Why TNA May Pull a WCW

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So there's a good chance that you're not going to want to watch a 2 hour interview with Mick Foley, but you should.

To cut to the chase of the what I'm interested in here, there's something that came up in Bobby Heenan's book that I didn't touch on. WCW had an ultimate failure in self-promotion. During the Monday Night Wars, wrestlers were, probably more than ever again, crossing over into widespread mainstream culture. I mean, hell, Goldberg, at his height, was showing up at Cardinals games to hang out with Mark McGwire, in HIS height. As Brain points out, McGwire rubbed his bat with a Goldberg t-shirt. (The irony of how many view both accomplishments with degrees of 'fake'ness now is not lost on me.)

And this type of stuff wouldn't get mentioned on Nitro. To McMahon's credit, Heenan points out multiple times, clips from these things would be all over WWF programming.

So now we've got TNA, whose hottest property, whether they know it or not, is Mick Foley. He's showing up at cultural touchstones like The Rally to Restore Sanity, getting an award, and TNA doesn't even bother with a mention of it. Now, call it a fake rally or whatever, and call his award a pretend one, but you cannot argue the following:

1. Jon Stewart and the Daily Show's appeal for the media to calm the hell down was met with an overly defensive media.
2. The award Foley received was for defending the bullied, an incredibly important topic (which to TNA's credit, they have began an anti-bullying campaign).

So to not cash in on this is silly. It's positive press, free advertising, and letting whatever fringe fans who happen to watch without loyalty know that they're part of something relevant. Maybe in the days of ECW it was cool to be part of the completely fringe group, but if there's a sense that this fringe might be a pop-culturally relevant minority, it's a lot more likely to earn loyalty.

So When Foley tweeted that he was catching flak from TNA for comments made in the above Geek Week interview, they really need to know: they're dropping the ball.