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By Wade Keller, PWTorch editor

This isn’t working. This format and booking philosophy should not continue. When Dixie Carter is wondering aloud whether the “monthly PPV format” is the problem rather than the content of the monthly PPVs, you wonder if there will ever be change.

TNA No Surrender on Sunday night was another valiant attempt to shove even more gimmicks and insider jargon and counter-productive surprises and in-jokes and crudeness into three hours, hoping that if they keep giving viewers a greater quantity of something they’ve rejected time after time, they’ll finally like it.

The main event encapsulated the entire failure of TNA’s booking approach. The crowd pop for A.J. Styles at the end wasn’t an endorsement of the booking that led up to it. What the crowd was telling TNA was they are most happy when PPV ends with a wrestler pinning someone they don’t like. They were also cheering change. During the 15 minutes of the match itself, there were a lot of dead spots where the fans were quiet to the point that even Mike Tenay felt compelled to try to explain the silence.

If TNA wanted to give A.J. Styles the title, then build up Styles as the aspiring young wrestler wanting to make Sting proud and end Kurt Angle’s reign. And then deliver exactly that. It’s really that simple. TNA takes that satisfying storyline, and rather than trust the ultra-talented and charismatic Styles and Angle to tell a wonderful story within the confines of the ropes for 15 minutes, they insert Matt Morgan and Sting and tons of booking twists and turns. As a result, Styles is now competing with two other babyfaces for cheers, which forces fans throughout the 15 minutes to split their allegience and rationalize cheering for one over the others. Also, they built the majority of their TV shows around Morgan-Angle, not Styles-Angle. This should have been Styles vs. Angle or Morgan vs. Angle, not a three-way, four-way, or (gasp) five-way match.

If it was Styles vs. Angle, Sting should have sent Styles to the ring on his own to prove himself while he watched from the back. If TNA wanted Sting “involved,” just have him stand at the entryway of the arena with a baseball bat, scaring off the first hint of a run-in by Mafia members at a time when Angle appeared to be in jeopardy. That’d be all that would be needed in terms of an outside influence and a fitting inclusion of Obi-Sting Kenobi looking out for young protege A.J. Skywalker in the PPV main event climax of the storyline.

If it was Morgan vs. Angle, then keep Sting and Styles out of the situation entirely. Give fans that clear storyline of Morgan taking on Angle one-on-one for the title. Do the full turn of Morgan against Angle on TV three or four weeks earlier when Morgan finally smartens up and sees Angle for what he is. Then build the hell out of Morgan’s quest to win the title so fans are buying No Surrender to see one thing that they’ve anticipated for weeks - Morgan showing Angle his time is up and he’s run into a young, determined lion who is better than him.

If TNA insists on a four-way (which is a horrible idea considering the two perfectly suitable one-on-one matches above that could have headlined the show), then at the very least have one of the wrestlers in the match be clearly on Angle’s side so that it isn't three babyfaces and one heel champion. If Steiner were in the match, have Steiner be at Angle’s side. Don’t hint that he might turn on Angle before the PPV or during the match. Resist, resist, resist the temptation to do every single swerve that enters their minds. (Russo always sides with "surprise" over "logic" because he defines failure as a booker as fans guessing what's doing rather than defining failure as a booker being stagnant ratings and PPV buyrates so low TNA's President is openly wondering if they should do them anymore.) Then, the finish could have been similar, with Sting seeing a vulnerable Angle, and Steiner about hit Styles from behind, and rather than go for the win, Sting saves Styles from being hit from behind. As he does so, he tumbles to the floor and hurts his ankle. He then tells Styles to go for the pin because he can’t get up. That accomplishes everything and doesn't undercut anything that TNA should want to achieve in this situation.

Sting proves he’s magnanimous and honorable by saving Styles from being hit even when Angle was lying there vulnerable to a pin. In that scenario, unlike what played out, it wouldn’t be that Sting handed Styles the title in a way that made it seem like Styles didn’t have to work for it or Sting could have won it if he wanted to. Instead, Sting’s actions would have been motivated by the simple desire to save a friend from being knocked out from behind, prioritizing that over the selfish act of scoring a pin at that exact moment. When Sting got hurt tackling Steiner as he was about to hit Styles, it would give Styles the opening to get the win without Sting having to voluntarily give it up for no reason other than Dad wants Son to have the glory this time. There are many variations that would work. TNA picked a scenario that failed in several foreseeable ways. As happy as fans were with Styles winning, he didn't really win. Sting handed him the win he could have had.

They made a terribly crowded situation even worse by injecting Hernandez into the match. It made him look bad because he worked so hard for the briefcase and now was cashing it in for a one-in-five chance at a title. But what’s worse is that it caused even more splintering of loyalty among fans at the start of the match. Rather than having to choose whether they were going to root for Morgan, Sting, or Styles, they now had to rationalize cheering for or against Hernandez, too. It was way way way way way too much, and all of it not only unnecessarily, but obviously counter-productive.

And this is not brain surgery. Pro wrestling’s track record shows that simpler works better, that fans will pay to see two talented wrestlers - one whom they like and the other whom they don’t - fight for a title. They don’t need "swerves and surprises." They need, instead, "anticipation and payoff." The good guy doesn’t have to win every time, but when he does win, it ought to be a result of a focused yet perhaps rocky journey with occasional setbacks that fans followed and rooted for with a payoff that wasn’t the end result of 15 minutes of completley unnecessary distractions. Even if pro wrestling was invented by TNA eight months ago and there were not decades of history of what works or doesn't work to base their booking on, what happened last night was obviously counter-productive to any logical goal you’d have when promoting a show. It was excessive and undisciplined in every way.

This is why Vince Russo is regarded as a bad booker, among worst in the history of pro wrestling. He’s not bad out of laziness. He’s not bad because he tries new things that don’t work. He’s not bad because he’s behind the times. Many bookers have failed for those reasons. Russo is unique. He’s bad because he does so much wrong in such a concentrated, excessive, undisciplined, inefficient manner, and then refuses to ever learn from failure and adjust his approach.

There are things Russo can bring to a booking team of value. But leading the way, no way. He just doesn’t get it. He’s a kid in a candy store who stuffs his face with as much candy as he can and even though he nearly chokes each time and gets a stomach ache each time, he goes back for more and does it again and again and again. Why? Because if three pieces of candy tastes good, then 300 logically would be 100 times better. It’s just crazy that this is still happening and that there are enablers within TNA who continue to justify it. And that’s just one match.

Without going into as much detail, here are other problems along the same lines:

-Lethal Lockdown is a gimmick match that by its nature must be a main event and must feature all of the top names. It just feels wrong in a mid-card slot. It just feels wrong with mid-carders in it. It’s rules and structure are too elaborate for it to be a mid-card throwaway tag team match where one of the teams mocks not even knowing the names of their partners (which is yet another example of the Pension Wrestling Mafia sending messages to gullible management that these nobodies can’t sell tickets because they weren’t in WCW in 1998 or WWE in 2002 so keep paying us to do almost nothing because without us around, you're toast).

-They added an unscheduled match between two prelim wrestlers and had them brawl all over the building in match number four. Why? What did that accomplish? It just numbed the crowd to violence to come later. If TNA spent the first 90 minutes having matches that were wrestled inside the ropes, by the time they got to a match between top wrestlers who are in a money-feud where there was a special stip that allowed brawling outside of the ring, it’d mean something. It didn’t help, either, that Taz cracked up at one wrestler backdropping the other into a trash bin. Were the wrestlers going for comedy there? If not, why is the color guy basically mocking them? It says something about how seriously Taz thinks fans take these stunt brawls backstage that he felt it was okay to laugh at one of the moves that wasn’t played for comedy. He reacted as if Mae Young had just thrown a pie in Todd Grisham's face.

-There was a ref bump in the Bobby Lashley vs. Rhino match. Why? To save Rhino the “humiliation” of losing to Lashley clean? Or to take away the image that Lashley is a major force and huge signing who can beat a mid-carder like Rhino without help or controversy? It was another one of those knee-jerk booking moves that undercuts the big picture (get Lashley over) in the process of trying to do something small (like save Rhino from being “hurt” by jobbing, as if anyone would hold that against him given where the perception was to begin with regarding where these two were on the totem pole).

-Why did Dr. Stevie refuse to give Kevin Nash the money after the match? I think it was because, as Stevie has said on TV for weeks, a three count doesn’t win anyone the bounty, they have to destroy Abyss and put him out of wrestling. Nash trying to massage Abyss’s prostate with a taser doesn’t count as ending his career, so Stevie - as he clearly pointed out with his body language to Nash - wasn’t happy with just a 1-2-3. Did the announcers get this? Nope. Maybe they didn't actually see the pre-tapes where Stevie explained how one would earn the bounty, but someone should have told them in the production meeting or on headsets. Stevie was basically turned babyface when Nash stole his money, but if that was the intent, the announcers failed to drive it home and thus it was just a mess.

-The X Divison Title, which got almost no build-up on TV, goes on third. A title match in the third slot on the card tells viewers all they need to know about whether this title and these two wrestlers matter. No video package touting the title, the feud, or the wrestlers can overcome the fact that it’s positioned as a prelim title that prelim wrestlers fight over. Until X Division matches move into the main event or co-main event slot every single month, the X Division title will merely appeal to that narrow slice of the potential fanbase that just likes highspots and stiff work. The X Division can be so much more than that. The Pension Wrestling Mafia strikes again, undercutting the growth of the X Division which is largely made up of non-WWE/WCW alum, and they have people running the show playing the role of unwitting village idiots who are all too happy to nod along with the selfish rationalizations pushed by these "name-brand" pensioners who are snickering behind the scenes (and even on air - Scott Steiner golfing backstage is an inside joke just to show how unaware Dixie is of how much she's being taken advantage of) that they're "getting away with this" yet again.

I'll repeat, it’s not the Monthly PPV Formula that’s the problem. It’s what TNA is dumping and shoving into the three hours of satellite time that’s the problem. And month after month, they embody the definition of a fool by repeating the same thing over and over, with the only variation being they try to do more of what’s undercutting their success within that three hour window hoping more of what fans have rejected will make them like it. They won't. Will Ed Ferrara and Jeremy Borash being added back onto the booking team be enough to jerk the steering wheel into a radical new direction? Probably not, but I sure hope so.

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