TNA Showing Promise, But Still Not Where They Need to be

By the end of this week’s TNA Impact, several things were abundantly clear:

1: Matt Morgan deserves a run with the TNA title: this guy is as over as he’s ever been and is in the best shape of his career. His skills on the microphone have continued to get better and he’s at the point now where he’s a well-polished product inside the ring and out.

2: Jeff Hardy is a disaster as a heel and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a microphone: The whole confrontation between Hardy, Morgan and Mr. Anderson through the first ten minutes of Impact! was a waste of time, mainly because Hardy is a horrible heel. He’s like a bunny; he needs to be allowed to go out and jump around because that’s what he’s best at. However, when that’s over, he should then be sent to the back. Allowing him to roam free with a microphone is not going to help TNA. He can still wrestle and should be in the World Title picture, but the whole purple belt and everything that comes with it is simply too much.

3: Jeff Jarrett’s current angle is a joke: Seriously? Double J as an MMA fighter? Snore. If Jarrett wants time on his show, he should be doing the right thing and putting youngsters over. He’s always been a decent heel and can still wrestle. There’s no reason why he can’t be making mid-carders miserable on-screen in some fun storylines that end with them getting some fan support. Get him another hottie manager and bam, the guy has a legitimate role in the company again, even if he isn’t in a stable or a part of a major storyline.

That would be the smart thing to do with him at this point in his career.

This MMA angle is just a waste of time. In 1982 this would have worked, when people still thought this sport wasn’t staged. Now, you’re just being asked to suspend disbelief when your disbelief was never even a question.

4: TNA isn’t learning from its past mistakes: We’ll admit that haven’t watched TNA at all over the past three months and getting back in the swing of things on Thursday was an adjustment to say the very least. The last time we watched, Fortune was a pretty damn cool group and they were battling the old ECW guys in an angle that was all for the dough that came with giving these guys one more shot, but it was at least fun.

With Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan’s new group and Fortune working side by side, this screams of all the other crappy groups the company has had over the years. Two heel groups working side by side just doesn’t work. Anyone remember when there were two heel NWO groups in WCW? Either you don’t because it was unwatchable or because it wasn’t cool enough to remember. TNA has to be extremely careful here. One of these groups has to be the stronger one and eventually they have to have their own enemies. It’s difficult to get all this done in just two hours a week, but combining storylines and making one gigantic faction is lazy. If TNA dedicated the time and energy to developing the personas of these factions more, different fans would flock to them and appreciate them, the same way groups like the Horsemen, DX and the NWO had huge fan bases in spite of them being heels. Right now, they’re just the bad guys. Either that changes soon, or TNA will have to do what it does every 10 months or so and start all their storylines over from scratch.

5: TNA’s in-ring action is much better than the WWE’s: Even though the show was weak, the matches themselves were much better than what’s been on Raw over the past month and change. There’s better in-ring psychology being showcased and the matches are fun to watch.

If only they could find a way to put it all together with some quality storylines.