The internet wrestling community is more biased than I’ve seen it in a long, long time. As I’ve looked around the internet wrestling community since this site opened its online doors back in January 2010, I can’t help but to be floored by the people who are completely dead-set against anything that Eric Bischoff or Hulk Hogan try to implement in TNA. Sure, they’ve made missteps, just as any organization makes. However, I wouldn’t expect many of the young kids or unemployable people that write about wrestling on the internet to understand how businesses function.

What I would expect, though, is some continuity in basic trains of thought. For example, I’ve read for months about how almost everything that Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff are doing with Vince Russo’s writing in TNA is a rehash of an old WCW or WWE gimmick. Is this true? Well, I’d argue that there’s no way that it can’t be true since the basic concept of professional wrestling hasn’t changed in thousands of years – good guy vs. bad guy (or some extension thereof).

But what makes me shake my head and helps me understand that there is essentially no chance for many of the online marks is the fact that they reserve this “we’ve seen it before” judgment for TNA and TNA alone. Where is the internet outrage over this completely ludicrous “invasion” angle that WWE is attempting with its NXT season one “rookies” taking over RAW? I haven’t seen a bigger ripoff of an invasion angle since the “ECW” invasion of RAW, which took place during the “WCW” invasion of RAW, which copied the nWo invasion of WCW, which – in turn – was copied off of a Japanese wrestling company!

That last sentence was meant to show the absurdity of someone saying that TNA is copying old WWE and WCW angles. If you didn’t get the humor in it, trying unplugging your head from your ass and coming down to join the rest of us in the real world.

Look folks – if you’re one of the masses who has spent any time in the last five months complaining that any part of TNA’s programming is a direct copy of an old WCW or WWE angle, then you owe it to the respect of your own words to admit that WWE is copying an old Japanese, WCW, and even their own WWE-based invasion storyline. If you can’t admit that to yourself, then you need to seriously consider whether you have Bischoff or Hogan Derangement Syndrome (i.e. anything that either of these guys do you hate without giving it a chance for success; see – Palin Derangement Syndrome and more notably Bush Derangement Syndrome).

The bigger point that I’d like to get across in this column, though, is that any of this type of anger or consternation over a recycled storyline is absurd. Quite frankly, if you’re mad at TNA because The Band (before it was disbanded) was a poor man’s replica of the nWo, then you don’t “get” this whole professional wrestling business. Similarly, if you find that you’re upset over the NXT “invasion” of RAW, then as Bubba the Love Sponge might say, you need to “learn how to work, kid.”

Everything in professional wrestling is copied from something else in professional wrestling. Everything. It’s rare that breakout stars come out of nowhere because of their natural charisma (Hulk Hogan, The Rock, the early days of Ric Flair, Superstar Billy Graham, etc). So, in light of the fact that the internet wrestling community has shown its anti-TNA hand by not condemning WWE recycling a 10+ year old invasion angle, can we all agree to stop ripping on TNA for allegedly recycling old WCW and WWE angles? Can we at least reach that consensus?

If not, then the internet wrestling community has a much more serious problem than we can even begin to fathom…

- Joe
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