Monday, August 06, 2007

Pacman

Ok heres the deal. I've heard more than 20 people say that they were shocked, surprized, or stunned at TNA bringing in Pacman Jones. I guess I'm in the minority then because I'm none of the above. No Pacman is not a wrestler and it seems a little absurd to bring him in. But lets wait one minute here...... If you look at the past this has been done thousands of times. Wrestlemania I saw a slew of people being brought in that had nothing to do with wrestling. Mr. T might not have been much of a stretch but does anyone remember Cindy Lopper ? What about in the 90's when WCW brought in Rodman? What about Tyson being brought in as a referee? Heck Andy Kaufman was even brought in in Memphis back in the day. The point is this. TNA has a wrestling product that not alot of people know about. If they do know about it, they are not telling anyone else to watch, because the ratings stay pretty much the same. They do there best to advertise but lets face it its easy to forget about TNA. To this point they haven't really done anything to stand out. Until now! Yahoo, USA today, CNN, Fox, ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN news, and ESPN radio have basicaly been plugging his appearance for Thursday all day long. I kid you not, I've heard them on ESPN radio mention TNAwrestling.com about 20 times on a 10 minute ride home.
In my humble opinion, this might have been the smartest thing, ratings wise, that TNA has ever done. I'm sure TNA's wed site hits have skyrocketed by curious people that want to see whats up with Pacman. If they can use this correctly the shows numbers should go up as well. Here though is where it becomes crucial for TNA to do this right. If I was running the show for Thursday, this is what I'd do. Run 4 really good matches and show what your company has to offer wrestling fans. Throw video recaps of fueds that are going on that are not adressed by the matches. Make sure in those 4 matches that you have you get at least 3 big established names in there somewhere. (Like a match with Sting, Angle, Nash, The Dudley's, or Christian) these guys are familiar faces to WWE and WCW fans that may not be familiar with TNA. Tease the fact that Pacman is in the building all night long. Then with 5 to 7 minutes left in the show, bring him to the ring for an interview. Interrupt that interview with a fresh heel ( like AJ, Rude, or Shelly) as a way to give the rub to someone new. Then just when it looks like all is lost and Pacman is cornered, out comes a baby to help out. (Jarrett would be perfect for this) Then you could do one of two things. 1: you could have Pac help Jarrett defeat the heel or 2: Pac turns on Jarrett and helps the heel. Either way would work. They just need to keep him off till the final minutes of the show. This almost forces people that tuned in to see Pac to have to watch the whole show. Then all you have to do is make sure the show delivers. This is just my opinion though. What do you think?

3 comments:

Brian Tramel said...

My main bitch about all this is not that TNA can benefit from this and I am not sure they can, but that people like Pacman Jones, who was involved in a triple shooting in a strip club is given so much press. I think all in all it makes wrestling just look bad. The Benoit thing happens just weeks ago and now TNA has hired strip club shooting Pacman Jones to rescue their promotion.

Pyrohawk said...

Good point, but as of right now the whole strip club shooting is up in the air. There has recently been a new witness to come out and say he had nothing to do with it. No matter what happens though, wrestling is always going to take the brunt of the media. If you go to the NFL's web site, just about every day someone in the organization has been suspended for viilating the substance abuse policy. But its not made into a big deal. But let one wrestler fail, and the whole biz, gets thrown under the bus. I guess what I'm trying to say is. If they are going to be negitve anyways, what does it matter?

Bluesman said...

You're right Hawk, there is a lot of negetive things going on in sports today. All I have to say is if he can't control himself in a strip club with a bunch of drunks and naked women. How is he going to take on an arena full of people really trying to get under his skin. The man is a Thug and should not be rewarded and remain in the spot light. I know he has a right to make a living, but does he deserve to be put on a pedistal and looked up to?