No

by Matthew Caverhill

Created on: December 30, 2009

With the upcoming January 4th episode of TNA Impact being scheduled to run directly opposite Monday Night Raw, the question that is increasingly being asked by the media and wrestling fans alike is can TNA compete with the WWE in any meaningful way.

The answer to that is sadly no.

Firstly, if you look at the ratings that TNA Impact receives on Thursday nights, you will see that in general, it receives ratings that are similar to the WWE’s two lower tier shows, Superstars and ECW. Smackdown generally nets twice the ratings and Raw triples and sometimes quadruples them, so TNA would have really present something worth seeing to start eating away at either of those two top shows.

And that represents the second problem: Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling can never hope to compete with World Wrestling Entertainment if they try to present the same kind of content, which seems to be the company’s ultimate goal. Instead, they should be trying to distance themselves as an entity by delivering a product that is unique and presents wrestling that would not normally take place in a WWE ring. For a while there, with their viable and exciting women’s wrestling and the X-Division, they were indeed producing this kind of content, but alas, TNA has been slowly changing its programming to replicate WWE-style wrestling and storylines to its own detriment.

To make an analogy, if someone was to open a pizzeria next to a very established place, as a business are they better served producing an inferior version of the competition’s pizzas or striking out on their own and making something different. If they do the former, then if given a choice, people will generally stick with the better version of the same recipe, so the latter seems like the better course of action, because in that case, the upstart has a much better chance of reaching people who are dissatisfied with the options that are available to them. That is what WCW did and they set themselves up as being different than the stagnating WWE and in doing so, they brought in new fans on top of those who converted.

Speaking of the WCW, it brings up another part of this equation that rarely gets mentioned: money. People tend to overlook the fact that Ted Turner had deep pockets and a television empire, so the company could withstand substantial losses both before and during the Monday Night Wars, while the WWE was not in a very good position at the start of that period. Today, the roles are very much reversed. TNA doesn’t have the kind of resources to fight like that, while the WWE does… meaning that Vince McMahon and company have the capacity to run the business at a loss and play very dirty if necessary while still putting on six hours of programming week in and week out, so unless TNA gets a major financial backer or finds a way to be extremely profitable in the near future, there is little hope of them coming out of a war with the WWE as a victor, or perhaps even as a survivor.

So while there is a very slim chance that all the elements can come together for TNA to become competitive with the WWE, it seems very unlikely that it will happen. As someone who enjoys wrestling, this is a real shame as a true competition for ratings and ad dollars would likely spur both companies to improve their collective product, and that is good for all fans. Even the hint of a threat would likely end the WWE’s complacency, and I don’t think any fan of this form of entertainment would object to that.

Learn more about this author, Matthew Caverhill.
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