Title, Hair, Injury

The last time I spoke about Mickie James in TNA, I criticized the fact that they were not building the feud very well between Mickie and Madison Rayne. It was a basic title feud. The finishes to the title matches were all the same. Mickie James is about to put Madison away, Tara comes down and causes a distraction, Madison uses some dirty heel tactic, and that's it. For two PPVs in a row, same story. In between, not that much development to really raise the stakes. The bar was set at a mediocre level that I did not believe would draw interest. Since then, I must admit, TNA has done a better job. Aside from being a steel cage match, which is a match type Mickie and Tara utilized a few months ago to get fans talking, Mickie's hair is also on the line. Madison Rayne is not a very solid worker in the ring, so it being a cage match may not have made for anything as respectable as Mickie and Tara did, even if Mickie was not injured. Nevertheless, the stakes are definitely raised. Title vs. Hair. You also have the added storyline element of Tara slowly turning on Madison. In a segment before Tara and Mickie went at it in a singles match on Impact a few weeks ago, Madison basically ordered Tara to do her bidding and take out Mickie. That lay the seeds down. This makes Tara's involvement in this more interesting than just a person who comes out at the end of the match to cost Mickie the win. I just hope that this aspect of the storyline does not overshadow the issues between Mickie and Madison. Then there is the part I like the best. I am definitely not happy that Mickie James was injured at a house show a few weeks ago, but I liked how TNA handled it. They didn't completely write her off. They didn't try to rush some last-minute substitution into the feud. They didn't pretend Mickie wasn't injured. They actually made an angle out of it. This isn't me crying about how the WWE treated Mickie James, but do you realize that they never gave her any true injury storyline in her entire time there? I'm not saying Mickie James never sold an injury in the ring or that they didn't make up an afterthought injury excuse to explain Mickie's absence when she had that infection in her leg. These aren't real storylines to me. In one case, it is really Mickie James who is carrying it, not the WWE. In the other case, it is treated as a trivial matter. In both cases, the WWE does not intend to do anything for Mickie's character. That is the thing about most real injury storylines. They do something for the character of the wrestler and usually draw interest. Whether it is a comedy angle, like Cody Rhodes and his mask, or something treated more seriously and epically, like the feud between Shawn Michaels and Batista that spawned into a feud between Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho a few years ago. That latter example definitely became an epic. Very elaborate storyline. I do not think Mickie's injury storyline here will turn into that, but it still allows her to show character. Can she overcome an injury to win the title and save her hair? I also like that they did the motorcycle bit, instead of trying to sell it off as Madison injuring Mickie at a house show or in some other way. It makes Mickie's character look stronger if she is able to bounce back from being hit with a motorcycle. If the hair was not enough, the injury angle definitely raises the stakes and can raise interest. TNA may suck for a lot of reasons, but I think they really went in the right direction for this feud. They took the negative of Mickie's injury and turned it into a positive. Only thing left, they have to book the right woman to win.