Step Up: TNA’s Wrestling Ring
I don’t personally care if TNA uses a 4 or 6-sided wrestling ring. I don’t care if they use an octagon, a circle, or a triangle. The shape of a ring is not going to change the quality of in-ring performance, nor will it have any bearing on TNA’s creative team. The overall product will only change if the people writing the show decide it needs to change.
That being said, I have to give TNA their due, because they listened to the fans, stuck to their guns, and didn’t immediately back-peddle out of their decision once the criticism started flowing in. Certain people made the case that the TNA locker room should decide what kind of ring they wrestle in. To a certain extent, I can get behind that idea – they are the ones putting their bodies on the line for our entertainment. But you have to remember that wrestlers are independently contracted employees.
To use a construction metaphor: TNA is the contractor, the wrestlers are the sub-contractors, and the fans are the people whose house they are building. If one day, Bobby Roode the roofing contractor shows up to work, and the future home owners have requested a completely different roof be installed, it is his job to build the roof. If he decides on his own that he’d rather build the original, with no regard to what the consumer has requested, he’s out of a job. It’s TNA’s job, as the metaphorical contractor, to work with the consumer to decide if a project can be changed, and then relay the changes to the sub-contractors.
The fans decided they wanted a 6-sided wrestling ring again. TNA said “OK, we can make that happen”, and made the change. I understand how that could be frustrating if you’re a wrestler, but I also totally side with TNA Wrestling for pulling the trigger. And the reason they get a “step up” this week is because I’ve seen them push for things before, and give up two weeks later, brushing it under the rug like it never happened. This time, they made a big deal about the switch, advertised it for weeks, and next week on Impact Wrestling you will start to see some major changes in the product take place. So really the “step up” is for the general direction that TNA is moving towards. But it all started with the decision to let the fans make a major decision – even if that “decision” was blatantly obvious, and had likely already been made by TNA officials.
