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| Another false start, or is this his time to fly, finally? Photo Credit: TNAWrestling.com |
If you talked to fans of TNA or wrestling observers in general, they all might scoff at the idea of a guy who has won the World Championship on four different occasions being called an up and comer. I mean, he's main evented PPVs! For all intents and purposes though, is he really a main event level talent in terms of presentation and exposure? I'd argue not, and that speaks to two really big problems, one with mainstream pro wrestling on the whole, but moreso, with TNA in regards to how it presents home grown guys versus the "old guard".
Pointing out that a guy has won titles to prove that a guy is main event status is bogus in the mainstream nowadays. In ROH or other indies, they award titles to guys who by and large earn main event status within the fed. In WWE and TNA, titles are given out to try and get guys over, or as a shock-value mechanism. When you have the guys in charge who are in charge in both places, ESPECIALLY in TNA (where one of the co-owners of the company, Hulk Hogan, came on a kayfabed show in ReAction and said that no one cared about fighting over fake belts... WHAT THE FUCK?), you get a wholesale deemphasis on titles and more emphasis on bullshit non-competition stories like kidnapping family members or wrestling over custody of children, and thus titles are truly props that guys carry around with them. You can thank TNA head-dipshit and Antichrist of pro wrestling himself, Vince Russo, for that idea, an idea that has stuck with people like Hogan, Bischoff, Kevin Dunn and sadly, Vince McMahon.
Still, even with the deemphasis on titles, the WWE has at least been trying to push new guys to the forefront over the last few years. Even if that push has been half-assed for some, if you go back a decade, you'll find that they created new stars to replace the Austins and Rocks and Foleys who left around that time. John Cena, Randy Orton, Kurt Angle, Brock Lesnar, Edge and now The Miz are all products of the WWE machine. Whom has TNA produced that's even on a comparable plane? ...uh, yeah, I'll get back to you on that one.
There are two different castes in TNA when it comes to how you're presented. There's the treatment given to its homegrown stars, which is usually shoddy and secondary to the big name players, and the big money treatment given to people who've already made their names somewhere else other than TNA. Styles, a guy who was built and given prominence in a time before TNA had this mentality, has been the biggest victim of that glass ceiling. Even when he was given main event shine in the last two years, it was either as a whiny baby who needed Sting to talk him off the ledge, or it was as a carbon copy of Ric Flair who was aimless and shiftless without Flair's guidance. That's not a way to build a star, that's a way to give a guy a complex.
In the WWE, Styles would be comparable to Chris Jericho right now. Jericho was a guy who never really got the ball like Cena or Triple H did, but he was a guy who tirelessly straddled the line between midcard and main event, doing work in both areas and getting exposure in a company that had worldwide market penetration. Styles would be in the upper echelon in WWE right now, even with similar treatment as he's gotten in TNA. The problem is though that TNA is far, far, FAR less exposed than the WWE is right now, and thus needs to be held to a different standard. Styles isn't reaching the same number of people Jericho did, and even he's not getting the same platform Jericho got in WWE when he was being made into a bit player.
They need to build stars, present them as equals to the WWE free agents they bring in and put them as the centerpieces to their plans of action, not as fringe players who only get play when the lamentations from hardcore fans get too loud for them not to take any action at all. For them to push Styles and Jay Lethal and the other originals aside and cram Kurt Angle, Jeff Jarrett (original or not in TNA, he was still made in WCW and WWF/E), Sting, Jeff Hardy and Ken Anderson down everyone's throats. The spotlight should be shared and booking should be done to get EVERYONE over, not just the big name stars with giant egos. Furthermore, they shouldn't have folks like Madison Rayne explicitly refer to the WWE as a "better" promotion (especially since the context she used that in was patently false... TNA has a far better women's division than WWE) when talking to Mickie James.
TNA has another opportunity to present AJ Styles in an equal light as Angle or the rest of the WWE/ECW/WCW retreads that they have at the top of the card. Will they do it, or will Styles forever be known as an up-and-comer, even when he's pushing 40 and starting on the downslope of his career? It may be absurd, but hey, is there anything about how TNA operates on a daily basis that isn't?
Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!
