by Mike Johnson @ 3:33 PM on 8/11/2008
Fire Russo!
The chants started in the Impact Zone.
Fire Russo!
Like a virus, they've spread across the country to TNA PPVs. It doesn't matter the location, New Jersey or Texas or Orlando. They are there.
Fire Russo!
The chants were initially dismissed as something Internet die-hard fans were doing to get themselves over while attending the free Impact and PPV tapings in Orlando. These were spoiled fans who had seen it all and since they were jaded and not getting their way, the easiest thing to do is to rage against the machine and scapegoat the guy that booked the worst era in the history of the now-long extinct World Championship Wrestling.
It's easy to point the finger at Vince Russo, but the reality is, he's not the person to blame. Russo, like any other employee, is just a cog in the TNA machine at this point. Even those closest to him admit that he'd likely be just as quick to quit the creative side of the company and work as an agent producing backstage segments if the option were viable. But, he's there as much to be the lightning rod for TNA's creative errors as much as he is there to brainstorm and be part of the company's creative team.
That's life and all the "Fire Russo" chants in the world aren't going to make a difference, because Vince Russo isn't the problem. He's not the head of creative - he's just another guy working there doing the job he's asked to do, the same as a lot of other employees who, no matter what they think, know if they want to keep their jobs secure, they have to accept TNA's bad with the good and move on.
There was a LOT of good on last night's PPV. I was in attendance at last night's Hard Justice PPV and with the exception of the Tuxedo Chain match, from top to bottom, there was tons of good wrestling. The crowd loved just about everything on the show - the athletics, the highspots, the characters, but not the creative end of things. In many ways, TNA's wrestlers are working as hard to put on a good show as it seems TNA creative works to contradict the work of their performers and it's a crime that it has to be this way.
TNA's product often feels haphazard, like you're watching the first half of one movie and suddenly it switches to another. You can't start out watching a crime drama and then finish off as a horror film. It's confusing and at times, it makes no sense. There is an overuse of gimmicks, of outside interference and of teases and swerves. All of these things are viable parts of wrestling's creative side, but all at once, sometimes in the same match and it's enough to make you want to put your fist through a wall. It's like watching your favorite baseball pitcher make it all the way to the final inning with a perfect no hitter, then stand witness to him walking the bases full and giving up a grand slam.
What makes it worse is that the audience that are coming out and paying for the product are obviously attracted to the concept of what TNA could be - an alternative to WWE with crazy wrestling, hard hitting moves and athletic, young, dynamic performers. When the audience gets what it wants (see Petey vs. Creed last night) they go nuts. When they get what TNA wants to deliver (tuxedo match, etc.) they revolt or worse, they give up caring.
AJ Styles and Kurt Angle tore the house down with one of the best start to finish matches I've seen all year with their Last Man Standing match. Whether it was great athletic wrestling or sick spots (the entire sequence by the stage was nothing short of awesome) or the drama of guys fighting to make it to their feet after losing a fall, they had Trenton in the palm of their hands. It was just awesome and a match well worth tracking down a DVD to revisit. In the end, Styles nailed Angle with a top rope DDT. With all the reported neck problems Angle has had, it was a logical finish to end it and give Styles a clean win. Styles needed the win, he deserved it and it put the exclamation point on his TNA star. Well, it did for about two minutes. Styles hit the ring and laid out Angle again, only for the lights to go off and Sting to attack Styles at the entranceway, laying him out.
What was meant to be a major dramatic moment, not just for AJ Styles' character, but for the Styles vs. Angle feud and for the fans watching the show was stolen for an angle putting Sting over as Kevin Nash watched. TNA had taken a star-making moment with a homegrown talent and made him and his performance secondary to Sting. Now that would be fine, but the reality is Sting is at the end of his career. He's not going on the road at house shows. He's not doing media to promote the company. Hell, half the time his baseball bat makes more TV appearances than he does!
I've written in the past that the time was now to get something out of Sting's TNA run beyond the idea that former WCW star Sting is on the roster (which means a lot to licensees and international markets - a lot more than most fans understand), but doing so at the expense of what was booked to be a major moment in the career path of AJ Styles is just criminal because you've just reinforced once again that the homegrown guys aren't as important as the wrestlers who made their names elsewhere, but the homegrown guys are the ones who carry the ball for the company in a lot more than just their in-ring work.
Booker T cuts a promo calling Samoa Joe a glorified trailer park independent wrestler. Well, that trailer park wrestler beat Booker bloody a month ago to the point that Sting had to save him, so what does that say about Booker? Second, that trailer park wrestler is not only the TNA WORLD CHAMPION but he's been in TNA for years, and a good portion of that was working main events. So, once again, because Booker T worked for WCW and WWE, while Samoa Joe was a homegrown talent, automatically, the audience is being educated that he's a level below Booker.
Now, let's remember that TNA spent months and months building up to Samoa Joe's Lockdown title win over Kurt Angle, but since that point, have only crapped on the guy by having him complain, blow off and cuddle back up to Kevin Nash. Samoa Joe isn't some rookie, although that's how he's portrayed. He's the TNA champion and before that he was the X-Division champion during the only period where the X title actually closed a TNA PPV - a bout that TNA themselves tout as the best in company history. So why in the world is the focus of TNA's World title picture on anything but Samoa Joe the wrestler? It's about whether Kevin Nash is jerking him around or jerking him off, it's about Booker T tearing down his accomplishments and it's about Jeff Jarrett's guitar mysteriously popping up in the ring to help Joe win the title.
So now, again, the focus isn't on Joe, the WORLD CHAMPION, but it's on Jeff Jarrett. I have no problem with Jarrett coming back and I've often felt that he was wrongly torn apart much worse than he's ever deserved, but like Sting and Styles, Joe shouldn't be overshadowed by the return of Jarrett or any other former national figure. Joe is a national figure now and he's the one pulling the cart. It's already been proven that he can carry a top title in a company and help it grow in ROH and that was without television exposure.
The way Samoa Joe continues to be booked is just as criminal as the handling of Styles on the Hard Justice PPV, because it's not about maximizing his assets, but making them seem less important than older names, names that are being paid far more money while doing far less wrestling and no touring at all. Hell, Kevin Nash couldn't be bothered to even put his wrestling tights on when he was scanned to appear in the TNA Impact video game - do you think that sort of antic would wash for two seconds if he was working for World Wrestling Entertainment? Of course not.
The two names I've mentioned above are hardly the only victims of the way the company presents themselves. Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutt found themselves doing the best they could last night in a match that was overbooked to the point that you could have predicted the "Russo" chants before the ring entrances. These were two talents that could have put together a good match in their sleep and instead they are getting a "boring" chant before an audience that has seen them work for years.
LAX are supposed to be counter-culture revolutionary Latino thugs, but Hector Guerrero is walking behind them hamming things up the way Eddie Guerrero did during his more sillier runs in WWE. The problem is unlike Eddie, Hector's not wrestling, so it breaks down the street credibility of what LAX, the company's top T-shirt seller, is supposed to be. The idea an LAX break-up was even toyed with just blows my mind. It would be the equivalent of WWE looking to break the Hardy Boyz up right after the ladder match that put them on the map.
James Storm and Robert Roode keep getting pushes that are supposed to elevate them but once they take a step, creative drops them down a few slots, over and over. Thankfully for them, their team gelled immediately and now they are Tag champions, but wasn't the entire point of splitting them from their original duos to try and make them solo stars?
Christopher Daniels is now Curry Man. The gimmick is great and he's perfect at it, but was this really what TNA had in mind when they were building up Daniels as a singles star against Sting all those months ago? I think not.
Some might argue that some or all of these names should be happy with any national TV exposure. On that, I call bulls***. That was the same arguments given to the WCW Cruiserweights when they were unhappy with how they were being used. Every single one of them left for greener pastures and become bigger stars - Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero - and in doing so, cut the heart and soul out of WCW. Some might think that company died in March 2001, but the reality is that once the Radicalz, who were carrying the yeoman's share of the in-ring workrate, bolted, WCW never recovered.
The backstage atmosphere within TNA is nowhere near the egotistical, frustrating scene that helped murder WCW - not by a longshot and I'm not claiming it is anywhere near that trainwreck. Still, there has to be a genuine frustration among some that wonder if they aren't getting focused on, not because of what they have or haven't done in TNA, but because they didn't have the fortune to be wrestling for WWE and WCW during the Monday Night Wars. If you are part of TNA, you are a national star and TNA should be treating you like one.
I get the impression that TNA hears the Russo chants and has an immediate knee-jerk reaction of "it's smart fans blaming Vince." That's not what it is. It's the audience trying to tell the company that they aren't getting the TNA they want to pay for. They could have just as easily have been chanting Fire Dixie or Jeff or Dutch or Don West. These fans are all saying the same thing - they are saying they want to see the product they know TNA can be and the product they want to pay for. Unlike their cousins in Orlando, they ARE actually paying to see TNA, so their words cannot be ignored. It's time for TNA to grow creatively, just as they've grown financially in the last year.
It's not going to be easy and I'm not going to sit back and say how it should be done - there are always going to be growing pains with any company, especially one based around an entertainment medium. With the negativity and jaded environment that comes with professional wrestling, it's doubly tough.
Still, it's obvious TNA is at it's heart a wrestling company, not a sports-entertainment company. Every time the company tries to delve into long soap opera mystery, it only confuses the audience or leads to fans pointing out the illogical things these characters are doing. Indeed, when TNA focused on wrestling with Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle at Lockdown, everyone raved.
It was the same thing last night. As soon as Lethal and Dutt kicked their match into gear towards the end last night, the live audience forgot about the Russo chants and began reacting again positively and enjoying themselves. When Petey Williams and Consequences Creed ran through their near-falls and back and forths, the building erupted. When Kurt Angle dove off the stage to the floor, it was a true great moment and everyone loved it. When Team 3D, Rhino and Christian Cage brawled around the Sovereign Bank Arena, it was as fun as any wrestling atmosphere.
Why? TNA was giving the fans what they wanted - good wrestling. That's all they have to do. The creative side of TNA needs to catch up with the product the fans want and the product TNA is giving them athletically. It's going to take time to make changes and for those changes to add positive benefits, but there's no time like the present to make things happen. I hope we get to see it.
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