Impact Wrestling has come a long way since it’s inception back in 2002 when it had amazing matches between AJ Styles and Samoa Joe and different and fresh concepts like the six-sided octagon ring and The X-Division Title Match. They’ve produced some of the biggest stars in the history of the company from AJ Styles to Samoa Joe. But when they brought in Hogan and his cronies that took over the creative, the storylines had greatly suffered as a result and many thought it was the end for TNA especially when they had the financial problems back a few years ago, but that they are now owned by a billion dollar company, they’ve rebranded themselves as Impact Wrestling and have bounced back stronger than ever nowadays as evidenced with this past July’s Slammiversary PPV.
The main differences between WWE and Impact Wrestling nowadays is that while WWE has the most money and quantity, Impact Wrestling on the other hand has less money, but more programming quality than WWE. Also, Impact Wrestling allows wrestlers to work at other promotions which is something that WWE notoriously doesn’t allow their wrestlers to do because they don’t want to lose their monopolistic stranglehold on the wrestling industry.
Here are several things that Impact Wrestling does better than WWE
1. Clean Finishes - When watching a match on Impact Wrestling, you often see a very good match that has a very clean finish whereas in today’s WWE, you often see the same tiresome matches often end in either a disqualification or no contest as seen in the main event Universal Title match between Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman at the recent Hell In A Cell PPV.
2. Not Relying Heavily On Nostalgia Anymore - Back during The Old WCW and TNA days, these companies relied heavily on nostalgia in the form of past WWE stars to draw for their big shows. While the benefit of that brought in big money and ratings for the old promotions, but the downside to it was that it was one of the main reasons that brought about the downfall of WCW and TNA. One of the main things that’s killing WWE’s current product is the fact that they continue to undercut their current roster by relying heavily on nostalgia in the form of part-timers like Brock Lesnar that are used to bury any momentum that young full-time wrestlers gain. For Impact Wrestling nowadays however, instead of relying on the old WWE guys, they rely on big names from the indies such as current Impact World Champion Austin Aires to draw for their shows.
3. Producing Meaningful Content - Another one of the main things that’s killing WWE’s current product is the extreme over-saturation of the product when WWE produces up to 11 hours of meaningless content a month from an hour of 205 Live, NXT, Total Divas to 2 hours of filler on Smackdown Live and 3 hours of Monday Night Filler, but with Impact Wrestling, they produce two hours of solid content every week that makes fans not only want more, but they make sure that fans don’t feel burned out watching no more than two hours of Impact every week.
4. Redundant Storylines - Another one of the main things that’s killing WWE’s current product is the fact that they continue to rely on old redundant Attitude/Ruthless Agression Era storylines to generate ratings, but this has only been the opposite as the ratings continue to drop every week and every year. Impact Wrestling on the other hand comes up with innovative ideas and new storylines for their wrestlers so that the fans can be interested in the storylines on their weekly shows.
5. Better Women’s Division - In today’s WWE, The Women’s Division is very lackluster because many of the female wrestlers don’t even get quality airtime on the main roster every week. For example Sasha Banks and Naomi have been buried by The WWE by being left off the last few PPVs and nowadays, the women in WWE are only given between 3-5 minutes mostly to showcase their talent on the main roster. The WWE has never truly respected women as wrestlers as evidenced during The Attitude/Ruthless Aggression/ Divas Eras, the women in WWE were portrayed in a very negative and sexist light that nobody took very seriously and even not being allowed to perform at The Greatest Royal Rumble event in Saudi Arabia this past April. Whereas in Impact Wrestling, the female performers like Kiera Hogan, Su Young, and Tessa Blanchard are given between 10-15 minutes to showcase their talent in Impact Wrestling. Impact Wrestling has definitely been on the forefront of women’s wrestling for over a decade and they still are because they treat their female wrestlers better than WWE.
6. Non-Scripted Promos - In today’s WWE, the performers are heavily restricted from speaking from the heart in their promos which in turn stifles their creativity and halts their character development. The scripted promos in today’s WWE makes performers sound extremely robotic. In Impact Wrestling nowadays however, wrestlers speak from the heart in their promos that allows them to connect them to their character that also allows them to get over with fans. Unlike WWE, Impact Wrestling performers also don’t have to worry about cookie cutter scripted lines being forcefed to them by some writers backstage.
The Conclusion - By making small moves with better direction and vision, Impact Wrestling has a better future ahead of them.
By Kwame Shakir
