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The Upcoming Promotional War
May 23, 2005 by Andrew Sharp

The Monday Night Wars is viewed as one of the most exciting periods in wrestling history. Having started watching wrestling in January of the year 2000 I came into the scene just as the Wars between the then WWF and WCW were waning and the WWF was clearly on top. However, since becoming an avid fan I have taken it upon myself (as any loyal fan would) to learn as much history about this business as possible.

People would argue that there will never ever again be a time in wrestling like the period from the mid-90's to about 2001, and they're probably right, but in this column I'm going to suggest what might possibly soon be the nearest thing to re-capturing what many view as the modern-glory years.

NWA-TNA a company that's been up and down for the past 3 years, widely viewed as the number 2 wrestling promotion in the world. People are beginning to doubt whether they can pose a legitimate threat to the WWE and maybe give them a run for their money. WCW pretty much did this overnight; Eric Bischoff walked in with an endless ATM machine, stole lots of stars and lots of ratings, and we all know how the story ends. TNA have now been around for nearly 3 years and are obviously fighting an uphill battle.

With the possibility of getting a TV slot on Spike TV where in September WWE will have left, things could get interesting very fast - one would hope. However, over the past 2 years I've learned not to get my hopes up about the current wrestling product.

I'm not going to go into detail about what I think TNA should do to compete with WWE but I will add that TNA has got great wrestling talent, and perhaps the majority of the time they put on better matches than you will see on a RAW or SmackDown!, and if only TNA could go head to head with WWE, you never know we might see great matches out of WWE much more frequently - just like we used to. Fact of the matter is there needs to be 2 top promotions.

WWE is criticized for putting more focus on storylines than wrestling, but if you think back to the boom period in 1999-2000 you will realise that they were doing the exact same thing back then and look how popular that was.

Imagine if TNA became the number 2 promotion or even surpassed the WWE and became number 1...Wouldn't there be some confusion over the Title situation" Would WWE be forced to unify the WWE and World Title" Will people ever make the connection that the NWA Title became the WCW Title, which in 2001 was brought out by the WWE later renamed the World Heavyweight Championship we now see on RAW" Isn't the Title TNA are using now therefore void"

Every wrestling fan can hope to re-live what I and many others view as the glory days of wrestling, but one thing's for sure - if there is an upcoming promotional war things will be a lot different this time around.

by Andrew Sharp ..

Killian Brennan wrote:
Just a quick comment, there is one flaw in the article that I feel needs rectifying, the titles which were unified by the WWE were not the WWE and NWA belts. After the WCW withdrew from the NWA the NWA World Heavyweight Title was replaced by a WCW one, that's the belt which the WWE got their hands on when the company was bought up. The NWA title that TNA use is the real NWA belt.

Jacob Kuhn wrote:
I don't want to say too much about your article, because most of it is simply your perspective. We are all entitled to ours, as you are yours. Also, the most obvious flaw was already pointed out; the confusion which still surrounds some fans about the whole NWA/WCW World Title belts.

One thing I want to say is that TNA is not the number two promotion in the world. There would even be some debate that WWE is number one. A lot of fans would argue that New Japan is the number one promotion in the world. And even if WWE is bigger, TNA can't yet compare with a lot of the other large promotions in the world.

What TNA mostly has right now is potential. What they do with this is totally up to them. They can run with it, or they can waste it. TNA is not in the same position WCW was when the Monday Night Wars began. TNA has been around for three years. WCW was originally known as Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling and became that in 1973. It remained such until it was purchased by Ted Turner in the early 90's. Mid Atlantic was part of the NWA and for a large portion of time had the NWA World Champion on their roster.

TNA is part of the NWA, but the company itself is very young. They haven't had the years under the NWA banner to build themselves into a position to compete. Neither are they able to capitalize off the Mid Atlantic NWA years because Vince owns the Mid Atlantic tapes.

What TNA does have going for them is that they are offering another option. They are putting together a 'wrestling' show, not a 'sports entertainment' show. There are many fans that want to see non WWE product on a national scale. What TNA SHOULD be doing is appealing to those fans instead of honing in on WWE's. That would be their method to success.

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