Why I Hate Open Fight Night

[Big Red Machine]

Four months ago, TNA announced a nifty new idea called Open Fight Night that was supposed to be a big, innovative concept in wrestling which would take TNA to a new level of greatness, etc. etc. After four of these “Open Fight Nights,” I now find it to be the episode of wrestling TV that I dread the most each month. Those four episodes of Impact have been some of the worst of the past four months… and remember, this is IMPACT we’re talking about, so the bar for that title has been set pretty high (or low, I guess). In fairness, some of the suck from some of those was not the fault of the Open Fight Night concept, but rather of other things that TNA decided to close the show with (i.e. Bischoff vs. Borash and the Claire Lynch fiasco), but even ignoring those, Open Fight Night has still been horrendous.

My problems with Open Fight Night can be divided into two separate categories. The first is the problem with concept, from a creative/booking point of view, and the second has been the failure of its execution. To look at why I think the concept is a mistake from a booking point of view, we need to first run down what the concept is:

- Every month on Open Fight Night, one title will be defended (in addition to the TV Title, which is supposed to be defended every week).

- On Open Fight Night, anyone can grab a mic and challenge anyone else to a match, and the challenge must be accepted (but you can’t get a title shot this way).

- A non-TNA contracted wrestler will get the chance to impress the fans and the TNA office by having a match live on Impact

The first one, I am perfectly fine with. A big, hyped-up title defense on TV should be good for ratings. The problem with the Open Fight Night concept comes mostly from the second one (I have issues with Gut Check, too, I will address those in a separate article, entitled "Why I Hate Gut Check").

First and foremost, how is it decided who will get the mic time to make the challenges? If there isn’t some pre-determined system, (which, based on the evidence, there doesn’t seem to be, as I find it highly unlikely that Jeremy Borash would have been given time before… say… any one else on the roster who didn’t get time during the first OFN), then absolutely everyone should be rushing down to the ring to make challenges. Why? First of all, TV time is important, so you would think that this would be a great way to guarantee yourself some TV time. Why is it that we haven’t seen the guys who have barely been on TV over the past few months (Doug Williams, Hernandez, Tony Nese, Gunner, Winter, Mark Haskins, etc.) trying to get themselves on TV?

Secondly, the mic time is important because you can call out anyone you want. Absolutely everyone in the company who gets their hands on that mic on Open Fight Night should be calling out a champion. Yeah, you can’t get a title shot that night, but beating the champion in a non-title match is a tried and true way to earn a title shot. Unless you are in a super-heated feud with someone who isn’t the champion (and I don’t just mean a regular old feud. I mean a true blood-feud. I mean something like Steen vs. Generico or Angle vs. Jarrett or Kingston vs. Hero), you should be calling out the champion. If people have a chance to try to earn a title shot and don’t take it, then the titles don’t look important.

The third, and perhaps most problematic issue with Open Fight Night is the stipulation that says that the person you call out can’t refuse to fight. In a WWE/TNA-style “four weeks of TV, then a monthly PPV format, one of the most common (and easiest to book) set-ups for a feud is that one week, the heel does something to the babyface (insult him/her, cost him/her match, attack him/her from behind, etc), and at the end of the segment, the heel is either standing tall over the downed babyface, or runs away before the babyface can get revenge on him/her. The next week the babyface will call out the heel, but the heel won’t come out, or will jump the babyface from behind or run away again or do something to dodge the match. This will then lead up to the authority figure making a match between the babyface and the heel for the PPV, so that by the time the PPV rolls around, you really want to see the babyface get his/her hands on the heel. With Open Fight Night, though, the babyface can just call the heel out on TV and the heel has to come out. It rushes the story along which hurts it, and leads to needing to resort to gimmick matches more often to make things feel different, which in turn leads to the devaluation of gimmick matches, etc. In short, Open Fight Night takes away this wonderful and simplistic booking tool of the heel being able to dodge the babyface.

While the concept of Open Fight Night did contain a good idea or two along with some major mistakes, the execution of Open Fight Night has been piss-poor. That thing I mentioned above about how everyone should be calling out the champ? A champion has only been called out three times, and one of those times was former champion Bobby Roode, who already had a guaranteed rematch, and was just trying to get into Aries’ head with a non-title win, rather than someone actually trying to earn a shot at the title.

Now I said that I dread Open Fight Night each month, and one of the reasons is because the show always feels extremely repetitive. Guy A cuts a short promo calling out Guy B, and they have a singles match. Then, the next time we go to the ring, Guy C cuts a short promo calling out Guy D and they have a singles match, wash, rinse, and repeat. The concept of Open Fight Night is extremely limiting, but TNA hasn’t put any thought at all into ways to make things different. With the Bound For Glory Series, this has gotten even worse. The last two Open Fight Nights have both included six BFG Series guys doing the calling out, leading to BFG Series matches. Aside from the fact that having six BFG Series matches on the show means that none of those matches get the time they deserve (especially when you not only need time for those matches, but also the TV Title defense, the other title defense, and the Gut Check match), this makes the show feel even more repetitive. Just a bunch of traditional singles matches between mostly-heavyweight male wrestlers, over and over and over again.

Even without the BFG Series, though, TNA has made no attempt to add any variety to the Open Fight Night matches and call-outs. Aside from two occasions, every single call-out has been by a male-wrestler (and rarely anyone actively involved in the X-Division at the time), and only once has a call-out resulted in anything other than a singles match (we got ODB & EY vs. Gail & Madison at one point). How about having someone say I’m so good I can beat two guys” and have a handicap match, or someone who has problem with a few two different guys call them and have a four-way? Why not have a tag team call someone out (and yes, I know that the reason for that is that TNA only has three tag teams right now, and of those six guys, five of them are in the BFG Series, but that just shows how bad of an idea it was to tie up the entirety of your tag team division with the BFG Series, and is just another reason why they shouldn’t be having everyone in the BFG Series wrestle BFG Series matches on every single Open Fight Night). Or just to get really simple; why to all of the matches on Open Fight Night have to be Open Fight Night-gimmick related. Why not just a regularly scheduled match, even if it is only to break up the monotony of "short promo calling someone out, then a match. Short promo calling someone out, then a match?"

Of all of the components of Open Fight Night, the one I was most excited for was the big title defense. Unfortunately, that is the one who’s execution has been most horribly bungled. All three of the Open Fight Night’s that have had title defenses (yes, just three, because there was no title defense last week… with no explanation or even mention of it whatsoever- way to deliver on your promises, TNA) have had the show structured around an angle of recurring backstage segments with an authority figure (Hulk Hogan on the first two, Brooke on the one in June) having a big meeting with a few possible contenders asking them questions like “why do you think you deserve the title shot?” and occasionally dismissing people until it has been whittled down to one contender, who is then given the title shot. This is a major kayfabe problem, and one that is not exclusive just to the execution of this concept.

Total Non-stop Action Wrestling, LLC is a business not just in the real world, but in the world of kayfabe as well. A business does not exist only when it is doing its thing. If you watch Impact, though, it seems as if TNA Wrestling LLC only exists during the two hours a week that Impact is on the air. For example, take Hulk Hogan becoming the General Manager. The 3/22/2012 Impact ended with Sting asking Hogan to be the GM, and the show ended without Hulk saying anything at all. Then, the next day (and for the entirety of the week that followed, until the next week’s Impact started), there was no mention on the TNA website of Hulk saying anything at all. What the hell happened? Once the show cut to black did everyone just say “Okay. Closing time. Let’s all go home!” then walk out of the arena and talk about it in any official (or even unofficial) capacity at all?

Pro wrestling is not like other TV. Time doesn’t stop once the episode ends and then pick up again at the stroke of 9:00 the next week. There is a kayfabe reality going on in the time between the end the show this week and the beginning of the show the next week. During that time, TNA Wrestling LLC, Hulk Hogan (not Terry Boella, but the character “Hulk Hogan”), the character Dixie Carter, and everyone else still exist and are doing things.

In the week before Open Fight Night, Hulk Hogan had all of the time in the world to root through the roster to pick out who he wanted to see challenge for what title, to interview the wrestlers, narrowed things down and make his decision, so that they could have the match on Open Fight Night. That is his kayfabe job. To book matches on the show. So what the hell was Hulk doing all week that he hadn’t narrowed it down to any less than four contenders by the beginning of Open Fight Night? It’s not like he even has other matches to book, as the judges take care of Gut Check and most of the matches are made by the wrestlers challenging each other because of the Open Fight Night gimmick. So why is he doing this now, when he should have had it done before the damn show even started?

This is not only a kayfabe problem in and of itself, but it also creates other problems within the show. Obviously the segments with the authority figure whittling it down from four potential contenders to one take up time on the show which could be much better spent on the matches. Second of all, if the match is determined before the show starts, TNA can promote the match and hype up the show, which will hopefully get more people to watch it.

The poor execution of Open Fight Night has also created problems for TNA in another major way. Open Fight Night is often booked as very much a closing show. Especially in terms of the matches, Open Fight Night is a show where things get resolved. I have beef with you, I use Open Fight Night to call you and force a match, we have our match, everything is resolved. The problem with this is that Open Fight Night is the second week of TNA's (usually) four week cycle between PPVs. As a result of this, we rarely have more than one or two matches for the PPV even set up (never mind officially announced) by the beginning of the third week. This leaves TNA with just four hours of air time to set up five or six feuds or title matches and make you care about them, as well as pushing the one or two that they already have. This results in fans not really caring about most of the matches on the PPVs, and as a result, not buying them, which hurts TNA financially.

So, is Open Fight Night salvageable? Probably. Given the choice, I would have rejected the concept, but, if done well it has some potential. If it is to be successful, though, TNA has a lot of problems to fix.