Professor QnA- TNA name change, TNA vs RoH and more!

[! JDM The Professional !]

Carl Asks:

What's your thoughts on TNA supposedly changing it's name? Is it really changing it's name entirely? Do you feel as though the name TNA has held the company back?

It's hard to say as the reports have been conflicting. Here's the facts though, as of this Thursday TNA has rebranded it's TNA Impact show to simply be, Impact Wrestling. The current story is that TNA will use the initials TNA less and less. Whether that means that they will completely get rid of them entirely, is debatable.

How does the name WWE tell you anything more than the name TNA does? The intials WWE mean nothing.

Granted, TNA can lead to giggles. But the letters WWE mean nothing without context.

Once you say World Wrestling Entertainment, you have to say Total Non-Stop Action. The letters TNA are always followed by the words, WRESTLING.

So if anything TNA actually has the leg up on WWE in that sense. On 99% of things associated with WWE, they don't even say wrestling, whereas TNA always has wrestling in their branding. TNA is now looking to rebrand itself with a huge mention of WRESTLING in the title. I think that's a good idea, but I wouldn't drop the TNA initials, myself.

I would be shocked if TNA completely got rid of the TNA name. I liken it more to how WWE now no longer wants to be called World Wrestling Entertainment, even if that's still their name. While I'm sure that sort of logic (completely removing TNA's name) has been thrown out from time to time, the single biggest aspect of any company is brand recognition. TNA has far too much money, time and brand recognition in, well, TNA.

A big key will be to see how Sunday's Sacrifice show is presented. If they say something like "Welcome to Impact Wrestling Sacrifice", it'll be a good clue as to what the future holds. I don't mind emphasizing the branding on the Impact Wrestling part, but I think it would be fundamentally retarded for TNA to drop the TNA namesake altogether.

Ralph Johnson Asks: Did Dixie Carter get fired for sexual harassment and for how badly she treats the knockouts? I heard that was the truth.

Uh, no. The whole "TNA Knockouts are treated so bad" nonsense is a concoction of a couple of disgruntled workers who have little to no basis for their subsequent lawsuits. TNA and the wrestling business in general is tough. Women sadly, are the lowest rungs on that ladder. However, TNA has done nothing illegal to any Knockout under contract. If that was the case, they wouldn't constantly be grooming talent from across the globe that are females.

Dixie Carter is still involved with the company heavily. However, she has been removed in storylines on purpose and has taken less of an active role in the day to day. I don't know if perhaps Bischoff and Hogan to an extent haven't looked to truly oust her, but the truth is, Dixie is still the boss and will likely remain so for the immediate future.

Rico5627 Asks:

When is TNA coming out with a new game?

TNA has a new mobile game coming out very soon. I realize that's not really what you're probably wanting, but it looks to be a very expansive mobile game. Sadly right now their game license is still tied up with Midway, but it seems as though that's being worked out. The new I-Pad/Mobile game looks pretty good and actually looks like it's almost a port of a bigger system game. To me, that likely means that someone, somewhere, is already working on a game that could be for one of the major console systems.

Terrance Asks:

Should Hulk Hogan have been fired for his anti-Japan promo?

Hogan didn't cut an anti-Japan promo. As usual, this was a case of much ado about nothing. Did Hulk intentionally say something controversial to draw heel heat? Yes, absolutely. It's totally a non-issue, though.

Guy cut a promo, related his wake of destruction to a legit wake of destruction. Suddenly everyone is on their high horse. Bunch of nonsense.

Was it in poor taste? Sure. But it was vague and generally inoffensive. Saying Tsunami doesn't make you a "black eye on wrestling"... That's just silly. Tsunamis are real. I guess John Tenta was a black eye on wrestling too, because his gimmick was Earthquake. See what I'm getting at here. It was poor timing on Hogan's part and Spike and TNA cut the bit from the promo. No harm, no foul at the end of the day.

I mean it's not like they exploited Eddie Guerrero's death for months to get cheap heat or anything. You know, like the WWE did and nobody batted an eye at. Japan, the devastation, none of that was explicitly spoken about.

Chip Faraway elaborates on This long forgotten controversy:

Don't you think that Hogan's promo about the tsunami was an indication that Hulk Hogan can't write his own material and that Vince McMahon came up with all of it? Hogan is much like Vince Russo's writing. When you look at it, it seems like a great idea but it needs a filter and that filter has always been Vince McMahon. Hogan wouldn't have done half of the idiotic crap he did if he was still in the WWE with Vinnie Mac guiding him. Just kinda shows you who really created Hulkamania to me.

Yeah except Hogan was doing the entire Hulkamania gimmick, every bit of it, in AWA, long before McMahon. Vince didn't do anything to create Hulkamania. He just marketed it whereas Verne Gagne was too stupid to do so.

As I said above, I think the tsunami thing was a non-story. People were looking for something new to gripe about Hogan. He sadly gave them material. Nobody was hurt. As Gilbert Gottfried said about his controversy, if people in Japan were worried about what the likes of him were saying, with all they had going on, their priorities were out of whack. In essence, only people on high horses in the US cared about stuff like this.

Randle Asks:

What's your thoughts on Eddie Edwards comments that ROH could overtake TNA as #2? Do you think that could happen?

Well anything can happen, but let's break this down. First, here is what Eddie said:

    On ROH overtaking TNA as the #2 wrestling company: "I think it's a legit thing that could happen. I think it's a matter of our product getting out there and more fans - like you said before, there's that sense that there's that hardcore fan base that's concentrated on Ring of Honor. Some fans might be a little sceptical or gun-shy to come on board. But I think if we put our product out there - have somewhere to put it out there - and show fans what we can do, we'll have people jumping on board day after day after day, you know. I don't think we would have to change our product and I don't think we would. Just by saying "Ring of Honor", you know what it is and you know what to expect. So I think we wouldn't want to change what we've done. All the history that Ring of Honor has has been building up to this point and if we get that chance to go to the next level, it's all been leading up to that point. So there would be no point in changing what we've done or how we got to where we are. Because we still have to go out there and show them we're the best wrestling in America. I think that's what would be what drives the fans to want to come see us and what we do. Once they realize what's going on in Ring of Honor, people aren't going to want to stop seeing the way we do it."



Look, I don't expect Eddie to say anything other than that. I mean, he's asked a question about the company that pays his bills. Of course he's going to say that they COULD in theory beat TNA. It's just not based on any facts. Firstly, TNA is light years ahead of ROH in terms of production and national exposure. Not even counting international exposure, in which ROH has essentially none and TNA is seen in over 100 countries.

Secondly, this seems to operate under the false presumption that ROH is the #3 wrestling company in the United States. I'm not entirely sure why people actually believe that. Sure, even I fall into the trap of occasionally acting as though ROH is #3, but they're not. And let's also be clear that #3 isn't really a fair assessment of the reality of the situation. WWE is #1, TNA is a distant #2 and there is no #3. The next number would be like #400. That's how wide the gap is.

As for my comments that ROH isn't #3, that I'm sure a lot of people will object to... Look at the facts. ROH has no TV deal. Even when they had one, they aired on HDnet. HDnet draws such low ratings that they do not participate in the Nielsen ratings system. However, when a brief testing was done by Nielsen, just to get a baseline, HDnet was drawing between 5,000-20,000 viewers for their HIGHEST rated shows. ROH was canceled by HDnet because they were expensive to produce and didn't draw ratings. Even so, if ROH was the highest rated show on HDnet (which obviously it wasn't) it was likely drawing around 20,000 viewers.

That's abysmal. It's non-existent. Television in a decent market would be better than that. Which brings me to the real #3 and #4. OVW and FCW. OVW airs in the Louisville, Kentucky market where they reach millions of homes a week. While I don't have the intimate numbers, it's a no brainer that OVW is drawing more than 20,000 viewers a week. Likewise, OVW's shows are available online. OVW also airs in the much smaller London, Kentucky market. Even so, OVW could net a few thousand viewers there. Seeing as how OVW has maintained a TV presence since they first hit the air, it's safe to assume that they do decent local TV ratings.

FCW airs in Tampa and Central Florida. Another decent TV market where they could in theory draw over 20,000 fans per episode. FCW is also available online and can be viewed that way. In essence, even though the market is smaller than HDnet, the viewership is a much higher ratio.

Remember that most ROH i-PPVs have drawn under 1,000 buys and their big "hits" have barely drawn over 1,500 in terms of buys. ROH was dropped by real PPV providers because of their low numbers. They drew less than 40 buys in Canada in several instances and once had 19 people order their PPV in the United States. ROH isn't even #3, folks.

If you think ROH is competitive with TNA, I've got a bridge to sell you.

I realize that's going to break a lot of hearts. On May 6th TNA drew 1.567 million viewers on Spike TV. TNA isn't just the #2 wrestling company in the US in terms of exposure, they're the #2 in the WORLD! They have TV deals all across the globe and regularly beat WWE in certain parts of the globe, including the UK. Enough said. ROH isn't nipping at TNA's ankles. They're nipping at OVW's.

THE WRAP UP
That's it for this edition, but Sunday is the big PPV. It looks to be a good show and with any luck I'll have a post show wrap-up latter this week. As always, please feel free to send in more questions. I'll choose some random questions each week and answer them to the best of my ability. Ideally these questions will deal with TNA, but I'm actually open to all questions about pro wrestling. So drop me a line at ProfNewtonGimmick@yahoo.com, leave a question below and next Thursday or so we'll check back in with the answers. Also, be sure to follow me on Twitter to find out the latest goings on of the Professor of Pop Culture and visit me and the gang at Infinite Hollywood where we discuss a variety of Pop Culture insanity.

Thanks guys!

[Conor]

Some interesting comments but there's one thing I take umbrage with:

I mean it's not like they exploited Eddie Guerrero's death for months to get cheap heat or anything. You know, like the WWE did and nobody batted an eye at.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't a wrestling fan who didn't take offence to WWE's exploitation of Guerrero's death.

[Tezmission Black]

Yeh the whole Eddies in Hell thing pissed me off.

[Drama Queen]

Some interesting comments but there's one thing I take umbrage with:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't a wrestling fan who didn't take offence to WWE's exploitation of Guerrero's death.

Same here which leads me to believe this professor guy is just another opinionated internet arsehole like the rest of us. I was EXTREMELY uncomfortable with the Guerrero angle and this cunt is trying to make out that we treated it as no big deal just because time has elapsed and it is not as fresh in out mind.

Cunts like this really annoy me.

[Hondo]

It comes off as another TNA fanboy waxing idiotic, if we're being honest.

[Duckman]

It comes off as another TNA fanboy waxing idiotic, if we're being honest.

QFT.

Peace

Duckman