Bells and Whistles - The TNA World Title Tournament

There's one thing I'll give Dixie Carter credit for: She's very convincing in her present on-screen role as a clueless idiot who is out of her depth running a wrestling company.

Take the Wheel of Dixie, for example, which she uses to randomly apply stipulations to matches in the TNA World Title tournament. It's a brilliant portrayal of an incompetent wrestling promoter who doesn't have an ounce of respect for the traditions of the industry.

The fact that the tournament will determine a new Heavyweight Champion of the World should be enough. It cheapens the tournament and the title to make each match a gimmick match. In a kayfabe sense, it also gives certain wrestlers an unnecessary advantage - Jeff Hardy vs Chris Sabin should be about the best man winning, but instead the match was stacked in favour of Hardy, the babyface and the pre-match favourite, with the Full Metal Mayhem stipulation. How does that make Hardy's victory seem like an achievement? Fair enough, it was a good match and the finish was cool, but it just didn't need the gimmick. If the World Title is treated with enough prestige, a match like that should be big enough without any bells and whistles...

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Sadly, I think this is just an extension of the fact TNA's creative team can't provide any sense of continuity, with regard to the storylines of individual wrestlers and very few get to establish any kind of track record, to establish themselves in the pecking order...outside of the few top heavyweights.

Hence the thinking that they can spice things up by throwing random elements into matches. In one sense I get it and can sort of appreciate it, but agree it doesn't really befit a world title tournament.

With any given football fixture, over a season, you can see that TEAM A has won X number of matches and has put a sequence of results together, but that TEAM B has beaten TEAMS X, Y and Z recently.

It helps give some background to the tie and some sense of perspective, as well as an indication of who might have an advantage, or whether it will be a close-run affair.

With some decent booking and long-term planning, (injuries allowing), I'm sure TNA could give their roster similar histories, to give matches a sense of importance / anticipation. It might also help if they previewed title matches with short video montages of the wrestlers' last few fights.


Anyway, good article and sums up my thoughts on how wrestling should work.

Dixie's gimmick reminds me of Karen Jarrett's ham-fisted management of the Knockouts (back when there was an actual Knockouts roster), when she'd have them washing people's cars in their bikinis and suchlike.

Whether the "incompetence" gimmick is part of a longer term plan or not, it looks set to continue TNA's trend of putting together illogical matches. Only difference this time is they can blame it on the "Wheel of Dixie".

I get the impression that TNA don't feel 7 straight up wrestling matches, one each week, are big enough deals to draw an audience.

The problem is that they are probably right. But that is only because TNA haven't made enough stars to make people want to see the matches without a gimmick.

The problem with Dixie's character is what's the end game? Where are TNA going with this storyline? People have commented on the plagiarism by TNA of the Punk MITB storyline, but even if AJ returns and becomes the undisputed world champion what happens to Dixie? Will another authority figure rise up to challenge her? Sting perhaps? Jarrett? How are they going to write her off tv? TNA need to move away from overbearing and overshadowing authority figures on screen.

Tna need jack tunney!

Anyone else agree it's time authority figures faded into the background and let actual wrestlers be the stars of the show?

Plenty room for heel managers, commentators etc to get the bad guys over without having the guy in charge of the company help them out too