@@itachi-kun7736 No, no and no! Once Jeff Jarrett was out of the picture, Dixie Carter WAS the main problem with TNA, other than Panda energy's unwillingness to commit much more than their initial investment (I can't say I blame them in hindsight to be honest.)It wouldn't have mattered much with the incompetents running TNA, most notably the boss lady herself. It was only years after I was done with them, did I learn that her "Momma Dixie" image, that she worked tirelessly to paint in terms of PR was fake. She was a petty tyrant, she treated the TNA "original" talent like shit, particularly the KO's, was condescending and conceited, and obsessed with being a TV star, and didn't want anyone questioning her lack of knowledge in terms of wrestling. I also learned that it was Dixie who killed the idea of more intimate fan feedback access to TNA offices, when it had been a proposed PR selling point for TNA shortly before. This was done, because she was furious about some of the negative feedback, like the "fire Russo" sentiment that was going around at the time. She didn't want to hear about any negative at all.
Dishonorable Mention: Giving 6-figure contracts & payoffs to reality show personalities such as Johnny Fairplay, J-Woww & Jenna Morasca while full-time roster members are being so underpaid that they are living on foodstamps & working a 2nd job at Sunglass Hut.
Trying to restart the Monday Night Wars was one of the dumbest moves in wrestling history. WCW had the tv-deal and backing to go toe-to-toe with WWE, TNA didn't. Ratings were up before that fiasco, never got back to that level even after returning to their old night with their tails
But that was a fun experiment it did prove that only 20% of WWE viewers watched both WWE and Impact so it was a waste of time chasing after them. It’s was also sad to see how divided the wrestling viewers were 10yrs ago as compared to tv shows of the same genre.
Tbh tna had quite a roster: kurt angle, jeff hardy, RVD, samoa joe, sting, ric flair, kevin nash, aj styles, mick foley, Dudleys and even Hulk frikkin Hogan. I'd say give it a shot as well. I think they shouldve booked a Hulk Hogan ring return as main selling point on their first legit monday night show. But instead they had some weird Sting vs rvd action with rvds surprise show up completely overshadowed by Hulk and Bischoff. I mean tbh the stars on raw werent that much better, yeah cena and trips (as only two as Sheamus was a frikkin main eventer then) but Angle, rvd and sting should be able to compete with that if booked well. Maybe the real mistake was competing in mania season, if they just waited till 3 weeks after mania
Not true about their TV viewership. From September 2009 - January 2010 TNA averaged 1.3M viewers or close to it weekly. Monday obviously didn’t work. They returned to their old night and shit was down for a bit in total viewers slightly where they were doing around 1.2M for a couple months following returning to their old night. But then their viewers as a whole grew from closing quarter of 2009 where they were consistently doing 1.4M+ by the end of 2010 which was a bit above the average viewers of 2009 year end and in 2011 they more often than not did 1.6M+ viewers. The narrative that they lost their audience just isn’t true - total viewers returned and rose above what it was doing prior to Monday move. The rating nunber itself declined because their potential audience got bigger but their viewers didn’t grow substantially. But as for actual viewer nunber trying Mondays didn’t kill it at all. Spike saw it plateau and wanted to try to get some growth - it just didn’t work to a level they’d have wanted.
At least after the table incident, Dixie at least got off of TV with only a few sporadic appearances and stopped playing Vince-knock off the next time she appeared (though that still did not change the fact that she was a bad business owner). Steph on the other hand still played a character that was one of the biggest examples of "Go-Away Heat" up until Wrestlemania 34 (when she finally lost after a few years of being an intolerable jerk and also finally got off of television aside from a few appearances).
If wasnt for investors pumping money in it would be gone as it doesnt make more than it spends. Its truly truly awful and looks like backyard wrestling filmed on a phone!
@@juliusvillalon6816 A comeback? To what? They have never been in any way a competitor to the WWE and failed miserably when they tried to be. They've had years at the game with amazing talent (sometimes) and AEW has walked in and became No2 in a very short time. So how exactly are they going to become a genuine competitor? Pumping money like Turner didnt work for WCW in the long run and its 20 years later with a very different wrestling world and audience 🤷🏽♂️
@@tarync6539 they are interesting again and they have the AEW partnership going on so I say they are doing a comeback maybe not major but they are getting there
indyalmighty Your selling for my hard slap👋🏾 (& your 11 people that like your comment).... Mega brilliant. I can’t believe you love that garbage segment.
You mentioned Jesse Sorensen, there was also the whole deal with Daffney where she did that run in on that Monster's Ball with Abyss and Abyss threw her through a table outside the ring and she broke her arm, she told Daffney that she would be taken care of, she was not. Also Sorensen did recover, and he's still wrestling now.
Wrong. I had never even heard of TNA before Hogan signed, and had not watched wrestling since 2006/2007. I came back to wrestling when Hogan signed (As did many other people)
Dixie didnt pay her bills for the company hogan and eric try to keep it running it go back to what i said she want to go head up with wwe that when it died
@TheVolourn ratings drop idk what u was looking at i asumme u a hogan fan so i understand why u saying this but ummmm they couldnt book for shit i can honestly say russo did a better job than that
The sad part is it’s almost impossible for Impact to reach such levels ever again. They’ve got the best women’s division in the world and they’re on twitch every week.
Logan Jeffery andrew I really do miss TNA but I agree it’s almost impossible for redeem themselves without some crazy person ploughing loads of money in. The tape library is really their only valuable asset
Don’t forget letting Paul Heyman slip thru here fingers. Paul actually went to Her house and laid out a plan but she didn’t get what he was trying to do
So trash that to this day he still works for wwe and they never let him go since he got signed, because they know his value to professional wrestling. But sure, he is trash.
@@BadselS bro that might have been the character Paul E. had played to be heel. Dude used to run ECW, one of its golden years, and is good on the mic that they pair him up with Lesnar to make up for Lesnar's poor mic skill. In conclusion, he knows what he is doing.
Nick Aldis (Magnus) has indeed done a great job in reviving his career with the NWA. One of the reasons he went with NWA is that he felt that could Soar or Crash on his own merit. He did very well.
If you haven't done one already, I'd love to see a video done on every time TNA blatantly ripped off a WWE or WCW storyline. Seeing Dixie's heel authority figure reminds me of how she was literally trying to emulate Stephanie McMahon. Or how Aces and Eights was literally the NWO and AJ was portraying the same role Sting did way back when. At the top of the list would have to be how they copied the Daniel Bryan phenomenon but tried to use Eric Young.
Viacom paid for most of the highest paid talent like Hogan, Bischoff and Sting. That didn't come out of TNA's bottom line. They had such a sweetheart deal with Viacom, it's amazing they managed to fuck it up. You are right in that Russo was the ultimate cause for the decline, in more ways than one.
Unless that company is WWE. Vince McMahon might not have the best track for creative decisions but he's not stupid enough to trust those crooks with his financial decisions. It's like Cornette has been saying for years and years, Vince McMahon will outlast everybody because Vince always makes sure the actual business side runs as a well oiled machine.
Agreed! All they wanted to know, is how much money was in it for them. Dixie paid them what they wanted, and took money out of the Wrestlers pockets to do it, if I'm understanding this whole scenario right.
Thanks for bringing up the Billy Corgan thing. Another shitty thing about that blow up, is that Billy Corgan had wrestling experience. He founded "Resistance Pro" back in the day. Him and his knowledge of running a pro wrestling fed would have been huge for TNA back then compared to the zero experienced Dixie Carter had prior to buying TNA with her Dad's money.
What's your point? What wrestling experience did Billy Corgan have when he founded Resistance Pro? Everyone started out with zero experience in the business at some point. Billy had experience in the entertainment business, as did Dixie when she got into wrestling. When the Carters took over TNA in 2002, it was a dead company with a failed business model. They didn't just buy a well-performing company, they took it over from the scratch and built it into a well-known brand.
Thank you, the on-screen talent meeting was such a big turn off for so many people and yet most people don't even mention it when talking about the failures of TNA.
Claire Lynch was the moment I COMPLETELY gave up on TNA. It's been years and I haven't watched a single second of Impact. She was so hard to look at and hard to listen to. She was like the living embodiment of everything that was cringey about TNA.
What kills me about this woman is that she blamed Dutch Mantell for putting plants in the audience to scream fire Russo. Rather than accept what was going on she blamed someone else.
I remember when Hogan joined and one of the first matches (maybe the first) was Nasty Boys. Knobb's knees were creaking like a rocking chair on a stoop. It was like watching one of those "aerobics for the elderly" videos.
TNA did have the Best Knockouts Traci, Gail Kim, ODB, Angelina Love, Velvet Sky, Brooke Tessmacher, Mickie James, Christy Hemme, Madison Rayne, ODB, Jacqueline, Awesome Kong, Roxxi, Taylor Wilde, Sarita and of course, my girl Tara (VICTORIA from WWE) However, Dixie Carter messed it all up, not to mention, she didn't give Tara a decent title run It's no wonder why so many wrestlers hated her including Angelina Love, Velvet Sky, Awesome Kong and even Tara herself as well as AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Konnan and Scott Steiner
A lot of Wrestling mistake usually tend to involve Russo. There's a definite reason why Cornette wants to piss on his grave when Russo starts pushing up daisies.
He was out to destroy what TNA wanted to do, right from the get-go! What, with his Sports Entertainment Extreme (S. E. X. Idea), he really put the kaibash on things, until the Powers-that-be realized just what he was up to. Vince Russo is one of the top worst people to ever trust a Wrestling Organization with!
They should've never changed the six sided rings for me that was one of the best parts of the show cause when you got the big tag matches it was awesome cause they could twice as many teams.
To help understand how bad the move from Spike to Destination America was, Destination America on Dish was ONLY on the Top 250 channel package, the second most expensive channel pack. TNA fans who were on Dish were truly SOL at that time. And the ride doesn't even end there.
It was even worse in Germany. At some point they were on Eurosport. But they lost that contract and the last thing I saw from TNA was Eric Young winning a Bikini Contest against knockouts while wearing Spongebob shorts. The commentator's reaction to that was "better make sure to watch which promotion you sign to your network, or you get bs like this" They returned for a brief period of time during the aces and eights storyline, but that was on a small channel and at a timeslot somewhere around midnight, so I didn't really bother following that.
@@HarmonySword No, Vince did it better. Unfortunately, being a woman in today's hypersensitive era means that male wrestlers cannot touch her to exact retribution. The reason why the Austin vs McMahon feud worked so well was precisely cause fans got to see Mr McMahon get his comeuppance for blatant misdeeds. Stephanie is a fantastic heel, I will give her that, but her getting away with slapping men with no way for them to get back at her is one of the reasons fans tuned out of the whole Authority angle. Even when she got thrown around, it was always circumstantial, like when she went through a table after she got bumped by her husband, who in turn, was selling a Spear from Roman Reigns. I don't like Vince as a person, but you have to give him props for taking all the bumps and hits just to put his guys over, primarily Austin.
Being on screen was Dixie's problem. She should have just been involved with running the company and thats it, never on screen, never mentioned and help guide the direction.
Another amazing video MarkyD! Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I was ROTFL at all of Dixie's dumbass decisions!! The biggest being getting them kicked off of Spike!! I even got my lil bro to watch this with me, & he hated TNA, back in the day.
Well, he hasn't watched anymore, since that one. Idk, I've never been able to figure my brother out. Despite all the shitty decisions Dixie made, those were the golden years of TNA/IMPACT, & i actually look back on those years with fondness. My little bro nowadays, hates IMPACT, hates AEW, & hates current WWE. Meanwhile, watching MarkyD's videos made me a fan of IMPACT again, & i have been watching again & enjoying the product.
The only reason I started watching TNA was the women’s division. TNA had the best women’s division in pro wrestling and no other women’s division hasn’t come close to them in talent and in matches. I applaud all the women in TNA and they should be extremely proud of what they did. ODB, Gayle Kim, The Beautiful People, Awesome Kong, and the list goes on and on. Thank you for making women’s wrestling great and worth watching!
As a huge fan of Victoria & Gail Kim & am happy they got their deserved recognition in TNA, the current group of women in WWE is the best that any major North American promotion has had. Asuka, the Four Horsewomen, Io Shirai, Rhea Ripley, Shayna Baszler, Lacey Evans, Bianca Belair, Alexa Bliss...even a comedy women's team like The Iiconics are good in the ring. TNA was showing better womens work in the late 00s-early 10s while WWE was still mostly stuck on model divas, but WWE womens roster today is unreal good.
@@ronaldshank7589 lol go away clown you don't know her! And you are still talking about years later in such a manner? It's funny you people will find any narrative that fits your whining. First it was Dixie was too nice then it was she's a scumbag with no heart?
The picture of Dixie with her eyes going in the opposite direction is a great way of knowing how smart she looks is about the same with some of her thinking
For me I was a fan of TNA from the start and all the way up till Hogan and Bischoff entered. Only thing that was decent with them was Jeff Hardy's heel turn till he screwed up at Victory Road against Sting. I tried to watch TNA but it definitely wasn't the same. I was done after AJ Styles left.
They could have gave her better moments as a heel. I feel like one moment they missed out on was Dixie Carter begging Hogan to stay. When she was begging she should have hit Hogan with a low blow then fire him. But she was left being lame as a heel.
Yeah, she made herself look incredibly stupid, holding on to his leg & begging him. Meanwhile, that ends up really being his final appearance for the company!
[1] Jeff & Jerry Jarrett owned and operated TNA Wrestling from 2002 to early 2012 and [2] Anthem Sports and Entertainment owned and operated TNA Wrestling from 2017 to present, remanded Impact Wrestling in 2017 (to be renamed back to TNA Wrestling in January 2024) were the best years. The Dixie Carter owned and operated TNA Wrestling from 2012 to late 2016 was the worst years, which the promotion took years to recover from.
I’ll never believe the Spike hated Russo thing, doesn’t even make sense. The ratings were good. Plus Russo wasn’t even head writer he was just consulting from his home. The whole claim it cost them their Spike deal started from Cornette who’s hardly impartial.
Not resigning styles, Hiring Hogan, getting rid of the six sides, being on tv to much, oh hiring Flair as well. Also some of the story lines were really bad during this time. There were so many things that went wrong.
While Dixie Land may not have been an amusement park, word from the boys in the locker room she was definitely a very popular ride a bunch of people rode. I’d take the ride as long as there was no line or at least a very short one.
WWE starting to look like...this? I don't really know what to call this time in TNA/IMPACT. On a side note: Did you know TNA once had Okada (yes that Okada) and did nothing? Well now you know.
