Jumping ship.

Anyone who has read my posts over the years on the old 606 and now V2 know that I have been a WWE stalwart. I havent always defended it zealously but I was blinded to other feds. For me, the WWE was everything. The best stars, the best booking, the best matchs etc. However, half way through 2012, I have had an epiphany.

The WWE has been an absolute mess. It has shown sparks of greatness but 2012 on a whole has been dire. The booking is all over the place. Cena beats Kane, loses to The Rock, beats Lesnar, loses to Johnny Ace, beats the Big Show. No consistency, no point. Why did The Rock go over Cena, only for Cena to go over Lesnar? 2 huge matchs, with no one looking better for it. Not to mention, we have 2 world titles that have been completely devalued because of the over saturation of Cena. A world title hasnt been the main event of a PPV ALL YEAR. Always. ALWAYS featuring under a John Cena match. Now im not blaming Cena, but the WWE have officially made him bigger than both world titles.

Speaking of World titles. WWE have 2 of them, and not enough talent to make it work. The WWE have such a gap in talent its frightening. We go from established main eventers like Punk, Orton and Cena, to the Upper mid carders like Ziggler, Christian and Rhodes. The Mid carders like Satino, Ryder and Swagger, and then we're down to the jobbers/squashers. Guys like Ziggler and Christian are ready to main event, but since Brock Lesnar left in 2004, the WWE have been scared to pull the trigger on new talent. We're going to end up with a roster made entirely of guys who have little main event experience, and have the company built around them. Guys like The Miz, ADR, Rhodes, Ziggler, Swagger, Ryder, Barrett and Clay will end up being thrown in at the deep end.

The WWE seem to have completely forgotten about long term booking. Its all about ratings now, not then. Why build up a star and have an engrossing story to bring in more veiwers when we can have average ratings week in week out? The closest thing we've had this year was Cena "embracing the hate" which inevitably was a let down. The Punk/Bryan/AJ story is the only decent bit of booking going on right now, because we all slated it, but now its good viewing. That might be because everything else is so dire right enough.

Then on the other side of the fence, we have TNA.

TNA have completely won me over this year, and im sorry its taken me this long to realise it. Sure, it still has its silly moments (the whole Dixie/AJ angle springs to mind), but on the whole its a much more well rounded product. From a wrestling and booking standpoint, its almost better in everyway. A roster of Knockouts that can actually wrestle. A good tag team division (although its dwindles slightly recently). The fantastic X division. The ability to have upper card fueds that dont require/overshadow the World title. The depth of TNA's roster in spot on. Its not Top heavy or full of fluff, which WWE has managed to do at the same time some how. From a pure wrestling stand point, TNA has some of the best talent, and talent that works well with each other. Different styles that compliment one an other. Hardy, Anderson, Joe, Roode, Aries to name a few, all work together well. Theres no "He needs a good worker to get a decent match out of" because the all seem to be able to do it.

From a booking side, TNA again win by a great margin. Long term creations like the Bound for Glory series open up all kinds of possibillities. Option C has given the X division alot more prestigue. More than the IC and US titles combined. It now physically represents what the mid card titles always metaphorically represented, the chance to step up. The booking around Roode/Aries has been brilliant. Sure it leaves some questions to be answered but thats what good booking does and the start of a fued, leave you wanting more. The past 3 PPV's TNA have released have been more entertaining and logical than ANYTHING the WWE have down for the past 12 months.

While the WWE will always have a special place in my heart, I will now follow TNA more closely, and I encourage any doubters to do the same. Its gonna take a couple of months to get to know the characters as much as you do the WWE, but its worth it. It is by far the better product.

The grass really is greener on the other side.

I havent read this yet jsut incase there are any raw spoilers from last night are there?

I fully agree, however I have always been on the TNA side, it is just so much more interesting, the wrestling is better and the storyline just make more sense than anything WWE creative can dream up!

bretmeharty wrote:I havent read this yet jsut incase there are any raw spoilers from last night are there?

No RAW or Destination X spoilers

Completely agree with you, while we have had some odd and annoying storylines in Impact they've finally realised instead of trying to compete with WWE they are just going to do their own thing.

They will never be able to compete with WWE without serious investment, WCW only challenged WWE becuase Ted Turner thought he would give this pro wrestling lark a go. All TNA need to is do there own thing expand slowly, like maybe the next step is hold all PPVs out of the Impact Zone. So long as their patient they can achieve better things.

During this last year we've seen Bobby Roode go from a tag team guy to a genuine main eventer for future years to come, Aries is getting a chance now to solidify himself at the top, why WWE only hired this guy to do the voice of Jacob Cass on WWE 12 is beyond me. I admit this permanent hyping of ex ROH guys on here used to annoy me alot, seeing as I couldn't have cared less what they did in ROH or the indys like being able to hit a belly back suplex turning it into a piledriver then floating it into a fujiwara arm bar or whatever, since they hadn't done it on the big stage. But with Aries I have been proved wrong, I'm glad I have been, I hope the guy gets a real chance to have a solid run.

The real strength Impact has at the moment is that Hogan is just GM and thats it, he's not involved really in any major storylines just doing a GMs job and letting the young guys establish themselves.

That Garrett Bischoff guy has dissapeared aswell.

whole heartedly agree TNA is the place to be - as far as quality of product and value for money it is miles better than WWE at the moment and is steadily expanding; I'm really excited about what the future holds for TNA!

I think that Samo has summed it up brilliantly and I notice that quite a few articles on the dirtsheets are starting to back TNA a bit more which is great.

At times, I felt I was the sole member of the TNA payroll on here! Glad a few more have made the jump over and are not just spouting the truths of 18 months ago - ie "its full of WWE rejects, the booking makes no sense, the production values are awful etc...."

the transformation in TNA is truly remarkable however this is worrying!

http://www.impactwrestling.com/news/item/3629-Don-t-Let-DirecTV-Drop-Spike-Click-For-Important-Info-On-How-To-Help

What will TNA do if they lose their TV deal?

I've no kept up to date with any Wrestling let alone Spike TV's TNA ratings but are TNA not one of the highest rated shows on Spike? They're at a stage now where they get such a big viewership that a network would definitely pick them up

Adam D wrote:Glad a few more have made the jump over and are not just spouting the truths of 18 months ago - ie "its full of WWE rejects, the booking makes no sense, the production values are awful etc...."

I apologize wholeheartedly. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Like I said I was blind to anything else, refusing to accept anything could be better than WWE.

I will say though that TNA need to put a little bit more into entrance music. Alot of songs sound the same and dont have the big BANG factor alot of WWE themes have. As of this moment, thats my only real complaint.

tna is great just need the cowboy with the gold.

Spoiler for Raw last night, and Raw 1000

Spoiler:

No offence to Slater but they won't waste the Rock on him. Slater will be fed to someone like Stone Cold or someone else from the Attitude era.

Fine by me.

I'll happily watch him take a stunner, or a tombstone or whatever - but I just don't want to see The Rock have carte blanche to rip it out of him, his look, his gimmick, his style, his accent, then Rock Bottom him before he even gets chance to respond, before carting back off to Hollywood the next week leaving Slater with nothing.

Electric Demon wrote:Fine by me.

I'll happily watch him take a stunner, or a tombstone or whatever - but I just don't want to see The Rock have carte blanche to rip it out of him, his look, his gimmick, his style, his accent, then Rock Bottom him before he even gets chance to respond, before carting back off to Hollywood the next week leaving Slater with nothing.

My spider sense tells you are not a fan of the Rock

I've often criticised TNA, and my criticism was usually unfair as I had never actually sat down and watched an edition all the way through

Watched (or should I say still watching) Destination X and it's brilliant, the last man standing match was awesome, I remember when WWE used to put on good matches