WWE vs TNA differences

[SABER]

By the way, I have known Marcus for years. Only ever met Ray 2 times and I had never even talked or heard about Kev until I joined the fed.

[Eno Redrum]

Ever notice that when it rains, the ground gets wet? Just a random thought that crossed my mind.

[Kingpin]

My post from another wrestling blog on the subject. The wife read this post word for word. She was once again protesting your points and Ill type it up when I get the time.


The way I see it WWE has become horrible flawed in their promotion of the wrestling storyline. In the last few years it has become a cycle of PPV pushes and less of wrestling story. We all know the point of wrestling is to sell merchandise and PPV’s BUT without a reason for me to buy a PPV it all becomes just mindless filler. This is where story comes into play.

An example of story done right is Macho Man and Elizabeth. For the sake of our younger readers we won’t use that instead I will break it down in much shorter and more current examples.

A good story starts with an introduction. The wrestlers must be presented with the proper light that they will be shaded in for the rest of the story.

Example: Goldberg. WCW eventually billed him as a wrestling phoneme. At first he was nothing special but slowly built him in appearances and through light hype. This garnered him the necessary attention that he needed to begin to move up in the card. After he had gained sufficient hype WCW then began pushing Goldberg toward the main event while billing the story of who was going to stop the streak. They even had the brilliant marketing ploy of “Who’s Next”. It is a simple way of saying who wants to try to stop the streak.

Of course the finnish sucked because they took a bailout ending with a cattle prod. WCW missed an excellent chance to get a wrestler over by actually beating Goldberg clean. Heel heat would have been immense.

Next there has to be a reason for the feud to exist.

For the example I will choose one of the modern well written story lines (so far). Eric Young’s heel turn in TNA. They took a mid carder seemingly doing nothing but gimmicks and turned it into a fantastic “Hate Group” Leader angle. Eric was doing comedy and getting the shaft from supposed Jeff Jarrett when one day he had enough and finally snapped. It was great writing and him becoming the leader of world elite was not only good but it added to the inherent flaw in the wrestler. Hopefully they do something constructive with the new element of Hernandez . Young has great Motive to work against TNA.

Third there has to be a finish

Unfortunately the last great finish I saw was Austin/Rock at wrestlemainia. WWE used to excel at putting a bow on story lines with an epic match but in the last few years they have left feuds open and just lingering.

Example: just this past ECW Shamus began a feud with Benjamin over a “stolen” tag victory. Well what ever happened to the feud with Goldust?

Better Example: HHH stepped in to defend his family from Randy Orton’s “evil” yet he decides to drop the whole idea in favor of bringing back Shawn Michaels for a reformed DX and a feud with The henchmen of Legacy? WTF, If Randy kicked the Krap out of my family there would be some sort of closure to the situation. A proper ending would to have one of the wrestlers get “Taken out” with a minor injury for one three week period declaring a de-facto winner(or some other solid ending the point is that IT ENDS). You can still maintain bad blood between the wrestlers but the story ine ENDS.

In modern WWE story lines are left started but not finished Wrestlers are introduced but forgotten and Feuds just start for NO REASON (Undertaker/PUNK which logically ends with Jeff hardy interfering at Breaking Point.)

In short these are just a fraction of things that I see while watching wrestling. Of course if you watched it like I have through the years you too would feel cheated.

I heard Manny Ramerez say something interesting about the modern state of tag team wrestling. “These days the “hurt” man makes his own comeback. How can the “hot tag” succeed if the “hurt” face has already done all of the work of the comeback. It kills the psychology of the match entirely.”

Noe JSN go marinate on that and tell me why I an slightly bitter about the current state of wrestling and the WWE

Extra thoughts

What ever happened to personas?

What ever happened to Monsters and their charismatic managers?

What ever happened to the sleazy back room deals of old WWF story (IE the megabucks deal)?

Wgy does everyone try to wrestle as “themselves” Example: Curt Hawkins. Why can’t he be “The HAWK” or something

Marinate

[SABER]

Is "marinate" becoming the new JENT catch phrase?

[Marcus T]

no just my pharse, but as long as Mrs. Ray cooking cookies, I don't gve two shits.

[Eno Redrum]

But you may end up taking a shit while you are up there and we all know you will talk shit no matter where you are. There, that equals two shits.

[Chesbro]

Ray, that was a pretty well thought out and right on the money column, but again, it's about storylines and who is creating more scintilating television.

My points about WWE's superiority is based on the fact that they have a better production and the little things that they do during their show, draws actual fan hype and crowd reaction.

WWE knows how to grab the fans. You don't have to like the storylines when it comes to them. Truth be told... there are very few times when I've ever read a wrestling column where the writer was really up on WWE or TNA material. I haven't watched a show for any federation in the past decade where I wasn't shaking my head going "jesus, that was retarded."

What you get from indy federations is a really great <u>wrestling</u> show. Those guys work their ass off to keep you glued to your seat with an outstanding match, but unless you follow a particular federation, there is little chance that you will know what is going on with their storylines. There is no recap moments to fill you in. There are very few promos. It's just match, match, match, brawl, match.

My experience at the only indy show I've been to was a ROH show last year during WrestleMania weekend in Orlando. It was a fantastic show, but I couldn't tell you the next thing about their storylines other than Erik Stevens and Roderick Strong didn't like each other much. Neither did the Briscoes and Age of the Fall. It was a great wrestling show, thats it.

[Jamie Krenshaw]

Storyline-wise, I think Smackdown has been very good all year (particularly since the draft). Yes, there's still moments each week that are retarded but fuck, it's wrestling. The whole thing is inherently retarded!

I agree that WWE's production values are miles above their competition. Just look at their video packages. TNA does okay with these things, though. I think the reason the majority of fans at the shows don't get very loud (unless they are getting loud and it's just poorly mic'd every week) is that they are confused. I don't mind the shades of grey booking myself but it's not really productive in getting a strong reaction for a wrestler either way unless they have natural charisma. There are so many guys in TNA whose face/heel alignment I could struggle to tell you. The Motor City Machine Guns for one. They're natural heels and should be being pushed like Edge and Christian were in their heyday. Instead they gut shunted back and forth across the card, turned from face to heel and back again. I haven't seen the show in a coupla months so I couldn't even tell you what they are now.

For me, personally, at the moment, Smackdown is the best wrestling show around by a mile (though I fear for it when Raw inevitably pinches Jericho) and if you want really great wrestling, download some Dragon Gate stuff. Right now, until they prove they can successfully push someone I actually care about, TNA isn't required viewing for me.

[Rastafari]

I wasn't going to comment cuz I like both for different reasons but I will say this.



For TNA, its the fast paced back and forth action that gets me excited about the show. I love watching AJ Styles and say someone like Christopher Daniels go at each other for a good 20-30 minutes, pulling out moves from nowhere and every once in a while they do back and forth exchange that gets the crowd pumped and clapping.

The 6 sided ring also makes for more interesting combos and angles of attack. Its pretty awesome when Abyss throws someone into one side of the ring ropes, bounces off a side angle that you wouldn't normally get in WWE rings, and slams into his opponent sending them flying across the ring, I like those "Holy Shit" moments on every show, I don't have a lot of money so I don't normally buy PPVs. Watching WWE gets stale when it comes to the wrestling, I fast forward a lot of matches because I already know how its going to go. I know some of the wrestlers are a lot better and more fun to watch at PPVs, but like I said, I'm poor.


Everyone talks about the announcing teams and stuff, for me, its not a problem because I can't actually hear them, all I see is their names and what they are saying on the Closed Captions. So I wouldn't know if Don West was screaming at the top of his lungs or just casually announcing, therefore I watch the action to get into the matches. When I watch WWE, I usually only watch matches to see if the announcers talk about angles and storylines and things like that. The match itself usually is boring unless its someone like Rey Mysterio vs John Morrison or Kofi Kingston vs Evan Borune, combos like that will be fun to watch.


As for Story lines, WWE seems to run the same ones year after year, while TNA seems to try to mimic the 96-99 WCW days when nWo was king. The Main Event Mafia/World Elite super group is a dream come true, IF, they had a second show to showcase the lower card talent. Bashar and Koyashi have not wrestled matches in more than a month and just usually come around for WE beatdowns. Steiner needs to retire, he's lost it on the mic and he's losing it in the ring, its time for him to move on to other things, meanwhile, Booker could do with a new gimmick and a more aggressive personality, say the early Harlem Heat attitude. Nash should just serve as a body guard, its painful to watch him in the ring nowdays, he's slower that Foley ever was.


I do like the fact that TNA Knockout division is so diverse and there are so many talented wrestlers that its more fun to watch their matches. The Divas, well they're great to look at for the most part, but most of them couldn't hold a candle to most of the TNA Knockouts.


As far as PPV events and great gimmicks, WWE wins by far. So like I said I love both companies and I'm a WRESTLING fan more than anything, doesn't matter who it is, WWE, TNA, old school ECW, WCW. I've been watching since I can remember, and I've always wanted to have some type of job in the wrestling industry. I enjoy both promotions.