogan's face and causing havoc at the announcers table.

Re-creating Montreal is the least creative thing that a booker can do. It has been done so many times in so many promotions that it has been rendered meaningless. WCW did it at Starrcade '99 when they were in meltdown, and that was ten years ago. When you consider that WWE is currently running an angle based on Bret Hart's first appearance since Montreal, the decision to book Thursday's angle becomes even more baffling. TNA should be trying to differentiate their product from the Vince McMahon's, but instead they are running a low-rent version of one of the WWE's biggest storylines of 2010. Why bother to watch Kurt Angle in the role of Bret Hart, when you can watch the WWE and see the real thing?

The Bischoff-Hogan regime is in its infancy, but there are already signs that it will be yet another false dawn for TNA. The wrestlers who have been used to promote TNA's image of providing better wrestling than the WWE are now doing jobs to stars that haven't been over in years or, in some cases, decades.

Hulk Hogan was right when he suggested that there is a market for a wrestling product that offers an alternative to the WWE. Too bad it's looking like TNA isn't it.

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

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