I know I throw this word out a lot, but the only way I can describe last night's PPV is this: Baffling.
In an age of declining PPV business, TNA seems to have taken a boom-period stance of '
it, they're going to order it anyway' booking that makes no sense. There was NOTHING to sell this PPV on aside from the promise of a good tag team match and Styles/Williams. Everything else was fairly 'meh', and the surprise stuff is the icing on the shit cake.
Let's think about this... you want people to order your PPV.
First, you announce a mystery opponent. This is a guy that, flying in the face of all logic, has some actual history in the business and a fanbase. So, let's not even HINT at who it is. While I certainly don't think that Matt Hardy was going to put money in wallets, it's a reasonable idea to have had him at least debut on Impact before the match. Oh, and can we look at the timeline here? RVD debuts. RVD wins the title. RVD is stripped of title. RVD never really gets revenge for either losing the title nor the horrendous beat-down that caused it. RVD gets bogged down in ECW shit. RVD is booked against Matt Hardy. RVD loses to Matt Hardy. There's no real pretty way to paint that one.
Second, you have NO MAIN EVENT. Oh no, wait, sorry... you do have a main event. A main event that's a #1 contender's match (what?) between two faces (what?) who really should be working together (what?) to fight of this supposed great evil (what?) of Immortal (what?). This is not the electric match-up that I want to see.
Third, one of the few good-on-paper matches you have, Styles/Williams, is canceled because of an injury. What bugs me is that they HAD to have known about this before the show aired, which means they decided to just not announce it until after people paid. Look, if there was a match worth paying for here, it was that one. For a company that's all about the social networking, you'd think they maybe could've brought it up. I mean, really. Plus, to top it off, you replace arguably the best worker in the company with Abyss? C'mon.
So, that was the build up... then, once it happened, we got a surprise main event and a new champion. This is worst hotshot booking in recent memory. Seriously. This is RVD/Styles level shit, and it's sad that a national company is even still doing things like this. Why is Anderson champ? What purpose does this serve? Seriously, from a booking perspective, explain the logic of hot-shotting the belt onto Anderson in an unannounced match that (wait for it) 99% of TNA/s audience will never see because they don't order the PPVs?
Look, I want TNA to succeed. I want that talent they ahve in DROVES to be utilized in a way that gives WWE a kick in the ass. When I see shit like this, though, I just know it's never going to happen. Look at last night. People, some of them talented, sat around in a room and this was the BEST THEY CAME UP WITH. They looked at these plans and went "That's the one!".
Think about that.
(insert obligatory Matt Hardy is fat and talentless comment here)