T.N.A.A.R.P.?

First, allow us to apologize for being a bit late to the party on this update. Sadly, real life gets in the way of blogging sometimes, and since you're not sending us money in the mail to compensate for the amount of laughter we're bringing you on a daily basis, we can't quit our day jobs. Soooo...checks please?

Anyway, we have a quick break-down of some stats for you. There's been a lot of talk recently about TNA seeming to forget what made them a young upstart to begin with. Mainly, that whole "young" part. More and more, the locker room of TNA is looking like the signature signing convention scene from The Wrestler. With the recent signing of Hulk Hogan as a booker, which means he'll eventually hold every title the company has to offer, and the debut of Jim "the Anvil" Neidhart seem to suggest the folks over at the other promotion have been playing a little too much Legends of Wrestlemania.

But just how much is it? We decided to pull out the trusty LOLculator and crunch some of the numbers. How much has the average age of performers changed over the years? For sampling, we'll compare TNA's first three-hour pay-per-view, "Victory Road," which went down almost five years on November 7th, 2004, and the most recent pay-per-vew, "Bound for Glory," as well as throwing in some of the more high-profile signings in the recent weeks.

Let's get started with the math! Again, we did our best here, but remember, we never claimed to be a news site, and these methods may not be comepletely sound, but it seems good enough for us.

At "Victory Road," there were 43 people on the card. We didn't take into account valets or mangers. The youngest was Puma, who was 20 at the time; the oldest being Konnan and Jacqueline, who were both 40. The average age among that group came out to 29.43 years. A good portion of that group has remained with the company, a few were blown out, and a couple went to WWE.

Now, at last month's "Bound for Glory" pay-per-view, we looked at 33 performers on the card. A number of wrestlers are 23 (Consequences Creed, Taylor Wilde, and Madison Rayne); the oldest at that event were Sting and Kevin Nash at 50 years old. If you include two new members of TNA, Hulk Hogan becomes the oldest at 56, with Jim Neidhart not far behind at 53. The average age of this newer group is 34.65 years.

The major area where TNA got younger was the Knockouts division, which didn't really exist during that first pay-per-view. The only women on the card were Trinity and Jacqueline, 37 and 45 respectively. Compare that to "Bound for Glory," where four of the seven Knockouts are 30 or younger. Minus that group, the current age of TNA goes up to 36 years.

What does this all mean? Well, nothing really. Honestly, all you have to do is look at the product and you can see that they've strayed from wrestling and athleticism to something approximating WWE-lite, with a premium placed on storyline and promos. That's something at which the older guard can excell. But which came first? Was the change in focus a product of the desire pull in big names from the glory days, or did they bring in these old-timers to push the new direction of the company and teach some of the younger members of the roster the intangibles of story-telling and mic work.

If the latter is the case, we think you made a mistake with Neidhart, Dixie.