Source: Mike Johnson of Pro Wrestling Insider

After putting themselves on the Monday Night map with a 1.5 live Impact rating, TNA opened their return to the Northeast with a very good house show, selling out the Capital One Theater in Westbury, Long Island, NY to the tune of 2,500 fans. The venue is without a doubt, one of the best buildings ever built for live concerts with awesome acoustics in the round, including a slowly rotating stage, so no matter where you are sitting, at some point, the band will be facing you. With that set up in mind, it’s perhaps the perfect setting for the company’s six-sided ring.

The show ran the typical two and a half hours for a TNA live event – much longer if you include the extremely long “autograph party” afterwards with most of the roster signing around ringside and the opportunity for a group to get into the Six-Sided ring with TNA champion AJ Styles and pose with him and the championship belt. If there’s one thing that sets the TNA house shows apart from every other company out there, it’s the level of glad-handing done to the crowd. Jeremy Borash does an insanely great job getting the crowd to pop and go nuts with the tease of being picked to go backstage during intermission. There is a lot of crowd interactions and mic work from the talent since it’s such an intimate atmosphere. While WWE sometimes makes you feel like you are just seeing an average road show, TNA goes out of their way to push the idea that you are seeing something special and they are thankful that you came. For a lot of fans, that makes a huge difference and it certainly pushes the energy level to the next plateau. I don’t think I can recall a house show where I’ve seen an audience just flat out enjoying themselves so much the entire night.

In a smart piece of strategy, TNA brought Don West in to the house shows this weekend. Although he was advertised as managing The Amazing Red, he was actually working the merchandise stand the entire time. The idea here was that by putting West there, they were going to move a lot more merchandise and it would give them a chance to do some “specials” in the vein that they do on www.shoptna.com. At the Westbury event, they were selling a special Sting t-shirt that was printed just for this loop with the deal being if you purchased the shirt, you received 4 free random TNA DVDs for $20. A secondary deal was a pair of photos signed by Kurt Angle and Desmond Wolfe for $15. West knows how to play to the audience and I’d be really interested in seeing what the average merchandise sale is per show usually vs. when he’s on the road as he’s a master salesman.

In another smart move, TNA had Taz, Earl Hebner and Slick Johnson signing for free in the lobby. Positioned next to them was a vendor selling the TNA program for $20, so they were racking up in that regard as well. During intermission and after the show, Mick Foley signed in the same location. Again, in comparison to a WWE show, fans were now seeing TV characters signing for free. You’d never see that at a WWE event.

Of course, the meat and potatoes of the event itself is the actual wrestling. In that regard, five of the six matches were good. The other, featuring Kevin Nash and Eric Young vs. Beer Money was as good as a match with Nash in 2010 could allow. There was nothing terrible on the show at all, but it was interesting to see the slight differences in the TNA television show product and the live event. On Impact, everyone is trying to hit their TV marks and whip out as many fast moves as possible. On the house shows, they slow down considerably and play off the crowd. There’s a lot more chain wrestling and back and forth counters. There’s more of a build to the matches and there’s a lot less reliance on insane dives and crazy bumps. It’s much more of an old school pro wrestling babyface vs. heel formula and it was an excellent presentation in that regard.

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