Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff now the most powerful people in TNA

If it wasn't obvious already, Dave Meltzer confirmed in this week's Wrestling Observer Newsletter that Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff are now the most powerful people in TNA Wrestling.

The political manoeuvrings at Bound For Glory were a giveaway sign.  While promoting TNA's biggest PPV of the year, Hogan made it known that Robert Roode, who everyone expected to win the TNA World Heavyweight championship from Kurt Angle on the show, was "not the next guy" and praised Roode's Beer Money partner James Storm instead as a potential breakout star.  We all know what happened next, Roode lost to Angle in an anticlimactic finish to BFG despite his opponent's bum hamstring and Storm was the one chosen to take the title from the seriously injured champion instead.  Hogan's prophecy came to life.  Funny that.

This was no coincidence as Meltzer explained in his newsletter:

Hulk Hogan at the last minute came in and decided against Roode winning the title.  The original plan was for Roode to win the title, and build to a Roode vs. James Storm program down the line.

This perfectly illustrates the problem of Hogan having so much creative sway.  As he doesn't pay much attention to what is going on around him, the TNA creative team can build a major storyline for six months, only for Hogan to turn around and insist on them changing course just when they're about to pull the trigger on the payoff to all the hype, just because "he isn't feeling it, Brother".

Earlier today, we discovered that the big match TNA wants to build toward for their first major pay-per-view of next year, Lockdown 2012, is Hulk Hogan and Garrett Bischoff vs. Ric Flair and Eric Bischoff, as Flair is one of the few people in the promotion that Hogan trusts to work with on his badly thrashed back.  There's only two people in TNA's management who could possibly think this would be a money idea, no prices for guessing who, and everyone else is powerless to stop them.  Just like with the call to nix Roode's long planned title win:

It was noted regarding the decision making that going with Angle over Roode was purely a Hogan call, and it was noted no matter what name is in what position and what is said publicly about Bruce Prichard, Vince Russo, or even Dixie Carter, that the major decisions are all Hogan and Eric Bischoff.  On this one, when Hogan made the call, even though almost nobody agreed with it, the key people didn't even try to put up a fight.

But Dixie Carter's family owns the company, how could her power be usurped in such a way by Bischoff and Hogan?

Perhaps unsurprisingly it was through her own incompetence.  Apparently she lost a lot of stock with Spike TV when she promised them the return of Kevin Nash and Booker T to Impact on February 3rd, 2011 in an angle where the Main Event Mafia would be reformed to take on Immortal, but couldn't deliver when WWE signed them to appear in the 2011 Royal Rumble.  What made the story all the more stranger is that Nash was under contract to TNA, yet Dixie for some strange reason decided to let him out of his legally binding deal, so he could take WWE's more lucrative offer.  Here's how Meltzer put it in his newsletter:

One of the reasons Bischoff has a lot of power is because Spike works through him, which gives him a lot of power.  Spike lost a lot of faith in Dixie Carter after she pushed to them about how they were doing the angle to get the Main Event Mafia back together last year and they spent months building it up, telling Spike about Booker T and Kevin Nash and that she had them, only for Booker to have been in talks with WWE already and have no interest in coming back.  She had Nash under contract but Nash did whatever it was that he did (he told friends he threatened to tell the truth about her) and she released him from his contract and allowed him to sign with WWE.  This left them with months of build and no angle, and led to the Fortune babyface turn on Immortal and a feud that largely went nowhere.

Given that their recent moves suggest that Bischoff and Hogan have learnt nothing from the demise of WCW, this is unlikely to be good news for the future of TNA.  What do you think, Cagesiders?