Fixing TNA: The Name

Despite what critics think, we don’t believe TNA is beyond repair. Their roster is surprisingly impressive. Their production quality is pretty solid. Their social media presence isn’t that bad. With the change of leadership, Billy Corgan is now charged with the task of diagnosing the plague that’s held back TNA from ever gaining ground on WWE. Yesterday we began to look at every aspect of TNA in an effort to start fixing it. Today, we look at another huge problem…

TNA: The Name

Jerry Jarrett has said him and Jeff decided on the name TNA because TNA sounds like T&A. As in the slang term for women’s ‘assets’. He figured that’d be a hook for people scrolling through the pay per view listing. Come for the hopes of naked women, stay for the half naked men rolling around with one another. Color commentator (and apparent deadlock enthusiast) Ed Ferrara even used his 15 second entrance at the first ever TNA event to draw attention to the TNA/T&A homophone. Suddenly TNA pay per views like Destination X, Slammiversary and Bound of Glory all evoke a much more innuendo laden visual.

TNA, which stands for Total Nonstop Action, actually began as NWA-TNA due to their affiliation with the once prestigious and meaningful National Wrestling Alliance. TNA used the NWA World and Tag Championship as their titles from 2002-2007. Ken Shamrock became the inaugural NWA-TNA champion, winning the vacated title at TNA’s first show. 5 years later, NWA and TNA ended their working relationship with the NWA titles returning to the NWA and TNA starting their own title lineages. Thus entirely erasing the NWA portion of the TNA name.

TNA began using Impact! when they started airing weekly shows on Fox Sports Net in 2004. Impact was initially just the title of the show, similar to WWE Monday Night Raw and WCW Monday Nitro. In May 2011 however, TNA officially began the official (and confusing) transformation to Impact Wrestling. Were they renaming the show to incorporate the word Wrestling and make it clear that this was a wrestling show? (The complete opposite of Jarrett’s logic a decade earlier) Were they renaming the entire company Impact Wrestling? 5 years later and still no one is sure what the deal is.

The Case for the name ‘TNA’

If you want to follow exiting CEO Dixie Carter on Twitter, you follow @TNADixie. If you check the Twitter bio of new TNA President, Billy Corgan, he calls himself..the President of TNA Wrestling. Other TNA talent use the TNA moniker in their social media handles to signify their affiliation. Bobby Lashley’s World Title has TNA written largely across the front, as do all of the current titles. Wrestling fans call it TNA. When you want to buy apparel, you go to ShopTNA.com. On the weekly TV show, the phrase TNA is mentioned often. All special events also fall under the TNA name. So it’s definitely still TNA…except for all the evidence pointing to…

The Case for the name ‘Impact Wrestling’

Watch TNA’s weekly show and TNA’s logo appears nowhere on the ring, set or any of the graphics. It’s all Impact Wrestling, including on cable provider’s listing. If you go to TNAWrestling.com, it re-directs to ImpactWrestling.com. All social media pages are branded as @ImpactWrestling. Any current t-shirt you purchase prominently features the Impact logo. At TNA’s Bound of Glory, the company will debut a new title: the Impact Grand Championship, the first title.

So what is TNA’s name? I think it’s Impact Wrestling. Maybe it’s both. Either way, it should simply be Impact Wrestling or it should be something else entirely. The name TNA has a stigma and a long history of failure. Impact still has a slight chance of salvaging it’s reputation. Change the belts, stop mentioning those three letters, update some text on the internet and you’re literally 99.9% done the transformation.

Recommendation for Fixing TNA:

• Get a better web site
• Commit 100% to the name “Impact Wrestling” (and it’s current logo)