While this website focuses on news and happenings in the WWE, I wanted to make note of TNA’s UK tour dates for January 2009.

The tour stops at Manchester (MEN Arena, January 20), Birmingham (NIA, January 21), Glasgow (Braehead Arena, January 22) and London (Wembley Arena, January 24). Those dates show some extremely high levels of ambition.

All are venues that WWE have used on recent tours, and with the exception of Braehead (which from memory seats around 3,500 for wrestling), its hard to see how TNA will sell those venues out.

The MEN is set up for around 19,000 for wrestling (depending on production setup etc), and WWE have struggled to sell out in the past. Birmingham and Wembley both seat well over 10,000, and recent WWE shows in those arenas have also played out with some empty seats.

Of course, its possible that areas of these venues can be curtained off. Its definitely possible for the MEN, where you can reduce the size by half, but that defeats the purpose of hiring it in the first place - especially when there are other suitable venues.

I can’t wait to see what TNA have planned between now and January, but my immediate thoughts are that hiring out the MEN ahead of the 10,000 seater Echo Arena in Liverpool (a city which TNA just sold-out in) is crazy.

By all accounts, TNA’s debut tour of the UK was a huge success. The only negative comments I heard from people in attendance were relating to lack of merchandise being available, the Fanfest and security at some of the dates. Given that this was TNA’s first full-scale venture into the UK, I think some minor teething problems were to be expected.

I’ve not seen or heard one bad thing about the actual shows themselves. That is a scenario mirroring TNA’s house shows in the States, which are more often than not received extremely well. As somebody said to me yesterday, the shows are all about wrestling, and that ultimately is what people want to see.

Nothing has been announced with regards to a TV or PPV taping, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of the dates is going to be filmed for some use. Whether that is an Impact taping, or a PPV, I’m not sure. Other options could be a Global Impact taping, or even a TV special for Bravo.

While unlikely, it wouldn’t be a total surprise if a deal with Setanta Sports had been at least discussed, with Setanta showing interest in WWE programming the past, and likely wanting to be involved with contract talks with WWE again when the current deal with Sky expires in January 2010.

When this past week’s UK dates were first announced, the impression I got at the time was that if the shows were a success, they would lead to a much larger scale operation in the UK and Europe. I also said at the time when we were running the WrestleMag website that TNA had the chance to overtake WWE in terms of UK viewing figures and awareness.

If you look at viewing figures, while WWE’s range of programming is seen by anywhere between 2 and 4 times the amount of viewers TNA Impact is, TNA still have the opportunity to change that.

Bravo (TNA’s UK television home) is available to more satellite and cable customers than WWE’s flagship programming is - purely because Raw, Smackdown and ECW air on Sky Sports, which costs extra money and isn’t subscribed to by all of Sky’s satellite subscribers (around 8 million in total) or Virgin Media’s cable customers (around 3.4m).

What TNA need right now is for Bravo to seriously get behind their product, and for all involved with January’s tours to do some serious promotion via the print media - both local and national.

Selling out four nights in front of a total of under 10,000 fans is one thing. Repeating that achievement in venues that can seat a total of over 40,000 is a much bigger task, although with obviously much bigger rewards.

The announcement of these new tour dates certainly show that TNA are ambitious, and keen to tap into their UK fanbase.