TNA Beats ECW

by Jack Windham
June 21, 2008

A lot of fans are going to be disturbed by this bit of news, but ECW has been beaten in the ratings by TNA this week.

TNA Beats ECW

ECW was headlined by a match between former rivals John Morrison and CM Punk.

It also featured some antics from Hornswoggle and a match involving newcomer Evan Bourne.

The show managed to score a 0.99 in the ratings.

TNA iMPACT! this week was headlined by a tag team match featuring AJ Styles and Christian Cage together again.

It also featured some entertaining X Cup matches and another open challenge by Awesome Kong.

That show managed to score a 1.03 in the ratings.

Short Term Thinking

You shouldn't be foolish enough to think that this week's shows are the sole reason for why the ratings went the way they did.

This is a long term thing. ECW's ratings go down not because of one bad show. It goes down because the show fails to consistently get viewers to want to tune in the following week.

Management might try to spike the ratings with a special appearance. However, that doesn't do much for long term ratings growth.

In the past, special guest appearances have helped ECW's ratings a bit, but it doesn't maintain the surge.

Competitive Nature

If you're a biased wrestling fan, then this bit of news is going to make you defensive.

You'll probably try to come up with some excuses for WWE.

You might even resort to the "WWE still makes more money than TNA" line that's pretty lame because everyone that watches wrestling should already know that.

However, if you're a true wrestling fan, then this is great news.

This isn't so much that TNA defeated ECW. It's about ECW dropping below TNA.

Competition is great for professional wrestling and Vince McMahon is one of the most competitive people on the planet.

Instead of making excuses for being beaten, you can bet anything that Vince McMahon will be fired up now to improve his 3rd show.

In fact, the ratings might even cause Vince McMahon to put a little more focus on ECW in the upcoming WWE Draft Lottery.

Closing Thoughts

The best thing for us wrestling fans is for TNA to continue beat ECW. That way, we'll get a much better ECW product.