TNA - Titles Not Appreciated.

Many people have said over the years that TNA is a terrible name for wrestling company. Since here in England we don’t really have the phrase “T&A”, meaning tits and ass, it doesn’t particularly bother me that much. But lets run with the idea that the name should change – I have the perfect alternative.

WTF.

Aside from the obvious abbreviation, that stands for “Why This” Federation,because way too often that’s exactly what I find myself uttering. “Why This?”

I could spend a very, very long time on this, and frankly I don’t have the energy to go all the way, through. Instead, I’ll simply focus on a couple of issues that bothered me greatly this week, specifically involved the tag division, X-division and the women’s division, specifically the titles.

Let’s start with the tag division. Now I might have this totally wrong, but there was a match at Destination X between The Motor City Machine Guns and Generation Me, and MCMG won, to give them a number one contendership to the tag team titles, right? Have they had that title match yet? I don’t think they have, unless they had it during a pre-show or post-show or TNA today online segment that nobody watches.

So why have a tag team match between the Motor City Machine Guns and Team 3D TO DETERMINE THE NUMBER ONE CONTENDERS?? It’s ludicrous.

To add to that, who won? Did Team 3D win due to a DQ from interference? Was the match thrown out? I didn’t hear an announcement. It’s madness. What’s the point of any of these matches if a) they contradict stuff which has already happened and b) the match’s conclusion means nothing going forward.

Meanwhile, the tag team champions are........Matt Morgan. Morgan laid out partner Hernandez a couple of weeks ago, and we were promised an explanation of why. We are yet to receive one.

Instead, we got Morgan referring to himself as “we” and apparently will defend soon against the number one contenders, which might be the Guns, might be Team 3D or might be no-one. Who knows?

Any explanation of why he laid his partner out? If the belts will be vacated? If he gets to choose a partner? Nope, nothing. Just a vague hint at schizophrenia. OK then.

Let’s go to Destination X again. Do I remember a Ladder match? A Ladder match which Kazarian won? So where the hell is he and why was he not mentioned once as Doug Wllliams’s number one contender during Doug’s appearance on Impact?

Shannon Moore came out and asked for a title shot at Lockdown, in a way in which we normally find ends with exactly that happening. There will be people that now have in their mind that Moore will wrestle Williams at that PPV, despite them facing off at the last one.

It may well be an excuse to make this a three-way involving Kaz, Moore and Doug, and I have no problem with that. But at least acknowledge the existence of a number one contender during the segment put aside for the division.

And then there are the Knockouts. The poor, undervalued females of TNA who get no respect from those who ought to be showing it. They draw good ratings for the company every week, and many have called for them to have more exposure (in a storyline and angle respect, I mean) on television.

Now, I don’t want to scream “conspiracy”, but it didn’t half seem to me like the booking of the Knockout’s on Impact was deliberately tacky and absurd, so that if they fail they say “yeah, we tried the KOs in the main event /overrun slot, and they failed. Experiment over.” If they succeed, however, it shows that sex sells – so lets do more of it.

I’m taking a punt here, but this reeks of WCW, and so it wouldn’t be a wild assumption to think that perhaps Russo and Bischoff (particularly the former) are responsible.

If you didn’t see it, there was a 4 on 4 match - Velvet Sky, Lacey von Erich, Madison Rayne and Daffney v Tara, Angelina Love, Ayako Hamada and ODB. There would be four falls, and whenever one happened, the scorer of the fall would get a key, and both they and the loser would drop out of the match, until all were finished. Confused yet? You will be.

Then, the four keyholders would each open a box containing a ‘prize’. One was the TNA Knockouts title. Think of that. The women’s title belt was a prize which one person scoring a relatively nondescript pin in an eight-person tag would win. Someone achieving the same feat would win a spider. (how exactly that came to be TNA property is unknown, as is why they didn’t just simply hand it back to Tara)Another would be forced to take their clothes off. That’s classy.

Actually, I don’t even care that one of them was going to do this. Let’s not even worry about whether this ought to be passed off as entertainment or not. The problem is that people ought to earn a world title, or a world title shot. I don’t even mind them winning the world title in a tag match, although I’d prefer it otherwise. But this meant that a world champion (for that is what Tara effectively was) won a match, or at least did all that could be asked of them, and then lost their title. That’s madness.

That’s three titles IN ONE SHOW that were devalued. The ‘Legends’ title – stupid name, by the way, is being carried by Rob Terry. Really nice guy, and this is absolutely not his fault, but he is not good enough to be being pushed in the manner he currently is. That isn’t to say he won’t become an effective big guy. But he isn’t there yet.

None of TNA’s secondary (or tertiary) titles mean a thing. They are just treated like accessories, not prized possessions. Tara cares more about a spider than a belt. Now I’m not saying she shouldn’t love a pet, but it just makes the belt look trivial.

I could be here a long time, bemoaning the terrible booking of Desmond Wolfe, chairshots to the head, the insignificance of Hardy, lack of need for “The Band”, Bubba, swearing, lack of Joe, ladder matches with keys, Orlando Jordan and plenty more. But I won’t.

I may do soon, though......