WWE Vs TNA. Monday Night Wars Revisited?

I'd like to take a moment to dissect both shows and bring up their good and bad parts with a short conclusion at the end.

Let's start with WWE's Monday Night Raw; anyone who's been a wrestling fan for over a decade knows what the Montreal screw-job was and who Bret "The Hit-man" Hart is. For those of you who don't know, Bret Hart was a very big star in the WWF and in fact he was world heavyweight wrestling champion.

1997 comes along and Bret Hart gets a better offer to come and work for a competitor of the WWF which was known as World Championship Wrestling, owned by Ted Turner. There was a small problem as Bret was the WWF's heavyweight champ and obviously he couldn't got to the competition with the WWF's biggest prize.

Now traditionally, when a situation like this arises, the wrestler that is leaving the company will "put over" a younger wrestler (put over means to legitimize) and this is usually done by the exiting wrestler to lose the title to the younger or up an coming talent.

Wrestlers have traditionally been always very protective of the business and it was an unwritten rule of wrestling for the better part of the 20th Century that this is how things are done.

So anyway, the WWF's pay per view spectacular known as "Survivor Series" comes along and the main event was going to be a title match between Bret Hard c vs Shawn Michaels and the event was taking place in Canada. It's bears mentioning that Bret Hart is Canadian.

The problem was that for one reason or another Bret Hart didn't like Michaels and he told Vince McMahon that he wasn't going to "drop the belt" in his home country but rather would surrender it the following day and thus vacating it.

To even the most casual wrestling fan it will be obvious that if things were handled the way Hart wanted to handle them the WWF would look extremely weak while the departing Bret Hart would look extremely strong and thus would be earning more money for the competition right out of the gate.

So McMahon got the idea that he would let Hart think that the match was going to go the way that Hart wanted it to go yet in the middle of the match McMahon jumps out of his ringside chair and orders the referee to ring the bell and declare Michaels the winner and new champion.

This bit of wrestling history became known in wrestling circles as the Montreal Screw-job.

I've got my own opinions about this situation but that is not the point of this article.

So, after 12 years McMahon and Hart come to making a deal where Hart signed a 4 month talent contract with the WWE (formerly known as the WWF).

This was the major story on Monday Night Raw and it was some very riveting television when Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart stood face to face in the ring after 12 years of no contact. It was also quite emotional when they shook hands and buried the hatchet.

In the meantime McMahons competition went belly up and McMahon bought the defunct company for it's extensive tape library and so that he had control over that companies name.

Now, many people claim that part of the reason that WCW went out of business is because it was poorly managed and wrestlers like Hulk Hogan and the rest of the faction, known as the nWo (New World Order, were receiving exorbitant amounts of money whether they worked or not.

It was as though mom and dad left the kids for the weekend and forgot to lock the liquor cabinet.

As I stated, WCW went out of business but then in 2002 a new company started to emerge. This company was known as TNA (Total Non-Stop Action) and from the looks of it the company seemed doomed to failure.

Nevertheless, their salvation came when Dixie Carter invested in the company and Spike TV gave TNA a time-slot. This obviously breathed some life into TNA.

TNA's greatest desire was to take on Vince McMahon and to beat him at his own game. They tried and they tried but no matter how hard they huffed and puffed they just couldn't blow McMahon's house down.

The decision was made to bring in Hulk Hogan as a partner to help run TNA and to build it up into a real competition to the WWE and on Monday, January 4th TNA held a huge 3 hour special on Spike TV where Hulk Hogan was going to debut for the first time.

The show started off very badly, it looked a bit like the keystone cops. Every angle that failed in the old WCW was rehashed and within 15 minutes of the show starting there must have been 5 different wrestlers debuting on the show. That in itself is not bad, but these wrestlers are friends of Hulk Hogan and they are very much past their prime. Some of them were past it back in WCW.

Granted, the Hulkster said that the company was going to require everyone to earn their spot on the show but given the way that the show was presented, now with Hogan at the helm, it just wreaked of WCW failure.

In essence, there were wrestlers from the past debuting every 5 minutes or so for the entire three hours. There were some fantastic matches, Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle and A. J. Styles put on a very impressive match. They didn't debut today and have been a vital part of what has kept the company afloat.

All in all, TNA needed hordes of wrestlers from the past to possibly achieve what the WWF achieved with just one wrestler from the past.

The thing that WCW didn't get and now TNA doesn't get is that it's not just star power or wrestling ability or giving a good interview. It's about telling a story, the return of Bret Hart to the WWE is a great story and tapped into the emotions of the fans.

For the sake of argument lets say that TNA managed to beat WWE in the ratings this past Monday. Lets say that the parade of wrestlers from years past managed to elevate TNA to the type of ratings they never had.

An obvious problem instantly arises; Now What? This stunt that they pulled was good for an initial pop in the ratings but what are they going to do next week to try and keep those ratings up? Are they going to bring in even more has-been wrestlers and parade them around for a couple of hours? That is the problem with TNA, they don't know what they are doing. Like most companies that take on the WWE, they all try to out-WWE the WWE instead of presenting a different product all together. A different style of wrestling, a different direction, an alternative. This would certainly keep their ratings growing as they would be the alternative wrestling program for fans that maybe have grown tired of the stuff Vince McMahon puts on every week.

It's just a shame that they don't have that kind of foresight. It's terrifying to think that Hulk Hogan, one of the biggest reasons for the destruction of WCW is now in charge of TNA's wallet.

The fact that all of Hogans lackeys made cameo's on the show was a very bad omen but I guess Hogan had no choice because the man has nothing left to offer and he knows it.

So, will the ratings be up for this past Monday's show? Absolutely.

Is this a sign of a new war between wrestling companies? Absolutely NOT!

I hope I'm wrong about Hulk Hogan, I hope that TNA does become the alternative wrestling show I'm just not holding my breath.

By: Rob Korczak