Today is the tenth anniversary of the first show in TNA history. The show, which was reviewed quite brilliantly on Trey Irby's dormant Crimson Mask podcast, was pretty much a trainwreck, not unlike a large portion of the company's history. There have been brilliant moments - the short time when the X-Division reigned supreme being one of them - and there have been times when the company was a collective black mark on wrestling's history.
Still, no matter how bad things got, no matter how many times troll wannabe MMA journalists who only cover wrestling because they have to said they'd go under within a month, TNA has survived. Ten years is not a trivial amount of time. ECW didn't survive that long. The time between WCW rising from the agglomerated primordial ooze of Jim Crockett Promotions and its purchase by WWE wasn't much longer than a decade, actually. In the post-national world of professional wrestling, a decade is a long time to be open, and what's even more amazing is that TNA is still here after everything going against it.
Forget that the name should have precluded it from being taken seriously by fans. This company survived two different stints by Vince Russo as head booker, lawsuits out the wazoo, key talent getting injured at inopportune times, timeslots being moved around on them and other things that befell the company, whether self-inflicted or not. I'd say most of their problems have stemmed because the people in charge, namely Dixie Carter, have had no business running a wrestling company post-turn of the century.
Yet, they're still here today, and I think at least critically, they're stronger than ever. They've seemingly ditched the WWE-lite mentality. Homegrown stars stand aside imports from WWE/WCW/ECW instead of in their shadows. They're trying different things like Open Fight Night and partnering with MMA fighters who want to do dual careers. Whether those things are good or bad to me is irrelevant for now because they're at least trying to be TNA or Impact Wrestling rather than a company like WWE. That's critical.
A lot of this might seem to be damning with faint praise, and honestly, I'm not sure the company really deserves all that many accolades. Chikara and ROH both turned ten this year, and PWG reaches their decade mark in 2013 (provided we're all still here and not in the tummies of the legion of bath salt addicts that may very well control the earth after December 21st this year). All three have done more to advance the art of wrestling than TNA and didn't have the benefit of their owners having rich parents to give them open checkbooks. I guarandamntee if Mike Quackenbush's parents were as loaded as Bob and Janice Carter, we might be talking differently about the landscape.
That being said, I think the company at least deserves some kind of due here. Plus, they're on a right track. Hopefully, if they last ten more years, they'll have made a better mark in the wrestling world than as the company that gave us Sharmell vs. Jenna Morasca and painted a dong on Samoa Joe's forehead.
