Dear Impact Wrestling...

...Please please please stop shooting yourselves in the foot. It's getting painful to watch.

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm a wrestling fan. Have been ever since watching a VHS copy of Summerslam '88 round at a friend's house when I was a littlun. I've seen 'em come and go - the Hulk Hogan/Ultimate Warrior era of the late '80s/early '90s, arguably the WWF's best year ever in 1992 with the rise of Bret Hart and the awesome Ric Flair/Randy Savage (RIP) feud, the slump of the mid-'90s that followed it pretty much straight away, the Monday Night Wars, watching WCW for the first time in the mid-'90s, the rise of Stone Cold, the Rock and DX that put WWF firmly back on top, the fantastic in-ring action that the WWF had in 2000-01 with the likes of Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Edge and Christian and the Hardy Boyz, watching the unthinkable happen as WWF bought out WCW in 2001 but being so disappointed with the way they handled the Invasion angle that I stopped watching altogether. Yup, like I say, I've seen a lot.

I started watching wrestling again in about 2006-7 when I finally started to have access to more than four TV channels. And these days, surprisingly for someone who was such a WWF loyalist growing up, I have to admit it's WCW's bastard son TNA (or Impact Wrestling as it's recently rebranded itself) that I usually watch. Simple reason - it's easier to find it on UK TV plus, if I'm honest, I quite like the more low-rent early '90s feel of TNA than the big Hollywood budget feel of WWE.

The trouble is that, given that Impact is run by largely the same team who were in charge at WCW during the turn of the millennium years when the company well and truly tanked, a lot of the mistakes it's making at the moment are starting to look depressingly familiar. Especially annoying when you consider that Impact is now available on Freeview here in Britain and has therefore actually overtaken WWE (which is only available on pay-per-view) as the most watched wrestling show here.

Case in point number one - earlier in the year, in one of their first shows on Challenge, Impact put out a really good weekly show which really succeeded in getting everybody anticipating their Victory Road event. They then followed it with an absolutely terrible PPV capped off by a 90-second title match between Sting and a somewhat worse-for-wear Jeff Hardy. You'd think they'd learn from a mistake like this but...

Case in point number two - a couple of weeks ago, the company had a big episode of its weekly Impact show where it announced the company name rebranding, promised more in-ring action and less boring between match segments and capped things off with a very good 25-man battle royale as a way of showing they mean business. This was then followed the next week by one of the worst shows I've seen from them where the X Division (a division for the company's cruiserweights) Championship was won by the 300lb+ Abyss, there was about 15 minutes of actual wrestling in a two-hour show and the usual lame-brained skit segments took up way too much time again. Another case of potential squandered.

And I, for one, am getting sick of it. Look guys, business may be a bit shaky for you over in the States but over here you've garnered yourselves a huge section of the TV market by going on Freeview. And so far you're not giving us a lot of reasons to tune in. Here then is my ten point plan as to how Impact needs to turn itself around. It's really not that difficult - you'd think...

1) Start pushing the younger stars. Yes, I know guys like Sting, Jeff Jarrett, Kurt Angle etc were huge stars in their day but one of the things that sunk WCW was that they kept stale old guys at the top way past their sell by date at the expense of the young talent who simply migrated to WWF for a push they knew they'd never get in WCW. Case in point - AJ Styles, great wrestler, loved by the fans yet he's been stuck in the midcard for the best part of a year since the likes of Hogan and Flair came in and brought all their mates with them. It's very reminiscent of the mid-'90s WCW with Sting - seriously, if they gave Styles a push in a main event feud with someone like Ken Anderson then they'd have something well worth watching.

2) Speaking of Anderson, please make your minds up whether he's a good guy or a bad guy. One week the guy's putting in a gutsy-as-hell performance to win the battle royale at the expense of the heel Ray Dudley, the next he's attacking the good guy champion Sting. I know the idea is to have Anderson as a law unto himself but this shades of grey idea isn't helping him build up a solid reaction from the crowd. Give him an identity and stick with it.

3) I am desperately hoping that the whole "destroying the X Division" angle that's going on at the moment is part of a plan to rebuild it and give them some extra credibility (Mick Foley's announcement that there will be an X Division PPV coming up is a good start). I'll reserve judgment on this one to see how it goes but having the champion Kazarian lose the title to the lumbering Abyss and the Buck Brothers lose in a handicap match to Matt Hardy in the same week is not a good start.

4) You need to build up some credible main event heels. Ever since Jeff Hardy left to go to rehab there's been a very noticeable gap in this area as the main event title picture has been dominated by fan favourites Sting and Rob van Dam and tweener Ken Anderson (see point 2). Yes we've got the whole Immortal faction headed up by Hogan, Bischoff and Flair but all three of those are better used out of the ring than in it and at the moment they just don't seem to have any credible main event challengers in their ranks. There's a few on the outskirts of the scene who could reasonably figure - Jeff Jarrett has the experience even though I think he's past his best by now while Ray Dudley and Matt Hardy are both solid triers who could probably carry a short-term feud with Sting. Failing that, you could just go with point 2 and turn Anderson full-on heel. He's always been better in that kind of a role anyway in my opinion.

5) The tag team division. Now this I think is one of Impact's strong points - the quality of the teams in here is, in my opinion at least, actually better than in the WWE as they seem to have a better team dynamic. The trouble is that there doesn't seem to be any attempt to build up any slow-burn feuds here. Beer Money Inc are, I think, worthy champions - good solid wrestlers and the fans love 'em. But in the last few months they've just been in hot-shot feud after hot-shot feud with the likes of Gunner & Murphy, Ink Inc and Matt Hardy & Chris Harris, all of which have lasted a few weeks at most. Certainly I think all three of those feuds could've done with being stretched out a bit as it feels like we've had a year's worth of programming crammed into a few weeks. C'mon guys, the materials are definitely there - give Roode and Storm a serious feud and watch 'em go. Oh, and on the same subject...

6) Impact is now the number one wrestling programme in Britain. You may or may not have noticed this but you actually have a British tag team on your books (the British Invasion) who are also pretty decent wrestlers. Would it really be too much to ask if you could give them a push?

7) Finally - please please please please please can we see the end of the Jeff Jarrett/Kurt Angle feud. It's been lumbering on so long now that it's got to the point that nobody cares anymore. And I swear if it cuts the amount of promos we get from Double J it can only be a good thing...

So there you have it. I dunno if anyone from the company will read this but I guarantee ya, go with that seven point plan and I think you'll find a lot of fans put off by Victory Road will happily start tuning back in again. Here's hoping...