In March 2010,professional wrestling promotionTotal Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) moved their weekly television program,Impact!, from airing on Thursdays to airing Monday nights. In doing so, TNA placedImpact! in direct competition withWorld Wrestling Entertainment's (WWE) flagship programMonday Night Raw. It drew comparisons to theMonday Night War, in which defunct wrestling promotionWorld Championship Wrestling (WCW) programNitro went head-to-head withRaw in a battle for higherNielsen ratings each week from 1995 to 2001; this ledImpact!'s move to sometimes be called "The New Monday Night Wars". The move was spurred by the signing ofHulk Hogan andEric Bischoff, two central figures of the original Monday Night War. Unlike WCW, TNA never gained traction against WWE, despite initially setting record high ratings forImpact!.Impact! returned to its Thursday night timeslot after declining ratings in May, less than two months after the move.
| Date | Raw | Impact! |
|---|---|---|
| January 4, 2010 | 3.6 | 1.5[1] |
| March 8, 2010 | 3.4 | 0.98[2] |
| March 15, 2010 | 3.71 | 0.84[3] |
| March 22, 2010 | 3.2 | 0.86[4] |
| March 29, 2010 | 3.7 | 0.62[5] |
| April 5, 2010 | 3.15 | 0.9[6] |
| April 12, 2010 | 3.24 | 0.8[7] |
| April 19, 2010 | 3.05 | 0.95[8] |
| April 26, 2010 | 3.3 | 0.5[9] |
| May 3, 2010 | 3.05 | 0.8[10] |
On October 27, 2009,Hulk Hogan announced that he andEric Bischoff had signed withTotal Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) in a press conference held atThe Theater at Madison Square Garden. TNA PresidentDixie Carter stated "Our goal is to become the world's biggest professional wrestling company. Hulk defines professional wrestling and we look forward to partnering with him in a variety of ways as we continue to grow TNA globally."[11]
During an appearance onSpike's presentation ofThe Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights Finale on December 5, Hogan announced thatImpact!, which normally aired on Thursdays, would go head to head withWorld Wrestling Entertainment's (WWE)Raw on Monday January 4 in a three-hour live broadcast on Spike.[12] Hogan was a top talent inWorld Championship Wrestling (WCW), which Bischoff was an executive of, when WCW debuted a program in 1995,Nitro, to compete withRaw in a ratings battle called theMonday Night War.[13]
WWE countered by announcing the return ofBret Hart, who had not appeared in WWE since theMontreal Screwjob in 1997.[14] Leading up to the show, TNA President Dixie Carter stated that while Spike was not expectingImpact! to beatRaw in the ratings, it would be considered a success if they managed to at least maintain their usual Thursday nightImpact! rating.[15] Spike presidentKevin Kay also announced there were plans to airImpact! on Mondays quarterly through 2010 and added that if the ratings proved successful on January 4, it could be moved to Monday nights permanently.[16]
By signing with TNA, Bischoff and Hogan were paired with writerVince Russo, whom they had conflicted with in WCW and had not worked with since they departed WCW afterBash at the Beach 2000. According to Russo, the three met together and worked out their differences before the January 4 show.[17]
The Monday nightImpact! featured the returns ofScott Hall,Sean Waltman,Sting,Jeff Jarrett,Jeff Hardy, and the debuts ofRic Flair,Sean Morley,The Nasty Boys,Orlando Jordan andBubba the Love Sponge in addition to Hogan and Bischoff.[18] OnRaw, Bret Hart confrontedVince McMahon andShawn Michaels for the first time in thirteen years.[19]
The ratings showed thatRaw came out on top, averaging 5.6 million viewers whileImpact! averaged 2.2 million viewers. The show peaked with three million viewers for the Hulk Hogan segment but then the viewership declined towards the end of the show to near 2.2 million viewers, the replay on January 7, 2010, garnered a 0.9 rating thus giving TNA a combined viewership range of 3.5–4.5 million viewers.[20][1] However, despite not beatingRaw in the ratings, TNA managed to set a new record forImpact!, beating the previous one of 1.97 million viewers, and thus gaining the confidence of Spike representatives.[21]
On March 8, 2010,Impact! moved to Monday nights at 9 pm EST to compete head-to-head withRaw. Eric Bischoff was once again competing on the opposite side of Vince McMahon's WWE and in an interview with Bubba the Love Sponge, he said that he believed "history is repeating itself".[22] This new "war" began in much the same way as the original did; with TNA relying on established wrestlers, including former WWE talent, and with TNA being led by Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff. WWE spokesman Robert Zimmerman responded to TNA's move by saying "We're not too concerned. We're in good shape."[22] Bischoff and Russo each stated that TNA were not focused on beating WWE in the ratings straight away, but rather gaining a significant share of their audience and growing TNA's own audience.[23]
On the March 8, 2010,Raw beatImpact! with a 3.4 rating which equated to approximately 5.1 million viewers, whileImpact! did a 0.98 with 1.4 million viewers; the replay of the show on Thursdays did 1.0, getting TNA a combined audience of 2.7 million viewers.[2] The following week, the March 15 episode ofImpact! scored its lowest rating since November 2006 with a .84 rating.[24][25] No quarter-hour segment ofImpact! reached past the previous week's overall rating. The broadcast lost 15% of the audience it opened with, going from a .87 opening quarter-hour to a .72 in theA.J. Styles versusJeff Hardy main event.Impact! averaged 1.1 million viewers, an overall decrease of 21.4% in viewership from the previous week.[26]Raw scored a 3.71 rating and averaged 5.60 million viewers, an overall increase of 10% in viewership from the previous week. The broadcast's first hour was the most viewed first hour since August 24, 2009, while the second was the most viewed second hour since January 4, 2010.[3] On March 22, six days beforeWrestleMania XXVI,Raw scored a 3.2 andImpact! scored a 0.86.Raw's rating was down more than one million viewers, equating to about 20%. Ratings forImpact! had improved slightly over the last week as they promoted a Career vs. Career match betweenJeff Jarrett andMick Foley.[4]
The night after WrestleMania XXVI,Raw scored a 3.7 rating, up from last week, andImpact! scored a 0.62.[5] Spike executives announced the April 5 liveImpact! would air an hour earlier thanRaw due to competition from theNCAA Division I men's basketball tournament.[27] The April 5 episode ofRaw lost 14% of their viewers with a 3.15 rating, whileImpact! scored a 0.9 rating, their highest rating since the March 15 episode, gaining a 33% in total viewers as they aired Kurt Angle vs. Mr. Anderson in aladder match.[6] After better ratings for the April 5 episode ofImpact!, TNA decided to startImpact! at the 8:00 p.m. ET time slot permanently.[28] The April 12 episode ofRaw made a comeback with a 3.24 rating, while the tapedImpact! scored a 0.8 rating managing to keep most of their audience.[7] Then on April 19, the night afterTNA Lockdown,Raw scored a 3.05 rating, their lowest score in two years, whileImpact! scored a 0.95 rating, their highest score since April 5 as they featured aTNA World Heavyweight Championship match betweenRob Van Dam and A.J. Styles.[8] On April 26,Raw aired the2010 WWE draft, and scored a 3.3 rating, whileImpact! lost 48% of their audience with a 0.5 rating.[9]
Impact! moved back to Thursday nights starting with the May 13 show. On the final battle betweenRaw andImpact!,Raw drew a 3.05 andImpact! drew a 0.8 rating gaining a 37.5% in total viewers. The replay ratings of most of Monday night episodes were sufficient for survival but showed that the average audience is some two million viewers that prefer to watch on Thursdays.[10][29]
In a press release, Spike's Senior Vice President of Sports and Specials, Brian J. Diamond, said: "The fans have spoken and with their input we have determined the best time slot to maximize the TNA audience is on Thursday nights where we are confident it will be among the most-watched shows with young men". In the same announcement, TNA presidentDixie Carter was quoted as saying, "Our fans made it clear that they preferred the Thursday night time period. By moving to Thursdays, this is a win/win opportunity for both TNA and the fans. We are looking forward to delivering what the fans are asking for."[29]
Vice described the move as one of many gambles TNA has taken during their history, but wrote that it "turned out disastrously."[30]Impact! ratings dropped 7% from 2009's 1.14 average, finishing 2010 at 1.06.WrestleView ascribed the drop to the "disastrous decision" to run oppositeRaw.[31] Although the move failed to boost ratings for TNA, James Caldwell ofPro Wrestling Torch attributed a 6% drop inRaw ratings (from 3.69 to 3.47) to competition fromImpact!.[32] At the end of 2010, the "New Monday Night Wars" received the annualWrestleCrapGooker Award, which honors the worst events in wrestling.[33]
By July 2011, nearly all of the new talents brought in forImpact!'s initial Monday launch had left TNA, with the exceptions ofRic Flair (who left the following year) andJeff Hardy (who left in 2017).[34] Hulk Hogan departed TNA in October 2013.[35] Eric Bischoff was sent home from TNA that same month and his contract expired in early 2014. When asked about positive memories from his time in TNA, Bischoff stated, "I don’t have any."[36]
In the tenth anniversary reprint ofR.D. Reynolds andBryan Alvarez'sThe Death of WCW, the authors compared the move to the original Monday Night War. They wrote that TNA did not have the audience that WCW did when they moved to initiate the Monday Night War, pointing out thatWCW Saturday Night typically did better than WWE shows did in the weekend timeslots. Reynolds and Alvarez also wrote that TNA did not have the financial resources that WCW did and that WWE was not "asleep at the wheel" as they were in 1995.[37]
WWE would not face direct ratings competition from a rival promotion again until the beginning of the "Wednesday Night War" on October 2, 2019, whenAll Elite Wrestling (AEW) debuted their weekly show,Dynamite, during the same timeslot asWWE NXT.Comicbook.com wrote that TNA's move to Monday night's "[serves] as somewhat of a cautionary tale to any companies bold enough to try and take on Vince McMahon."[38] AEW executive Nick Jackson ofThe Young Bucks said that TNA failed to be different from WWE, tellingBleacher Report that: "You can't try to be them. The one thing TNA did wrong was try to be a lesser version of them. We can't be them because we're not competing with them. We have to be different and we have to listen to the fans."[39]