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KELLER BLOG: Why putting Samoa Joe vs. Suicide on first last night with no hype was a mistake Aug 28, 2009 - 12:17:13 PM
The booking philosophy or rationale for putting on Joe vs. Suicide with zero hype or backstory is that the match was super-short, so why bother.
The problem is, no matter how short the match is, the supposition is that nobody knew it'd be short ahead of time. So whether it went one minute or 30 minutes, the lack of hype sends the message to viewers that these are two opening match scrubs we threw out there to fill some time. An example that proves the point is that they'd never open a show with Mick Foley vs. Kurt Angle or Sting vs. A.J. Styles for no reason and with no hype (even if the match was only going to last a minute). Why, because it obviously would be (a) a lost opportunity and (b) send a message to viewers that these guys don't matter and their match is, well, just an opening scrub level match. Now, Joe vs. Suicide is not at the marquee level of the two examples, but it should be treated as something closer to those two examples than what it was, whether it being booked to be short or not.
TNA can define just about any match as being a big deal, and at times they might overhype which is bad a thing. But underhyping is even worse because viewers can live with overhype because they kinda know that comes with the territory, but when you underhype a match, especially with wrestlers not yet fully defined as main eventers (or in Joe's case, misproduced and badly botched for the last year that he's been brought down from main event status and needs to be rebuild), it just tells viewers - unnecessarily - that these two guys are just filling time with moves and we put no more thought into it than that.
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