Dave Scott – TNA: Booking Matters

Hello there folks! Today I’m here to talk about TNA and their booking. It is nothing new to slag of TNA’s poor booking but I’m going to just point out some major flaws they have in it and do some comparison to the WWE’s way of doing things.

First off though I would like to say that I did think that Sacrifice was actually a pretty good show by the usual standard we see thrown at us by TNA, though it was not perfect and the build for some of the matches weren’t done well putting that all aside I thought the matches that were on the card were pretty good.

It was while watching Sacrifice and looking at what we had in front of us I realised that TNA seem to have three ways of booking things. You have on the fly booking, booking which lasts way to long and is strung out or on occasion they can build things up decently.

First of all lets talk about their on the fly booking. For example you had AJ Styles vs Kurt Angle and Jeff Hardy vs Ken Anderson. Both matches which on paper should be able to draw in an audience, but due to their being no build and pretty much no reason for the matches it has a damaging effect on the drawing power of the matches. Also these are matches that if you watch Impact or any TNA PPV’s you will have seen before, there is nothing new to these at all and that is one thing I don’t think the powers at be at TNA realise sometimes. You can’t just throw together two guys as good as they are with practically no build or no reasoning and expect people to want to watch it. Especially with four of the top guys on your roster, if they do it on Impact that is fine, but if your wanting people to pay their hard earned money on a PPV you are going to have to make it worth their while.

Now every one of those guys by that talent level in TNA is a main event player and is in amongst their top draws. WWE do have PPV’s where they throw matches together last minute, however they are usually with midcard guys from the roster like Jack Swagger, Brodus Clay, Ryback and so forth. They don’t have guys like CM Punk, John Cena or Triple H in this position and for good reason, they know that to get the crowd to actually buy the respected PPV their needs to be at least some form of build towards it. Now I’m not saying they never do lazy booking because they do I mean look at Kane vs Randy Orton, not really any reason for that match other than to bulk up Wrestlemania a tad with some big names. But they don’t do it half as much as TNA do with their big name stars.

Now I move onto booking which lasts way to long and the prime example I can think of that is Crimson and Matt Morgan, I know that they weren’t wrestling on the Sacrifice card but I’m talking about the booking in general rather than this one PPV. This is something that has been long and strung out and boring. I’ve drifted in and out of TNA over the last year or so but I still keep up to date and watch it whenever I can, but these two guys just seemed to have been around each other for far to long. Whether it is part of a tag team or against each other it has just been to long and the sad thing is that everyone knows that Crimson will win every match they have because they won’t want to break his unbeaten run. Just separate the two of them though and move them onto something new because it is needed. Also on the subject of booking for far to long the AJ Styles, Kazarian and Daniels thing was something that was build up for to long with this secret which turned out to be a really crap secret. I can honestly say if I was banging Dixie Carter everyone would know about it and Triple H will tell you from his experiences banging the right girl can take you places!

So finally we have it when TNA get something right. My example from last night is Austin Aries and Bully Ray, which had a nice build to it and the match itself was pretty good (the spot where Bully Ray kicked Aries off of the top rope onto the guardrail was amazing). This is exactly how TNA should look to book things, give a decent build where it shows that the guys really don’t like each other and then have the pay off from the build mean something. There is one thing that could really fault this though and that is if they don’t have a rematch, if they just end the feud there it is just another random feud, but give it a few more months and a few more matches and it could be something that could really elevate both guys.

When WWE books a feud in recent years, it tends to usually last around three months, or three pay per views. Things like CM Punk vs Jericho, Mark Henry vs Big Show and Christian vs Randy Orton were all feuds that got around that time scale with every match their feud escalated further and different elements would be added to their stories and their matches. This is what TNA needs to do more often. If you look at Bobby Roode since he won the world title in November at Turning Point and December at Final Resolution he faced AJ Styles, which is fine in theory, but he really should have been facing James Storm. Everything that had built up over the last few months had built towards those two guys feud and they put AJ in the mix instead. So there we see a small level of consistency with the matches but the wrong choice for the matches. Then in January at Genesis he went onto fight Jeff Hardy, February at Against All Odds he wrestled Bully Ray, James Storm and Jeff Hardy, March at Victory Road he wrestled Sting in a non-title match, April at Lockdown he went against James Storm and then RVD last night at Sacrifice. To me everything within that just seems to all over the place and not enough consistency within it all, have a one of PPV feud is fine every once in a while. WWE usually do it at the Royal Rumble and it usually gives a guy who wouldn’t normally get a chance at the title a little time to shine.

So all in all what I’m saying is maybe TNA should look up to the WWE and see the way the book things and take a little advice from them in the part because things could be a lot brighter over in TNA with just a bit more thought in the process!

Cheers guys!

Hope you all enjoy Raw tonight.

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