IMPACT Wrestling Official Thread

[WHG]

PWInsider is reporting that Chris Hero was backstage at the Impact taping last night. Interesting to see if he ends up working there. Given the lack of restrictions in their contracts now, and the fact that you only work for them every couple months at tapings, it seems far more likely than it would have before.

For his sake, I'd hate to see it.

[JTCole]

Quite frankly I'm amazed he never worked there in a major fashion other than, what, 2005?

[Sardonic Artery]

Decent Impact last night. I'm up for five rounds of Wolves vs. Roode/Aries.

The main event, however, bleh. Bleh booking, bleh interference, bleh EY apparently just throwing away his title shot by his actions. His piledriver is still solid though.

Can't say I was glad to see Bully Ray either. I liked his heel run, but then he became like so many who were happy to be booked at the top/paid well by TNA, only to go back to the E in a minor role and dump all over TNA.

[Thelone]

I can't even pretend to care about this product anymore. Everything is just so bland and lifeless and unappealing.

[Leo C]

Impact has been solid, imo. Granted, there's still some silly booking here and there, but overall the product has been fine for me.

[Sardonic Artery]

Impact has been solid, imo. Granted, there's still some silly booking here and there, but overall the product has been fine for me.

Agreed. EC3 is pretty much my happy place in wrestling.

[MFKR78]

Indeed it seems the vast majority of people are really high on TNA recently. Even online.

Personally I enjoyed most of what I saw since the reboot but I only got a couple of episodes in then got distracted by other stuff. What I've read has sounded pretty damn good, I just haven't had the time or desire to really watch wrestling properly. I am intrigued by Billy Corgan and his vision though and I'm very much down on things with WWE behind the scenes again. So with those I think I'm going to jump back in from this recent live Impact and see for myself.

Also big plus for me if Hero does indeed debut. I just got done watching Developmentally Speaking with Brian Myers, Colt, Ciampa and Hero and found it very entertaining. Was also shocked at how quiet and different Ciampa came off in comparison to the others! He definitely learned how to play a character well!

[supersonic]

http://www.pwinsider.com/article/93672/ ... s.html?p=1

Roderick Strong was backstage at the TNA tapings earlier this week.

[DXvsNWO1994]

Dave Meltzer reported in The Observer that the news heads of TNA's Production are none other than The Harris Brothers. I shit you not...

[supersonic]

Observer:

Spoiler: show

TNA Impact averaged 402,000 viewers for the first run show in March and 559,000 adding up the two airings. There is no real fair comparison point because of the switch of networks and availability. The 2014 average viewership in March was 1.13 million and the 2013 number was 1.37 million. So viewership was down 64.4%, based on just the first show, and down 50.5% based on adding the two different airings up. Total exposure level was down 41.2%. But exposure level isn’t the total answer because Spike is a far more popular channel. It was also hurt by moving it to Fridays. So we can say it’s doing worse, but there are too many variables to say if worse is just an exposure level issue or more than that.

The live vs. tape thing once again was shown to mean nothing as the heavily publicized live Impact on 5/8 with Kurt Angle vs. Eric Young did 358,000 viewers, the second lowest number to date on Destination America. The first show trailed only the 3/13 show. The replay did 105,000 viewers, which was the lowest replay show to date. The combined 463,000 viewers between the two airings was the all-time low, as the 3/13 show, the previous low mark, did 338,000 at 9 p.m. and 161,000 at 11 p.m, for 499,000 total viewers. The average viewer of the show was 54 years old.

The drop was due to the NBA playoffs, as TNA was going against LeBron James, and the Cleveland-Chicago game did 5.61 million viewers against the first show, and the Houston vs. Los Angeles Clippers game against the replay did 4.99 million viewers.

They taped TV through 6/19 this week. The go-home show for Slammiversary will be done almost live on 6/26 in Orlando. Then they will be doing Slammiversary live on 6/28 as a PPV, followed by six weeks of tapings on 6/29, 6/30 and 7/1, that would last until mid-August.

At the tapings they built toward a major show, Destination X, that will air on 6/12. It may be a three-hour special, but judging from how much was taped, I’m not sure of that and haven’t gotten that confirmed. The top matches are Kurt Angle vs. Rockstar Spud for the TNA title, followed by Angle defending against Austin Aries for the title as the top matches.

The Slammiversary main event is Angle vs. Ethan Carter III for the title. That was the only match made clear at the tapings so it looks like it’ll be a PPV show almost completely set up the Friday before the show, which has proven historically to not work in the past. It’s been so long since they’ve done a PPV that maybe it will do okay, but they were doing about 8,000 before on Spike and the exposure level is so far down, as is the buzz on the product. But I would think of those 8,000 fans that bought the Bound for Glory show, that most of them are still following the product and into it enough to pay this one after such a long wait. But WWE has also mentally devalued the price of PPVs but I’m not sure price is really that much of an object. Ultimately, the people who want to see it will watch it and those who don’t won’t.

Other matches that seem to be built up either for 6/26 TV or 6/28 PPV are Robbie E vs. Jessie Godderz, Magnus vs. James Storm (although they did not go so far as to issue challenges for a match at the tapings) and a Knockouts title match with Taryn Terrell vs. Brooke, and possibly a lingerie match with them.

The production people were all paid this past week. It had to happen. They were said to be shorted on money from January and February, and hadn’t been paid for March. TNA didn’t do anything in April so there was no money owed there. If they weren’t paid, they were going to refuse to work. TNA couldn’t afford that because there would have been no show on 5/8 because there was no time to negotiate and stall them if they refused, and not delivering the live show because you hadn’t paid production people would have been a disaster when it comes to Destination America. The same thing pretty much happened last year.

The creative team is now headed by David Lagana, with Matt Conway, Christy Hemme (who is more the liaison between John Gaburick and the women), and now Billy Corgan, working under Dixie Carter and Gaburick. Corgan was on Chris Jericho’s podcast and said he’s not the head of creative, and short-term he feels his greatest asset in he said he has a great eye for seeing a star, saying he saw C.M. Punk at a hotel and didn’t know who he was and never saw him wrestle but knew he was a star by the way he carried himself. He kept pushing how you can’t judge by looks, bringing up Jerry Blackwell (a 5-foot-9, 375 pounder who was a big star in the AWA in the 80s) many times. He said he thinks there are probably 50 Jerry Blackwell’s out there that nobody has found. He said he thinks TNA is producing solid shows with good angles and doesn’t see making radical changes, but gradually make small changes. He said he’s like to see more clean finishes, less outside interference and better use of championships, as well as bringing in more new talent and making new stars. He’d also like to create a developmental system. The problem with a developmental system is that it costs a lot of money to do it right and TNA doesn’t have that luxury right now. TNA had one in place with OVW, but dropped it in a round of cost-cutting.

The Young Bucks declined the offer to come in. Their priorities are New Japan so it would have been a difficult fit.

The 5/8 show saw Josh Matthews announce solo. He didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s really difficult to do two hours like that with nobody to bounce off of. He did it two weeks earlier, and did well, but that was in studio and not live-to-tape. Al Snow wasn’t back. While I can’t say Snow was good, you can’t expect someone to be that good first time out and have to give him time to get into the groove. Mike Tenay did the show for 5/15 as the co-host and Pope returned and did the show on 5/22. They didn’t tape any opens for the remainder of the shows so it’s not clear what the announcing team will be.

An interesting note is that TNA in an apparent attempt to get edgy had language bleeped out in interviews that aired on the 5/8 show that wouldn’t be allowed on television. MVP a couple of times used the N word (bleeped). Magnus used the F word, also bleeped. It’s notable because they tape at a theme park and draw young kids to the shows, plus even with adults, the N word is something most are uncomfortable with. MVP used it for that reason most likely, because his entire interview ripping on the U.S. government was meant to garner that kind of reaction.

The story behind the cutting of Great Sanada at the time they did was largely because he was caught in political crossfire. TNA had a talent exchange deal with Wrestle-1, which has fallen on hard financial times in Japan and has cut way back on shows. Because of that, they stopped booking TNA talent after the 11/1 show at Sumo Hall didn’t draw well. The deal was that Wrestle-1 would bring TNA guys to Japan, and in exchange, Sanada would be a regular in TNA, and they’d book him like a star. There were actually some long-term ideas between the promotions but Wrestle-1 stopped booking talent, so in response, TNA decided to stop using Sanada. If Sanada was really over, they’d have probably kept him, but the fact he wasn’t gave them a reason. Sanada did have a contract with TNA through the summer but it probably had minimal guarantees in it.

Sanada was at a press conference on 5/13 in Tokyo and announced that his Wrestle-1 contract expires on 5/15 and he’s not renewing it, saying he’s now living in the U.S., and wants to be a success there, and said he was very excited to work for GFW. Some reporters asked about going to WWE, he said, “Possibly,” and started laughing. I do know that there have been inquiries into WWE and ROH for Sanada. ROH wasn’t interested. Keiji Muto at the press conference confirmed the Wrestle-1 and TNA relationship was dead after TNA released Sanada and he acted like he wasn’t happy about it. The original idea was for Sanada to be groomed as the top star in Wrestle-1, and he was at first supposed to beat Muto at a big show in Japan, be a star here, and use that American success, like happened with Muto, to give him credibility as the champion and top singles star there. He looked great here at first, but then they gave him the Great Sanada gimmick and made him a heel with James Storm and that flopped. But his not renewing his Wrestle-1 deal was a surprise even though I was aware he wanted to stay in the U.S. for at least another year and wanted to be a success here.

Steve Smalls, who was the Senior Director of Production for the company, is leaving at the end of the month for a position with Teach for America. Ron & Don Harris were hired to head the production. Yes, the same Harris Brothers that were former wrestlers, and were friends of Jeff Jarrett.

John Gaburick has told talent that even though they’ve been told they can work anywhere as long as it isn’t on TNA TV taping days because TNA isn’t running house shows, they are not allowed to work the GFW television tapings. There was a vibe that they didn’t want anyone working GFW at all, but Gaburick said that he’s awaiting word from Dixie Carter regarding the GFW ballpark shows, but talent is under the impression it’s okay right now to get booked on those shows. GFW has contacted some TNA talent to work the ballpark shows. With the exception of Tyrus, nobody from TNA had taken any dates with GFW that we’re aware of.

Morale was described as so-so at the taping. It was a high intense week where everyone had so many matches, so it was more about work. There was a talk with talent where they were told no house shows until the summer at the earliest. Between that and the China tour canceled, that was a disappointment. People liked Billy Corgan but people’s moods weren’t changed one way or the other because he was there.

Also...

According to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, Destination America say they won't air a new episode of Impact on May 22nd because it's the start of Memorial Day Weekend, and they figure people will be out for the start of the weekend, and won't be watching TV that night, so they're airing Slammiversary 2014 instead. Thing is, TNA taped a show intended for that weekend, which will air in international markets. So hopefully for TNA's sake, they're just doing a bunch of matches that won't advance storylines.

This is clear as day that Destination America has buyer's remorse, and doesn't give two damns about TNA.

[DXvsNWO1994]

So TNA is moving back to Wednesday Nights...

IMPACT WRESTLING MOVING TO WEDNESDAY NIGHTS AT 9/8C ON DESTINATION AMERICA BEGINNING WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3

Destination America’s IMPACT WRESTLING, will make a permanent move to Wednesday nights at 9/8c beginning Wednesday, June 3rd. The mid-week knockout premiere will kick off with stellar matches showcasing America’s favorite wrestlers.
The tag teams will head to epic battles with The Wolves and the Dirty Heels competing in match three of the Best of 5 Series on their quest to capture the vacated TNA Tag Team Title, and The Rising and the BDC are at war battling it out in a six-man tag team matchup. TNA World Champion Kurt Angle will compete in the main event and the Knockouts will be in action featuring the Dollhouse and Brooke.

Tonight, IMPACT WRESTLING continues its premieres with Hardcore War at 9/8c on Destination America.

While Kurt Angle defeated Eric Young to retain the TNA World Title last week, the feud continues as Young and Angle form teams to compete in a 10-man tag match where each participant can bring a weapon of choice to the ring. Austin Aries and Bobby Roode, the Dirty Heels, will face The Wolves, and a returning Eddie Edwards, in the first of a Best of 5 Series for the TNA Tag Team Titles. The Dollhouse, Marti Bell and Jade, take on Brooke and Rebel in tag team Knockouts action. Ethan Carter III also continues his “EC3 for Champ” campaign and the BroMans return to find out what the future has in store for Jessie, Robbie E and DJ Z.

IMPACT WRESTLING premieres Hardcore War tonight at 9/8c with the permanent switch to Wednesday nights starting June 3rd only on Destination America!

[supersonic]

DA has an out clause in September.

[DXvsNWO1994]

DA has an out clause in September.

Hm....could be interesting....

[supersonic]

Observer:

Spoiler: show

On 5/15, TNA and Destination America announced the show was moving from Friday night to Wednesday night. The 5/29 show will be the last Friday show, and then on 6/3, they debut on Wednesday. In Canada, The Fight Network is following suit, moving the show from Friday night to Wednesday night. That's particularly notable in Canada because they get Smackdown on Wednesday. But Smackdown airs 8-10 p.m. Eastern and Impact from 9-11 p.m., so while it's clearly not good in Impact's first hour, there is the argument that people already watching wrestling will switch to the second hour and be more likely to be watching television. Still, the Fight Network in Canada, a subscription channel , has very limited penetration to begin with.

On the surface, that's a positive. More people watch TV on Wednesday. Airing from 9-11 p.m., they don't oppose Lucha Underground in the U.S., and even if they did, Lucha Underground draws such few viewers in English on El Rey that they're not really a factor. NXT on the WWE network was not the slightest bit of a factor when TNA moved to Wednesday on Spike. The obvious flip side of the move of dates is that Smackdown moved from Friday to Thursday, with the expectation that it would lead to a pretty significant audience increase. Instead, there has been a slight decline. In addition, every time TNA has moved in the past, it has taken a long time to get the viewers to the new slot, and they never got them fully back. Ratings declined when Spike moved from Thursday to Wednesday, a move made because of the fear that the NFL having more exposure on Thursday's on CBS would hurt the numbers. Even when they moved Impact up an hour on Thursday, the first hour of Impact never fully recovered the last viewership, and when they moved it back the hour, they didn't either.

But there are problems, given TNA just taped programming to air through 6/19. The commentary had already been voiced over for the 5/15 show, and nothing was changed. There were no references to the move in commentary, but there was at least one ad for the change and one graphic that I'm betting 98% of the audience missed. Then again, there were no references to the plans for the 5/22 show starting an hour earlier and being a show from 2014.

On 5/22, there will be no references in commentary, although there will probably be a few spots played about the move, so he heavy push won't come until 5/29, a show that would be voiced over most likely later this week.

There is a reference on the show taped before the fans, that was to air on 6/19, which in theory will now air on 6/17, with Mike Tenay introducing a segment talking about it being nine days before the Kurt Angle vs. Ethan Carter III match at Slammiversary, when it's now 11 days. But that can be edited in some form as well.

The biggest problem is that at press time, the TNA schedule still lists the next show on 6/26 in Orlando, which was scheduled to be the go-home show, shooting all he angles for Slammiversary. However, it's physically impossible, unless you're Hulk Hogan or the prosecutors office in the Eastern District on Long Island, to tape a show on 6/26 for an air date on 6/24, when the show is now scheduled.

They could move the taping up to 6/24 , but now you're got expense issues, because you'd have to fly people in for Wednesday, and either have them sit in Orlando with no tapings until the PPV that Sunday and then the tapings after, or shoot stuff on Thursday and Friday to get tapings out of the way, but you couldn't do anything in front of the crowd that would give away results from the PPV.

The other alternative would be to air the show taped only for international consumption on 6/22, and have it air on 6/29, and thus move everything back a week. But most of the angles for the PPV have not been shot, so you'd have to go into a PPV with the only match with an angle being the main event.

The other question involves the move and the future of TNA on Destination America, and if there is no future, what happens next?

Just days before the move was announced, Destination America made the decision to cancel TNA Wrestling, with the time frame given at the end of the third quarter (roughly the last week of September, when the current television season ends). Key people at the Discovery Channel network were informed of the decision at that point.

The word internally was that while they considered the ratings good, the ratings were not good enough to justify the cost of the programming. The other problem was that so many regular station advertisers specifically did not want to advertise on the show.

It should be noted that when the word was sent out, it was stated specifically that TNA would remain on Friday nights, with original episodes, until that point, and informing people for the fall season plans for Friday nights. Just days later, they were moved to Wednesday.

The decision was meant to be kept secret, very much like Spike kept secret publicly last year its decision to drop TNA for months after the decision was made and reported. It doesn't serve the station or the promotion any good to publicly cancel the show this far in advance. The public acknowledgment was expected to come around the time the station listed its 2015-16 television season prime time lineup with the launch of up front advertising.

Those who were informed of the cancellation have not been told at this point anything different several days after the change of date was announced. But things obviously have changed, at least to the degree of moving days. So this story is very much ongoing.

What is known is that Destination America reacts quickly to ratings. After the 3/13 episode, when the Friday show's numbers dropped to a new low, the decision was made to cancel the Saturday morning programming with the idea that eliminating the replay would help the Friday number, which is the only number they cared about. And Friday numbers did increase somewhat after that point. Eventually, they've dropped almost all their TNA programming except as far as time fillers, because of the difficulty in selling ads, and canceled all first run programming with the exception of the two hours of Impact airing multiple times on Friday nights. For the 5/8 show, the hope was going almost live would help deliver a big number, and Destination America also purchased an ad in USA Today to promote the show, thinking the added advertising and live would lead to an increased rating. Instead, the first episode did the second lowest number ever, and the replay, which is thought to be for the West Coast viewers in their prime time, did the all-time record low. Granted, that was more due to the NBA playoffs and going against a Cleveland Cavaliers game than anything else, but clearly the live hype meant nothing. Days later, the original decision to cancel was made.

Dixie Carter at TNA was aware of the decision early last week although it doesn't appear that most of the talent knew anything since word of things like this would get around quickly and this had not. Her knowing may have played a part in the move to Wednesday, but that is uncertain. Carter didn't respond to any questions on the subject.

There were officials from the network in Nashville this week meeting with the creative team on plans going forward.

The problem with TNA at Destination America is the curse of pro wrestling, that even the good numbers don't mean what they should because advertisers won't pay anywhere near the value for those viewers as for other sports or entertainment.

What makes the business a catch-22 is WWE has created a production look of what people think pro wrestling is supposed to look like on TV. The cost to get anywhere near that look costs money, and it's impossible to make that back in traditional ways unless you are WWE. So the only answer is either to be owned by a network, like ROH, but even they are limited because the network hasn't heavily invested in production or the product, or find a network willing to pay for the product, like Spike did for all those years. For the USA Network, wrestling is valuable because they are battling for the label of being No. 1 in prime time cable, and starting in January, with five hours per week of prime time wrestling. Even if they can't sell that advertising at the rate of lower rated shows, they can sell advertisers on being the most watched prime time network. For Spike, they were at the time looking at building a channel for guys, and pro wrestling is guys entertainment with a very loyal viewership. Plus, with Spike, because of the programming they did, the hope was wrestling would bring an audience into the station that they could promote other shows, whether it be Bar Rescue or Bellator, off. With Destination America, whatever viewers TNA brings in, that viewership doesn't mesh nearly as well with the rest of the network's programming.

TNA had multiple suitors last year coming off Spike, although they ended up making a deal with a virtually unknown station with less than full national clearance. Even though the quality of the programming is better, it hasn't created new interest in the product. In the television industry, being canceled two straight years, which is still not a definite although those at the station have not been told anything new since official word was given of the cancellation, is not a good sign.

[JTCole]

Can they find another Network by September?

[supersonic]

I can't fathom a network bothering. It's time to yank the plug and stop letting this corpse use up the landscape's oxygen.

[Thelone]

Can they find another Network by September?

They're fucked if they are indeed cancelled. I mean, they're on Destination f'n America which is already the bottom of the barrel.

[JTCole]

Reading that Meltzer column, Vince really was smart by investing so much in the way his shows are produced.

[DXvsNWO1994]

It's time to yank the plug and stop letting this corpse use up the landscape's oxygen.

Even though this situation sucks for people potentially losing their jobs, that line is hilarious.

[supersonic]

In a sec, I throw the tec to your fucking neck
Everybody hit the deck, Dixie bout to get some rec
Quick to leave your career in a coffin, for slick talking
You better act like Hogan and keep on walking
When I hit ya, go runnin' to your dirt sheet
You swung a left, you swung a right, you fell to the concrete
Your face, my feet, they meet, no replica
We rippin' up networks from Spike, to Destination America
Dixie Carter on a higher plane
Bookers say I'm strange, deranged because I let Russo create his own domain
Make your swerve badder
Watch our ratings shatter without our pockets get fatter
After the show, leave you on the street like you're feelin' sick
Down your backbone til you change the channel with a quick click
The shit I kick, ripping through the vest
Dixie Carter passing any test, TNA is ready to die!