The Reaction to TNA Reaction

Last week, I read on a wrestling news site that TNA president Dixie Carter—a person in charge of a wrestling company that knows jack about wrestling—had announced the premiere of a new TNA program on Monday nights to run consecutively with Impact. I believe the ridiculous tag line had something to say about “diving into the combustable backstage world of TNA wrestling.” That’s not an exact quote, but it’s close enough for government work.

In essence, TNA Reaction is a reality show, and I’m sure it’s just as scripted rigged, and pointless as every other “reality based” show on television right now. Why don’t they just call it Survivor TNA or Big Brother TNA Edition?

What TNA president Dixie Carter, Hulk Hogan, and the incomparable Eric Bischoff must be hoping this show will do is fool the blatant marks of TNA into feeling like they aren’t blatant marks. I’m sure I am not the only person that has noticed that Hogan and Bischoff have been showcasing some backstage discussion on Impact about who’s “getting over with the fans” and who’s “good for business”. Okay guys, Christopher Daniels was good for business. He was a solid wrestler with a wide range of maneuvers and a legitimate talent for in-ring and promo work, unlike the seven foot two inch tall man with one liquid ounce of brain matter that’s getting pushed as being good enough to take out Hernandez, otherwise known as Matt Morgan.

While there may be some prepubescent children, oblivious teens, and clueless forty year old men watching TNA that will buy this TNA Reaction crap, I—as an educated mark—will not. Call me pretentious. Say I’m no different than any other mark out there if you like, but the reality is, I know when I’m being condescended toward and when my intelligence as a paying fan of professional wrestling is being insulted. These backstage and boardroom jackasses ought to remember that if I stop paing to see their product, they start losing money. There is no wrestling business without the fans, and if you piss the fans off, your business goes down the old crapper.

Apparently, I’m not the only person who is turned off by TNA Reaction. At the very least, there are a lot of other people who just don’t care The first ever installment of TNA’s new show did a 0.3 rating. Which brings me to the ultimate point of this entry.

How the hell does TNA expect to compete with WWE, even with WWE’s newer less tolerable product, when they put crap like this on TV opposite Monday Night Raw? How do they expect to build up new stars, or rejuvenate the careers of old stars when they fire solid workers like Christopher Daniels? Most importantly, what in the blue hell (thank you Dwayne Johnson) was Bob Carter thinking when he put his Hollywood Hannah Montana promoting daughter in charge of the everyday workeigs of a freakingprofessional wrestling company? The wrestling gods (and I most certainly do not mean JBL) need to save us from this utter garbage that we are forced to watch on the national scale right now.