Since the departure of WCW, Vince McMahon and the members of the WWE staff who create the story lines, feuds and build to all the characters that exist within their wrestling organization, have failed over the years to create for us fans a consistent must watch wrestling program on a week to week basis.

Personally myself as a wrestling fan after the WWE bought WCW week by week my interest in wrestling slowly started fading and eventually brought me to a point where I watched wrestling occasionally and was no longer a regular viewer. I never stopped watching completely and I always had hope that at some point the WWE would create something or develop something that would re-strike the strong interest I once had, an interest that had me watching on a week to week basis and not wanting to miss a show, but it never happened.

Over the years there was only one thing that ended up re-sparking an interest that had been long lost and that was the short lived re-creation of the original ECW. Seeing the ECW “One Night Stand” pay per view gave me a new sense of hope and optimism that wrestling just may once again become that very watchable program that once existed. The whole ECW re-creation was fresh, exciting and got me watching once again, but long story short it became a WWE show and a mere shell of it's original self. ECW became a minor league WWE show, where all the guys who never truly got a chance on Raw or Smackdown went. My interest in wrestling was back to the point of almost having none and only hoping that something would be created in the future to redraw my interest.

To those who are reading this, don't get me wrong I'm not going to tell that you the WWE failed to create anything at all worth watching or didn't create any stars what so ever over the years, because surely that's not completely accurate. But unfortunately they failed to create anything that made me want to really watch wrestling and many of my friends as well, who were once “religious watchers, so to speak”. The point here really is, that wrestling for quite some time has not been close to my expectations and to the expectations of numerous fans throughout the world.

7 years ago a company named TNA founded and created by Jerry and Jeff Jarrett came into the midst of things. For years and years they were a small company with Jeff heavily pushing for it to be much more than that and eventually went on to become a mainstream wrestling organization. Again long story short for years and years TNA was not a highly noticed company, but with Jeff's dedication and hard work, as well as a partnership with Dixie Carter, the company eventually moved their way to where they are today and that's moving to Monday night's and going head to head with RAW. Who would have even thought of that possibility 7 years ago, surely not me as TNA was barely even existent in my mind.

TNA over the years had drawn some of my interest, mostly because of wrestler's like Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, Low Ki(when he was apart of TNA), Petey Williams and Christian Cage. However in spite of all those guys mentioned, TNA still seemed to fail in producing the type of shows that I as a wrestling fan wanted and hoped to see and much like the WWE really created nothing that stood out to me or caused me to want to start watching wrestling again on a regular basis.

This brings me to the announcement of one Hulk Hogan joining TNA wrestling and telling the world he plans to channel all his focus on re-creating a wrestling war and bring TNA to whole new level. Love or hate Hogan his arrival in TNA has drawn tons of attention to the company and upon the short time he has been aboard, he's lead them to prime time on Monday night's against the biggest wrestling company out there the WWE. Hogan has helped bring forth an altercation and a future war between two wrestling companies that has not existed in wrestling since WCW's Monday Night Nitro vs WWE's Monday Night Raw.

The announcement of Hogan's arrival to TNA was exciting to me, yet lead me to have some worry as well. Previous to the announcement of Hogan joining forces with TNA, I started gaining some interest in TNA and they seemed as if they were building some new stars and giving me something I wanted for a while, wrestling. Even in spite of some poor booking, TNA was offering good matches on a regular basis that the WWE had not been, at least for me.

So it seemed to me that TNA was going to give young stars a chance and were at least trying to build their young talent. With that being said Hulk Hogan has always been known as an ego maniac, a man who always wanted the spotlight for himself and was willing to take at the expense of others. So when I heard the news of Hogan coming aboard, I was excited because it was Hulk Hogan, one of the biggest icons in wrestling history, if not the biggest. But I was a little worried knowing his history and the last thing I wanted to see, was a mid aged man past his prime come in and steal the spotlight from younger stars.

An additional thought that crossed my mind was the possibility of guys like Scott Hall, Syxx Pack and other former WCW or WWE names coming aboard in TNA and like Hogan stealing the spotlight away from younger stars. Now Hogan did indeed bring some older stars on board, but they have not been the main focus in TNA and nothing has displayed to me that they are going to be in the way of TNA pushing the young guys they need to.

Some are not be pleased to see these older generation superstars in TNA, while others are excited to see them back. Whether guys like Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Syxx Pac(Sean Waltman), Mick Foley, Ric Flair, Sean Morley(Val Venis) or The Nasty Boys are of names people want to see or not, the reality of this all is they will draw some viewers, while they may not attract others. With that being said some of the names above can be used to draw back an older wrestling audience that has not tuned in for years and might cause them to take a look because they see a familiar face on television that they have not seen in a quite some time.

Now I know one can argue that point and say that the newer generation of fans are not interested in seeing these old generation stars on television and it would surely be a fair argument. However my take on that is, that if TNA uses both new and old generation stars the “right way”, they can successful attract the older wrestling audience, as well as a newer audience.

By the right things, I mean they continue as they have been in building younger stars and trying to create new stars like Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, The Pope “Deangelo Dinero”, Desmonde Wolfe and Eric Young being of the most important names to my mind. By TNA building the young, yet still using the old in some way they are creating new young stars that will draw new viewers and the older generation may re-strike interest to a fan who followed wrestling years ago. Either way both can serve their purpose in TNA if used correctly.

So continuing on, my worry after the signing of one Hulk Hogan was there and whether or not he was coming aboard to do the right thing for the business in the creation of new stars or was going to take the spotlight for himself was one of the biggest questions in my mind.

However from what I've seen lately in TNA, it looks as if the main focus in TNA has been building young stars and Hogan's involvement has only created what many wrestling fans have wanted to see for years and years, a Monday night wrestling war.

With that being said on Monday night's starting March 8th, us wrestling fans will now have an option that we have not had in a long time, the option to change the channel when something on one show is not appealing to us or during commercial breaks. When either of these circumstances occur the option to see what's happening on the other wrestling show will be available and to me that's something truly exciting.

As a fan not only does the excitement of having the option to choose exist in my mind, but many other exciting questions as well. Questions like,

How will TNA do as far as ratings?, especially since the last Monday night special scored their highest rating ever.

Will the WWE try harder to enhance their product or build new stars to offer us a better wrestling show than they have been in order to try and stop TNA's growth or possibility of stealing some of their fans?

What surprises might we see in the future?, what stars might return or jump ship?.

These are all questions I have not had within mind since the demise of WCW and the end of the wrestling wars.

Every fan's questions may differ, but the fact is the monday night wars are going to create curiosity in the mind of wrestling fans that will create additional interest or interest in general that wasn't there before. The option to watch either wrestling show and the questions of what will happen in the future results in us fan's tuning to see the difference in products or what surprises each company is going to bring forth to out due the other.

Regardless of what company produces the most enjoyable show throughout the whole war or on a particular night, most fans will watch both periodically in order to determine that for themselves and that itself results in every fan having those exciting questions within their minds of what's going to happen next.

Some final notes:

The fact itself of TNA moving to Monday night is a great sense of accomplishment in wrestling, because Monday night has always been and will probably always be the greatest wrestling night in history and for TNA to be a part of that means they will go down in history one way or another, let's hope with a good long lasting outcome.

I don't believe TNA will come any where close to competing with the WWE in the rating wars for quite some time, but the fact that they are going head to head is their chance to slowly steal some of the WWE regular viewers away, if they are able to consistently produce a more enjoyable show.

In my mind the WWE lately has had their moments in creating a good show, but seem to always fail in next week's show being just as good. In most cases I find they put on a really good show one week and unfortunately the next week's show ends up being disappointing. Reflecting on that, I think if TNA can produce an enjoyable show on a week to week basis, they can steal some WWE viewers away and increase their ratings slowly over time and maybe even be a competitor to the current king of wrestling in Vince McMahon at some point of time.

If TNA is able to do this and created the right stars that appeal to a good majority of the wrestling audience, than their competitor in the WWE who have not produced a consistent exciting wrestling program on a week to week basis will have no choice but to do so or they will end up losing the rating war at some point in the future.

The Monday night wars are not only going to be exciting because we now have two options on the same night or because of the anticipation of what surprises we might get, but also each company will have no choice but to produce a wrestling show that must maintain or gain viewers.

In TNA's case they are trying to gain viewers while the WWE is trying to at least maintain the audience they are getting without TNA taking any of them away. If TNA is creating a more enjoyable product than the WWE, than in order for the WWE to at least maintain their regular consistent viewers they will have no choice, but to offer an equal enjoyable wrestling program as TNA.

In conclusion, if TNA becomes successful over time they will force the WWE bring forth a more enjoyable program than they have been in order to stop their competitor from nipping at their heels or by passing them in ratings. As fans we should be hoping for this to happen, because if it does, wrestling should once again become that enjoyable show many of us have hoped for, for way too long.

We fans have much to look forward to and we can only hope that the most exciting days of wrestling are approaching.

Till next time wrestling fans
Best of Blessings.

Feel free to email me any questions, ideas or comments at andrew_vincent@live.com