The Future? Or so we thought.
It seems like a lame concept. Making a big deal about no longer watching a particular wrestling product by choice, because you don’t like it. I haven’t been able to watch as much Chikara and ROH as I would like, and a number of indies, mostly due to work, and accessibility (though when I get back to Cape Breton, I will be able to watch ROH on weekly TV). But through all of the necrophilia, exploding wrestlers, exploding limos, etc that pro wrestling has unleashed onto the world, there was never anything so bad that turned me off of a company. That was, until recently.
It was set to be one of the biggest and most anticipated matches of the year. Long time TNA mainstay Bobby Roode was in line for his first shot at the TNA Heavyweight Championship. For years, he was said to be a future main eventer, from his days in Team Canada till today. Bobby Roode was thought of as the future. Turned down by John Laurinaitis in 2003, Bobby Roode would prove WWE wrong in showing that he was main event material.
But on the night of Bound for Glory, 2011, it all went horribly wrong. Bobby Roode lost the match through a bad finish with his foot underneath the rope. It would be like if The Ultimate Warrior never won at Wrestlemania 6. If Steve Austin had never won at Wrestlemania 14. If John Cena never won at Wrestlemania 21. Months of build with the Bound for Glory series all went to waste, as people were swerved. And for some, this swerve went right into a tree.
This may not be Raven's destiny, but I'm sure there are people who have this in mind as theirs.
One frustrating part of this was they actually had a similar situation happen, where someone deserving finally won the belt. As a matter of fact, it was one of my favourite wrestlers. Raven joined TNA after being released from WWE. They didn’t renew his contract, and the door was left open to go right into the new upstart promotion of Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. Raven was a major star for ECW and WCW, but it didn’t seem to work out in WWE. He was jobbed out in 2001-2003, he was banished from Raw to work on Heat. His Seven Deadly Sins angle was watered down on television, an angle he’d been working months on himself. After his release, he gained new life on the independents, with his new run in TNA and his memorable feud with CM Punk. I actually first heard of Punk through this feud.
For the first few years he was there, Raven said that it was his destiny to become the NWA World Heavyweight Champion. Raven would go onto different feuds within the company, but it was still always his destiny. His feud with Jeff Jarrett, forming the gathering, getting his head shaved by Shane Douglas and James Mitchell, his feud with Sabu, all happened, even though it was still always Raven’s destiny to win that top prize. So, after two years of being in TNA, he finally achieved that destiny by winning the King of the Mountain match at Slammiversery, defeating the Champion AJ Styles, Abyss, Monty Brown and Sean Waltman. He replaced Jeff Jarrett in that match. Reports on the internet said that Raven cried when he found out he would be winning the title, due to it’s lineage and history. This was the climax of his career, as he ended up getting a thyroid condition which made him gain more weight, and his career was starting to wind down after that point. For a fan like myself, it was a big deal, due to his misuse in WWE, getting released in 2003, debuting with TNA, and then finally becoming the Champion after over 2 years. I actually didn’t get to see the pay per view, nor did I get the Fox Sports Network to be able to watch Impact. I searched out TNA on the internet to watch it, as I was such a huge fan of Raven and wanted to get the most out of the product as I could. This was back when they showed Impact on their website, before the Spike TV deal.
Raven wins the NWA World Heavyweight Title.
I was disappointed he lost it back to Jeff Jarrett before they went on television, but what can you do? But at the very least he was able to get that victory.
This leads to a great analogy I heard from Raven in one of his Secrets of the Ring DVDs, in regards to emotional connection. Say you’re dating this girl for a month, and she cheats on you with somebody else. It sucks, but no big deal. Now say you’re in love with the girl and she cheats on you. You want to beat the shit out of her. You wouldn’t. But, you might slash your wrists, or have sex with a girl who looks just like her. Raven trails off sometimes. But generally, it’s that emotional attachment.
So, if you look at Bobby Roode, what do we see, in regards to attachment? He started with the company in 2004. He was there when they started on Fox Sports Net. He was there when they started on Spike. He had been in the minds of fans of TNA since almost the beginning. He enters the Bound for Glory Series, and he is tied for last place for awhile. He makes his way into the top 4 and wins the Bound for Glory Series. TNA then put on one of the best angles I’ve seen them do in a long time, where Roode wrestles different members of Fortune and they make videos talking about Roode’s home life and everything he’s sacrificed to get here. All this, building up to the big day. It made the fans feel good, it made people excited. And then on the night of Bound for Glory, it was taken from everybody.
For some, it was potentially 8 years in the making.
After that, I realized that I can not get invested in the TNA product. While WWE has given me exciting and memorable moments like CM Punk winning the title at Money in the Bank, TNA gave me and others a disappointing blow. A middle finger to the fans who were invested in this program. They would eventually give the title to James Storm, another long standing member of the roster, but there was no angle behind it. It just simply got a reaction of, oh, congrats, I guess.
A few weeks later, the man who everyone was attached to, Bobby Roode, won the TNA Heavyweight Title and turned heel. Again, another congrats, but no one cares as much as they would have before. It’s like the girlfriend analogy. The girl cheated on you, but you were just dating for a few weeks. The angle was dead, and the excitement was gone.
In the end, it was too much of a disappointment. Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan talk about marks in a negative sense on Twitter. But in all honesty, I want to be a mark. I think most wrestling fans want that. In the real world, the TNA Heavyweight Title is meaningless. All professional wrestling titles are. But we want to believe. We want to believe these belts are important. Vince McMahon was criticized a lot for not wanting the term “belt” used on television. But Vince doesn’t want his wrestlers to fight for belts. He wants the to fight for titles. For important Championships. I want to believe these Championships are important. I knew that I couldn’t watch the product anymore because it didn’t matter who I was a fan of, I wasn’t going to get that attached to a product or any people on that product, because it was all futile.
When people believed professional wrestling was real, they gave their money to watch the shows with the belief that what they were seeing was legit. They were lied to. But you know what? Unlike all other scams, they got a pay off. They got to see Dusty win the belt. Hogan slay the dragon. They got to feel that joy. But in TNA, you will never get a pay off. So to me, it’s not worth getting attached to.
Roode finally wins the title....I guess. From quirkalicious on the FAN Forums