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The Rise and Fall of TNA Part 1
The germ of the idea for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling occurred on a fishing trip taken by Jeff Jarrett, his father Jerry Jarrett, and Bob Ryder. When the then WWF bought WCW, it left many wrestlers out of work because ECW had also recently fallen into bankruptcy. Due to Jeff Jarrett’s actions in leaving WWE in 1999, it was well known he would not be welcome back. In order to make a living in the United States, Jeff Jarrett had to wait for someone else to fill the vacuum left by WCW and ECW, or create his own company. To Jeff Jarrett’s credit, he put his money where his mouth was and TNA went from a conversation on a fishing trip to reality.
The rise and fall of TNA is difficult to trace. TNA had more ups and downs than any other new nationally based United States wrestling company in history due to the proliferation of the internet and the rise of the “smart” fan. Unlike ECW and other smaller promotions that started small in bingo halls and on basic cable, TNA’s first show took place on Pay-Per-View where all of their shows would air for $9.95 a week until September of 2004 when the company signed a national cable deal.
TNA had great matches and moments in its rise to a national presence, however they also made several fatal mistakes along the way that put them in their current position.
The First Show
TNA’s first show took place June 19, 2002 in Huntsville, Alabama where tickets were free and first come first serve. Those fans in the arena saw a show filled with former WWE, WCW, NWA, and ECW superstars as well as young up and coming wrestlers that would later make up the core of the TNA roster.
TNA’s first ever televised match featured The Flying Elvises (Sonny Siaki, Jimmy Yang, & Jorge Estrada) defeating the team of AJ Styles, Jerry Lynn, and Low-Ki. Despite losing their first match in TNA, Styles, Lynn, and Low-Ki arguably kept the company afloat with their hard work and fast-paced matches in the new X-Division.
The rest of the show was filled with appearances by the tag team of The Johnsons, Teo the midget, Ed Ferrara talking about a women’s lingerie battle royal for next week’s show, Toby Keith performing live, and a 20-Man Gauntlet that saw Ken Shamrock and a wrestler named Malice as the final two wrestlers setting up a one-on-one match for the NWA Heavyweight Championship the following week.
Watching this show now is extremely difficult. There’s a lot of Vince Russo-esque smut and wackiness, matches that feel too short, and questionable booking. However, in hindsight TNA’s first show should be seen as a win because a wrestling company successfully put on a show in an effort to give fans an alternative to the WWE which had a monopoly on the United States professional wrestling scene in 2002.
Dixie Carter and Panda Energy Invest in TNA
TNA had money problems from Day 1. Initially Jeff and Jerry Jarrett put their own money up (Jeff Jarrett even mortgaged his house at one point to keep TNA afloat) to start TNA but in order to keep the promotion running, they needed investors. The first major TNA investor was HealthSouth based out of Birmingham, Alabama. HealthSouth on the surface appeared to be a solid investor. Unfortunately something sinister lurked beneath the surface. HealthSouth became embroiled in a scandal in the summer of 2002 for fraud and accounting irregularities that caused them to pull their funding from TNA. TNA limped along for a few weeks without an investor but before a set of tapings in the fall of 2002, Jeff Jarrett was tapped out.
Enter Dixie Carter.
TNA had engaged Dixie Carter’s PR Firm in Nashville to help them with publicity and in the course of conversations, Jeff Jarrett mentioned he didn’t think the company was going to make it because they were out of money. Dixie saw an opportunity and in October 2002 convinced her parents, the owners of Panda Energy, to purchase majority ownership from HealthSouth.
Without Dixie Carter and Panda Energy’s investment, TNA would have died in 2002. Regardless of what has happened recently in TNA’s history, people were given jobs, fans saw great wrestling matches, and WWE had competition due to Dixie Carter’s investment.
TNA Signs with Fox Sports
Fox Sports’ Regional Networks wasn’t the ideal home for a TV show but it was definitely a signal TNA was growing. With the Fox Sports show, TNA was able to cancel their weekly PPV series which was slowly bleeding them dry financially and set themselves up to gain better sponsors and receive a small rights fee for their new show Impact.
The Fox Sports show also led to TNA signing an agreement to tape the show at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida on a soundstage affectionately dubbed “The Impact Zone.”
At this point in its existence, TNA had shown very small, incremental growth in terms of financial advancement, TV deals, and through this growth were able to sign some bigger named talent like Diamond Dallas Page, Billy Gunn, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall to help draw in more casual viewers.
While a Friday afternoon time slot that varied based on which Fox Sports regional network it aired wasn’t the best solution, it was perfect for TNA at that time. It allowed them to build storylines towards once a month Pay-Per-Views instead of the pattern they had fallen into of having to build to another event each week to keep viewers buying the weekly shows.
TNA Airs its First 3-Hour Pay-Per-View Victory Road
TNA’s first 3-hour Pay-Per-View Victory Road took place live at the Impact Zone on November 7, 2004 and featured a main event of NWA Champion Jeff Jarrett versus Jeff Hardy in a ladder match. While not perfect, Victory Road was a great way to kick off a new era of TNA. The undercard featured some solid matches with the highlights being the first ever Monster’s Ball match between Raven, Monty Brown, and Abyss, Petey Williams pinning AJ Styles in a match for the X Division Championship, and a solid main event that saw the return of Randy Savage to professional wrestling to help Jeff Hardy who was being attacked by Jarrett, Nash, and Hall.
Victory Road was not a home run, but it was a solid double. TNA proved it could produce a 3-Hour Pay-Per-View to help culminate storylines and feed into the next month’s arc of television.
At this point it its history, TNA needed to continue showing that incremental growth and Victory Road was evidence TNA was trending upward.
AJ Styles vs. Christopher Daniels 30 Minute Iron Man Match
No match in TNA meant more than this one in the early Impact era. AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels were members of the X-Division that was full of talent given their first national platforms by TNA. For years, both wrestlers ventured in and out of the X-Division (with AJ Styles even being a former NWA Champion for several month) with success and good matches following them no matter how silly the storylines made them seem at times.
By January 2005 Styles and Daniels had wrestled each other all over the world for 3PW, Ring of Honor, IWA Mid-South, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, and other independent organizations but had yet to touch in a one-on-one match in TNA.
When the two collided at Against All Odds, it felt important. The two wrestlers delivered a 30-minute match featuring the greatest hits of their independent encounters and planted seeds for future matches.
This match showed the X-Division could be the main event if given the opportunity. At the time Jeff Jarrett’s NWA Championship reign was frustrating fans. He seemed to have a stranglehold on the title and instead of building up talent within TNA to face him, the company kept bringing in older stars in a rotating “challenger of the month” type situation. Since TNA started Impact, Jarrett main evented every Pay-Per-View show until Lockdown against Jeff Hardy, Monty Brown (newer star but no one believed he had a chance), Kevin Nash, and Diamond Dallas Page.
Jarrett was having good matches with these guys but had problems surpassing the quality of the X-Division.
The X-Division is the Main Event…Finally
In the summer of 2005 Impact was not airing on Fox Sports and was without a United States television network for several months until the Spike TV deal became official. In the meantime, the show aired weekly on their website and the monthly Pay-Per-Views still took place.
During this period, TNA signed and debuted Samoa Joe, the former Ring of Honor champion who had the reputation of having great matches with the likes of Homicide, CM Punk, AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Bryan Danielson, and the universally acclaimed special attraction match from the Hammerstein Ballroom with Kenta Kobashi.
Joe quickly became red hot in TNA and was soon gaining traction as the hottest act in the company. He was inserted into the AJ Styles-Christopher Daniels feud for the X-Division Title and TNA made the gutsy call to promote a triple threat match for the belt and have it main event the Unbreakable 2005 Pay-Per-View.
The match was stunning and is arguably the greatest match in TNA history. That night, all three men became superstars in the eyes of all TNA fans if they were not already and signaled what many fans hoped would be a changing of the guard. This match proved all three could main event for TNA and be the stars of today and not the stars of tomorrow as TNA had been promoting them.
Regardless of what happened with these men and TNA down the road, that night they were perfect and lived up to and surpassed the high expectations fans had.
TNA Leaves Fox Sports and Signs with Spike TV
From a business standpoint, the high point of TNA was signing with Spike TV.
The backstory to the situation is TNA realized as great as the Fox Sports deal was, TNA needed a prime time or consistent time slot on a single network. Fox Sports was unwilling to give them that so instead of settling for the same deal, TNA decided to explore their options as a free agent.
At the same time, Spike TV decided not to renew their TV contract with WWE to air Monday Night Raw for a variety of reasons. This gave TNA an opportunity to partner with Spike TV, a network that for 5 years had been airing the highest rated professional wrestling show in the United States.
The two sides worked out a deal and TNA was set to air weekly on Saturday nights beginning in the Fall of 2005.
Part of that deal gave TNA more capital and the ability to spend some money on some big name talent that would enter the picture in the near future.
Bound for Glory 2005
TNA billed Bound for Glory as the biggest event in TNA history and it lived up to the hype despite their main event being changed the weekend of the show.
For the first show on Spike TV, TNA re-signed Kevin Nash to face Jeff Jarrett at Bound for Glory and all the television built it up as the main event of the show. The weekend of the show Kevin Nash checked in to a hospital with chest pains because he was worried he was having a heart attack.
Instead of panicking, TNA turned a negative into a positive and delivered a solid show and new main event. Up and down the card the wrestlers performed at a high level and it made for a great night.
TNA built up Samoa Joe by bringing in Jushin Liger and giving Joe the rub by continuing his undefeated streak. Rhino, Abyss, Sabu, and Jeff Hardy put on a great performance in the second edition of the Monster’s Ball that was full of plunder and saw Rhino pick up the win.
AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels had another Ironman Match that was every bit as good as the first and pushed AJ Styles further up the card as a main event wrestler.
The main event was a 10-Man Gauntlet Match where the winner would immediately wrestle Jeff Jarrett for the NWA Championship. Rhino would win the Gauntlet and then pin Jeff Jarrett to send the fans and viewers home happy.
TNA took a negative and turned it into a positive. However, in a sign of things to come in the future, TNA put the belt back on Jarrett at the next set of Impact tapings erasing some of the goodwill earned in the Bound for Glory main event.
While it was not the start of the fall, it was a warning sign that if TNA did not stop pushing performers from other organizations over some of their homegrown talent, things could get ugly.
TNA Signs the Dudley Boys (Team 3D), Christian Cage, and Sting
In the fall of 2005 TNA had momentum. They signed a TV deal with Spike TV to air Impact, they put on a great show in Bound for Glory, and then signed three of the hottest free agents available.
The Dudleys had a very puzzling end in WWE. The Dudleys were given time off during the beginning of 2005 due to having no other teams to wrestle and WWE’s Creative Team wanted to give them a rest and bring them back after they had replenished the tag team division on Smackdown. Aside from an appearance in the main event of ECW One Night Stand and some television tapings in Ohio Valley Wrestling, they never appeared on WWE TV again. At some point, WWE decided to not re-sign the them and let their contracts expire. The split was extremely contentious in that Bubba and D-Von thought they owned the Dudley Boys name only to find out WWE had trademarked it leaving them unable to use it. Due to this, Bubba and D-Von became Brother Ray and Brother Devon a.k.a Team 3D.
Christian’s departure from WWE occurred a little later and also under very frustrating circumstances. Throughout 2005, Christian built momentum with his Captain Charisma persona, his “Problem Solver” Tyson Tomko, and great matches. In the summer of 2005 he seemed primed to breakout on Raw where he feuded briefly with John Cena. He was moved to Smackdown in the draft and was promptly de-pushed and lost all his momentum in the process. WWE attempted to re-sign him but due to his frustration, Christian chose not to sign a new contract and move on following a brief appearance at Taboo Tuesday 2005.
Sting was the only main event wrestler from WCW to not eventually make appearances with WWE. Sting wrestled a few overseas tours for Andrew McManus and made one brief appearance in TNA during the weekly Pay-Per-View era that failed to move the needle. The return of Sting was big news because the former flag bearer for WCW was headed to TNA to be the new main event face of their company. Signing Sting gave TNA credibility because advertisers, toy companies, etc. knew who Sting was even if they did not know who TNA was.
The signing of these talents made it seem as if TNA was the place to be. All of these former WWE and WCW wrestlers came in and put the company over and made TNA feel important.
TNA had the momentum they needed and seemed ready to take on the world.
These men would all play an important part in TNA for the next several years. Christian Cage would defeat Jeff Jarrett for the NWA Championship and main event for several months, Team 3D worked with younger tag teams and helped establish them, and Sting helped bring more viewers while he feuded with Jeff Jarrett and built to Bound for Glory 2006.
Bound for Glory 2006
For the first time in their history, TNA would hold a Pay-Per-View event in a building that was not the Nashville Fairgrounds or the Impact Zone in Orlando, Florida.
For most of its history, TNA was strictly a television product. They did not run house shows. The company started slow with live events. Instead of absorbing the costs of going on the road themselves, TNA did sold shows with Hermie Sadler throughout the Virginias and Carolinas for most of 2004. These weren’t TNA shows per se but the shows were made up mostly of TNA talent so they were considered by many fans TNA house shows.
Finally, in early 2006 TNA was ready to start running their own live events. Their first house show took place in Plymouth, Michigan outside of Detroit that saw a sellout crowd witness Christian Cage pin Jeff Jarrett in the main event.
The crowd was so hot and into the show, TNA elected to hold what they consider their WrestleMania, Bound for Glory, in the same building.
The show itself was perfect. TNA had been building up the singles match between Sting and Jeff Jarrett for almost a year and at Bound for Glory, it was finally going to happen. Samoa Joe won the Monster’s Ball match, Christian Cage defeated Rhino in an awesome 8-Mile Street fight, LAX (Hernandez and Homicide) defeated AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels in a cage match that was arguably feud of the year for the company, and Sting conquered Jeff Jarrett in the main event for the NWA Championship.
Two months before the show, TNA made the announcement they had signed Kurt Angle and he made his debut facing off and head butting Samoa Joe setting up a match for next month’s Pay-Per-View and was the special enforcer for the main event between Sting and Jeff Jarrett.
Everything was going right for TNA following Bound for Glory 2006. The future was bright and it appeared with a new Thursday night prime time slot and two-hour show, they were ready to compete with WWE.
However, that night at Bound for Glory TNA had peaked.
They may have had higher bought Pay-Per-Views in the future, they may have had higher rated episodes of Impact, but from here on out TNA slowly started down a slippery slope that halted their momentum and ultimately led them to their destruction.
