wrestling / Columns

Bound For Disaster: Is This The Beginning Of The End For TNA Wrestling?

October 12, 2014 | Posted by Greg De Marco

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but Sunday night is TNA’s annual pay-per-view extravaganza, Bound For Glory. It’s commonly accepted as TNA’s biggest event of the year, although some can make the argument for Slammiversary. This year, the event emanates from Japan’s famed Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, one of wrestling’s most desired locations in the world.

Be warned: This article contains spoilers.

However, if you take a look at the card, you’ll see a complete disconnect from the Bound For Glory lineup to TNA’s current television product. The world championship isn’t being defended on what should be the company’s most important show of the year. And it’s not that the world champ is in a different match—the world champion isn’t even there.

If you even remember who the actual world champion is.

Well at least you have the world tag team champions, right? Well, sorta. The Wolves of Eddie Edwards and Davey Richards aren’t even in Japan for Bound For Glory. But despite what the Impact Wrestling website tells you, they aren’t even the tag team champions anymore!

In fact, Bound For Glory is built upon a main event (at least I assume it will be the main event) of James Storm and The Great Sanada against The Great Muta and Tajiri.

Wait…what?

Here’s the funny part. One of those four men is actually one half of the TNA World Tag Team Champions!

The second highest match listed on the card features TNA Hall of Fame inductees Team 3D—Bully Ray and Devon, neither of whom are likely to be returning from Japan as members of the TNA Roster—against Tommy Dreamer and Abyss.

Here’s the funny part. One of those four men is also actually one half of the TNA World Tag Team Champions!

I wish I could point out where the actual world champion is on the card…but he isn’t there either!

Confused yet?

You’re likely not, because you’ve been following along online and know the spoilers. TNA has already taped their shows into November—meaning they’ve already taped TV that will air after their most important show of the year! That is completely asinine for a company that expects us to see it as the #2 promotion in the United States.

At least we are getting one title match, as Samoa Joe defends the X-Division Championship against Low Ki and Kaz Hayashi. Okay, okay, here’s where it gets really goofy: Samoa also isn’t the X-Division Champion anymore! And the real X-Division Champion is one of his challengers!

This is starting to feel like an infomercial—BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Indeed, as HAVOK, the Knockouts Champion, is defending her championship against “top contender” Velvet Sky. Which is odd since Madison Rayne just became #1 contender on Wednesday’s Impact Wrestling. What’s even odder is the fact that neither HAVOK nor Madison are actually the Knockouts Champion!

Yes, TNA now has me saying “Holy Shit!” for all the wrong reasons.

Take a look at the list of champions, as featured on the Impact Wrestling website:

Five talents are pictured. Only two of them are appearing at Bound For Glory. Those matches are all set to air after Bound For Glory, basically spoiling the result of two of the show’s matches.

Oh, and the best part? NONE of those listed are actually the current champions!

(Remember my spoiler warning?)

Over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to see Bobby Roode win the World Championship from Bobby Lashley. Then James Storm and Abyss will inexplicably win the World Tag Team Championship The Wolves. Then Samoa Joe will be forced to vacate the X-Division Championship due to injury (despite defending it this weekend) and it’ll be won by Low Ki. And Knockouts Champion Havok (who defends it against Velvet Sky on Sunday) will lose—not to recently crowned #1 contender Madison Rayne, either. Taryn Terrell will soon be your Knockouts Champion.

As a kid, I was well aware of title changes taking place over a month before they aired. But that was when I was a kid! This is 2014 and wrestling results are reported all over the internet. The results are easy to come by.

Let’s take a look at the rest of the announced Bound For Glory card:
• Ethan Carter III vs Ryota Hama
• MVP vs Kazma Sakamoto
• Manik vs Minoru Tanaka
• Andy Wu & Hijo Del Pantera vs Kuroshio Ikemen Jiro & Yusuke Kodama

Yes, there is a guy named “Andy Wu” wrestling at TNA’s biggest event of the year. That’s his picture to the right!

What’s worse is the list of names not listed: Bobby Roode (the world champ), Davey Richards, Eddie Edwards, Austin Aries, Eric Young (a major part of TNA’s 2014 storylines), Magnus (the face of the company at the start of the year), Bram (arguably the most entertaining guy on each show), Mr. Anderson, Gunner, Jeff Hardy, and The Menagerie.

Okay, they’re only listed because of Rebel. Look left as you read on and you’ll see why! But hey, at least Tommy Dreamer got booked! I guess Rob Van Dam and Sabu weren’t available. Too bad Jerry Lynn is retired.

TNA’s Executive Vice President of Talent Relations and Creative, John Gaburick, has this to say about the card on the Impact Wrestling Website: “I can confidently say this will be the most intriguing and captivating three hours of professional wrestling action all year. With an incredible card pitting the best professional wrestling athletes against one another in never-before-seen matches, Bound For Glory will once again set the standard for the best wresting in the world.”

And he very well may be right. But the card makes zero sense in the TNA Universe (sorry to use that term). What’s being presented Sunday is basically “One Night Only: Bound For Glory.”

And I’m not 100% sure this is how TNA planned it. When the TNAMecca Twitter asked TNA official Bob Ryder why so many talents were missing from the card, Ryder replied that they did the best they could given the circumstances around the event. The tweet has since been removed, but that tells me that political forces were at work between TNA and Wrestle-1, The Great Muta’s promotion in Japan who is co-promoting the event with TNA. Bound For Glory isn’t listed on Wrestle-1’s schedule, but is featured amongst the news on their site.

And while I can say this likely isn’t 100% the way TNA planned it, I can’t say it’s not 100% their fault. Why in the world would you put your company, and talent, in this position?

Let’s review the points I’ve made above, shall we?
• The World and World Tag Team Championships aren’t defended at Bound For Glory
• Most of the roster isn’t featured on the event
• None of the company’s listed champions are even the current champions
• TNA has already taped at least a month’s worth of Impact Wrestling that takes place after Bound For Glory, arguably their signature pay-per-view

Add to this the most important fact: TNA still hasn’t announced any details of a television deal. Upon the last reports, the only offer is from Velocity. Not the former WWE TV show, but the TV network. WGN America is also rumored to be interested, along with two other unnamed networks.

None of those options are as good as Spike TV, and TNA stands to lose three quarters of their television revenue when the Spike TV deal ends. And that doesn’t take into account the rumored 15% fee that goes to UTA, the agency negotiating on TNA’s behalf.

And there’s still more. TNA’s commentary team of Mike Tenay and Taz won’t actually be at Bound For Glory, yet they’ll be doing commentary for the event. In Nashville. That always goes well from a “crowd noise to commentary volume” perspective.

Oh, and despite all this it was apparently still cost effective to fly Jeremy Borash over!

Head a little further back and you’ll see the end of TNA runs for the likes of Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian, one of the best acts—and two of the best performers—on the roster. You also have expiration of Kurt Angle’s contract before Bound For Glory takes place.

And let’s take a look at their last four sets of television tapings. The Bethlehem, Pennsylvania tapings after Slammiversary went very well, with the company promising to return. They then went to New York City for an amazing set of tapings that were one part independent wrestling, one part ECW reunion show and one part Impact Wrestling.

Those tapings also featured another problem–the biggest moment of the year for TNA. It wasn’t a pay-per-view, it wasn’t a title change. In fact, it wasn’t a match at all. The high point of TNA’s storytelling this year was Bully Ray putting Dixie Carter through a table. THAT was the biggest, most well built moment of the year. And the main antagonist wasn’t even a wrestler.

That followed with another good set of television tapings that saw about half of the attendance as the first set. Things still went well, despite the increase in hardcore style matches—the Impact Wrestling episode before Hardcore Justice featured more hardcore matches than Hardcore Justice itself.

The company then went back to Pennsylvania for the tapings that air before and after Bound For Glory. They held these tapings over four nights, likely eight episodes, with the following attendance numbers: 350, 200, 275, 650.

I’m sorry, there is no way to spin those numbers—those are BAD.

The schedule page of the Impact Wrestling website lists the following dates:
• October 12 – Bound For Glory (Tokyo, Japan)
• January 29 – Maximum Impact Tour (Glasgow, Scotland)
• January 30 – Maximum Impact Tour (Manchester, England)
• January 31 – Maximum Impact Tour (London, England)

You read that right, there are no events scheduled from October 12 to January 29. Those two events are 109 days apart.

109 days!

The title of this article is “Bound For Disaster: Is This The Beginning Of The End For TNA Wrestling?” The items I listed above tend to indicate that things are bad—really bad—for TNA.

But the answer to my question is still NO.

The beginning of the end is an arguable point, but I put it at the day the company let AJ Styles go. The company has lost more than one talent over the past 12 months, but none sting more than TNA (Sting pun unintended).

AJ Styles was the face of TNA, and Dixie Carter failed to see that. I know he wanted more money and they wanted to pay him less. Cut two or three other guys and keep AJ Styles. AJ should be defending the TNA World Championship at Bound For Glory in Japan (or winning it from Lashley) and should be doing so against the winner of the 2014 Bound For Glory Series.

Oh yeah, remember that??? The series of matches that gave you a title shot at TNA’s biggest event of the year? It didn’t happen this year, and that doesn’t matter because THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ISN’T BEING DEFENDED AT BOUND FOR GLORY!

This is like the WWE not having the 2015 Royal Rumble because the WWE World Heavyweight Championship won’t be defended at WrestleMania 31.

Unimaginable, right? Yet it’s happening in TNA right now.

It’s a sad state of affairs for TNA. I can’t say that the company will close up shop at the end of the year. In fact, I hope they don’t. TNA’s best bet right now is to take the lower end TV deal, finally change the name to Impact Wrestling and turn themselves into an independent wrestling showcase. Build new stars. Be a true alternative to the WWE. Make yourselves special again. Hold “Genesis 2015” in January and introduce a new, fresh product that will excite your old fans and (eventually) draw in new ones. You can’t “out-WWE” the WWE, but you can probably “out-NXT” the WWE.

Until then, have fun being the United States’ #3 promotion, behind WWE and Ring of Honor. I’m not even sure I’ll continue to have reasons to write about TNA.

ROH is outdrawing TNA’s events (you saw the numbers I listed above, right?), they are outdrawing their pay-per-view numbers, and if you total up the viewership in ROH’s Sinclair Broadcasting markets I bet they’re outdrawing TNA on television, too.

Like I said, I want TNA to succeed. Hell, I may want it more than they do.

Greg DeMarco is a wrestling fan of over 30 years and has also worked on the independent circuit as a promoter, announcer, character and booker. Greg a weekly contributor at 411Mania.com, applying his opinionated style to the world of pro wrestling on Sundays and Thursdays.

He began writing for 411Mania in October 2010 and has been pissing readers off ever since!

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