IMPACT Wrestling Official Thread

[DBSommer]

I want it to last long enough for the 'main office' be the same public phone booth that was the main office of GLOW 'owner' David McClane. (congrats to anyone old enough to have remembered watching it air back in the 80's)

[supersonic]

I believe the new location is literally near a junkyard too.

In addition, this bomb dropped. #OneFootOutTheDoor - https://twitter.com/LAWradio/status/719 ... wsrc%5Etfw

[supersonic]

HERE. WE. GO.

Dave Meltzer dropped a bombshell on today's Wrestling Observer Radio:

TNA isn't moving from their offices to their warehouse by choice. They're moving because they were evicted from the office. Dave didn't literally say they were evicted for not paying the rent but he did say it shows what kind of financial shape the company is in, which certainly implies it.

Dixie had rented out part of the office building before she was even part of TNA, back in her publicity days. Dave says while TNA says they are looking for investors "to grow", they actually need the money for things like paying for talent's airfare and booking the Impact Zone for the next tapings.

Dave says there is someone out there that is willing to buy TNA for the right price, but they want to have a controlling interest. Dixie doesn't want to give up the control, but he feels like she is going to have to and will eventually have to make this sale.

Dave also made it sound like Pop told TNA that they were moving the Impact replay only yesterday.

[supersonic]

Terrific for potential investors - http://impactwrestling.com/about-us/

[Mr. Mojo Risin]

That link sums up TNA in a nutshell. What a fucking joke.

[supersonic]

http://www.pwtorch.com/site/2016/04/12/ ... ht-replay/

[supersonic]

Observer:

In a really bad sign, the television and office people will be moving at the end of the month from their headquarters at Cummins Station in Nashville, where the corporate offices have been located since Dixie Carter took over the company in 2002. The company had fallen behind in rent and were no longer able to afford to stay there. They had already moved the offices to the basement where the TV production was done to cut back on expenses and Cummins Station essentially evicted them effective the end of the month. They are now moving the corporate offices to the warehouse they had been using for their merchandise. Because there is no room for the television production at the warehouse, they are moving the production to the offices of North Star Productions in Nashville. Carter had been based at Cummins Station long before TNA ever existed, as she was running her Trifecta Entertainment publicity company out of those offices. The Jarretts hired Trifecta Entertainment to do their publicity when they started TNA in the summer of 2002. The Jarretts had lost so much money in the early months of TNA, due to having a business model that simply couldn’t work, doing weekly $10 PPVs with no television to promote the PPV. That was based on the idea that PPV was profitable but the costs of producing television unless you had somebody to pay you, which they didn’t, cost money, missing the obvious fact that without television to promote it, very few people were going to buy PPVs. They were thinking they could do 150,000 buys weekly due to the low price, but ended up hovering between 8,000 and 12,000 weekly after from the third week on when thing settled into a normal pattern. When they were going to have to close up because they were so far in debt, Carter, the publicist, found out and being from a wealthy family, she put together the deal where her father would purchase controlling interest in the company to keep it alive and she would become the company President. The new prospective investors, who do exist and are still in play, haven’t purchased an interest in the company yet as far as we can find out. They have put money in to keep the TV going. The deal revolves around who ends up with controlling interest in the company but the feeling is TNA needs the deal to go through to survive, giving the investors the leverage to get the controlling interest

Another bad sign is that with no notice, on 4/11, Pop TV canceled the second Tuesday night airing of Impact. I should point out it was no notice to the fan base, but TNA was aware but also didn’t let its fans know until the day before. The assumption that all fans are going to find out about time slot changes through the Internet is so flawed. The least you could do is give the fan base one week or longer notice on television. They pushed that there’s only one chance to see the show. The second airing will instead air at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday mornings. This feels just like Destination America, although they were bailing on the replays the first time they got a bad number while Pop at least waited for a full quarter. It’s not good news, but in reality, the people who are fans of TNA will just set their DVR’s if it’s a bad time slot, and if they don’t, they were losing interest anyway. But it sucks as far as making new fans on the West Coast because the two airings are 6 p.m. on a Tuesday and 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday. The change isn’t that bad, in the sense they weren’t moved out of prime time, but just the fact they’d make the change a day before airing is never a good sign. Plus, every time TNA has had a time slot move, the result has always been whittling away at the audience, and there’s so much evidence in that direction that Pop making this move pretty much says what they care. Plus Brad Schwartz, the President of the station, who was predicting 1.3 million viewers when they got the product, and regularly tweets about company programming, hasn’t mentioned TNA in a Tweet in more than a month

[DXvsNWO1994]

So it was reported on Wrestling Observer Radio today that, apparently, TNA's "new investors", or whoever is interested in buying the company, is paying for the TV Tapings this week. Meltzer said TNA is strapped for cash, and they seemed to imply that these TV Tapings wouldn't be happening if it weren't for these "investors".

It's going to be really interesting to see what happens if TNA does end up getting sold.

[supersonic]

https://twitter.com/voiceswrestling/sta ... 8443032577

[DXvsNWO1994]

[DXvsNWO1994]

So The Harris Brothers (and their company, Aroluxe) are apparently the investors who are looking to buy TNA, and they are the ones who have fronted the money for these upcoming TV Tapings.

LOLTNA

[DXvsNWO1994]

Here's an article by PWInsider on the whole situation:

http://www.pwinsider.com/ViewArticle.php?id=101404

[JTCole]

Aren't Ron and Don Harris honest to goodness white supremacists?

[Big Red Machine]

Aren't Ron and Don Harris honest to goodness white supremacists?

Yes. Which is why I heavily suspect this whole thing is a work and is part of Dixie Carter's secret plan to turn TNA around by bringing in Goldberg to rid to TNA of the evil neo-Nazis.

[JTCole]

Aren't Ron and Don Harris honest to goodness white supremacists?

Yes. Which is why I heavily suspect this whole thing is a work and is part of Dixie Carter's secret plan to turn TNA around by bringing in Goldberg to rid to TNA of the evil neo-Nazis.

As long as Barry Horrowitz and Drew Gulak are with Goldberg.

[Big Red Machine]

Aren't Ron and Don Harris honest to goodness white supremacists?

Yes. Which is why I heavily suspect this whole thing is a work and is part of Dixie Carter's secret plan to turn TNA around by bringing in Goldberg to rid to TNA of the evil neo-Nazis.

As long as Barry Horrowitz and Drew Gulak are with Goldberg.

Rumor also has it that Michael Hayes is jumping from WWE to take part in the angle.

[supersonic]

Dave Meltzer spent the first 11 minutes of today's Wrestling Observer Radio podcast talking TNA, there were some tidbits:

- Dave mentions Mike Johnson's report that TNA owes The Harris Brother's production company cash and if they don't pay them TNA becomes that production company's property. He says he's not saying that Johnson is wrong, but it's inconsistent with everything he's heard. All Dave heard was that TNA was "in negotiations" and these were the key people TNA was in negotiations with.

- TNA has been in negotiations with at least one other person/group, but "these guys" are the only ones interested in buying. Now, Dave wasn't entirely clear if he was referring just to the Harris Bros or the Harris Bros and this other second mystery potential investors as "these guys", but based on listening to it, I think he was only referring to the Harris Brothers.

- Dixie is still looking to sell a share of the company but keep the majority, and the control. Dave seems to say that Dixie was trying to sell 40% of the company in 10% pieces to different people, and no one was even interested in 10%. Dave says that TNA was going to a lot of people in the TV industry with this offer, including their television partners, and no one bit.

- Dave says TNA's financial position is really bad, to the point where if he went through the details, you would not believe it. He says that lets just say that when he says they're out of money, they're out of money.

- The Harris Brother's production company is not a huge company, Dave doesn't know how they'd be able to turn TNA around. They don't run the company, they don't control it, but they are employees featured on their company website.

- Dave was told about the Harris Brother's company interest in TNA a ways back, but he was told to keep it off the record due to the feeling that if the story got out, it would jeopardize the possibility of it happening. Dave says he said what he did yesterday because the story was getting out then no matter what (Obviously due to the Voices of Wrestling leak). Also several other people yesterday once this all went down decided to talk to Dave on the record about it. Dave says the leak does potentially hurt the deal, especially with everyone tweeting about the Harris' nazi tattoos. "That doesn't help, especially with Pop TV".

- The Harris Brothers are tight with the Jarretts dating back to the late 80s/early 90s. Don Harris in particular is friends with Jeff.

- Dave says he doesn't know when a sale is going to happen, but a sale to someone has to happen. The tapings this week will happen, they have to happen, because if they don't run TV tapings they risk voiding their TV deals, and so if the Harris Brothers want TNA, they have to ensure the TV tapings happen. Dave is confident the tapings will happen this week, and says the wrestlers have been told not to believe anything they read and that everything is fine.

- Dave crunched the numbers, and Impact's February 2016 numbers were 31% lower than Impact's February 2015 numbers, despite the fact that Pop is available in 23 million more homes than Destination America. Dave points out how Pop is a bad fit for TNA as Pop is geared more towards women and TNA historically does poorly with women.

- In the questions section at the end of the show, Dave mentions how TNA needs to get wrestling people who are not WWE people. Says John Gaburick only knows WWE wrestling, doesn't know any other wrestling.

[JTCole]

Dave Meltzer spent the first 11 minutes of today's Wrestling Observer Radio podcast talking TNA, there were some tidbits:

- Dave mentions Mike Johnson's report that TNA owes The Harris Brother's production company cash and if they don't pay them TNA becomes that production company's property. He says he's not saying that Johnson is wrong, but it's inconsistent with everything he's heard. All Dave heard was that TNA was "in negotiations" and these were the key people TNA was in negotiations with.

- TNA has been in negotiations with at least one other person/group, but "these guys" are the only ones interested in buying. Now, Dave wasn't entirely clear if he was referring just to the Harris Bros or the Harris Bros and this other second mystery potential investors as "these guys", but based on listening to it, I think he was only referring to the Harris Brothers.

- Dixie is still looking to sell a share of the company but keep the majority, and the control. Dave seems to say that Dixie was trying to sell 40% of the company in 10% pieces to different people, and no one was even interested in 10%. Dave says that TNA was going to a lot of people in the TV industry with this offer, including their television partners, and no one bit.

- Dave says TNA's financial position is really bad, to the point where if he went through the details, you would not believe it. He says that lets just say that when he says they're out of money, they're out of money.

- The Harris Brother's production company is not a huge company, Dave doesn't know how they'd be able to turn TNA around. They don't run the company, they don't control it, but they are employees featured on their company website.

- Dave was told about the Harris Brother's company interest in TNA a ways back, but he was told to keep it off the record due to the feeling that if the story got out, it would jeopardize the possibility of it happening. Dave says he said what he did yesterday because the story was getting out then no matter what (Obviously due to the Voices of Wrestling leak). Also several other people yesterday once this all went down decided to talk to Dave on the record about it. Dave says the leak does potentially hurt the deal, especially with everyone tweeting about the Harris' nazi tattoos. "That doesn't help, especially with Pop TV".

- The Harris Brothers are tight with the Jarretts dating back to the late 80s/early 90s. Don Harris in particular is friends with Jeff.

- Dave says he doesn't know when a sale is going to happen, but a sale to someone has to happen. The tapings this week will happen, they have to happen, because if they don't run TV tapings they risk voiding their TV deals, and so if the Harris Brothers want TNA, they have to ensure the TV tapings happen. Dave is confident the tapings will happen this week, and says the wrestlers have been told not to believe anything they read and that everything is fine.

- Dave crunched the numbers, and Impact's February 2016 numbers were 31% lower than Impact's February 2015 numbers, despite the fact that Pop is available in 23 million more homes than Destination America. Dave points out how Pop is a bad fit for TNA as Pop is geared more towards women and TNA historically does poorly with women.

- In the questions section at the end of the show, Dave mentions how TNA needs to get wrestling people who are not WWE people. Says John Gaburick only knows WWE wrestling, doesn't know any other wrestling.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0

[Mr. Mojo Risin]

Too bad this isn't the era of when The Mafia was still running things. Can you imagine Dixie being in debt to the mob? Gangsters threatening to break Billy Corgan's legs? Somehow, it all seems a little too romantic. Now we, have to hear the reality about Dixie owing Neo-Nazi fuckheads The Harris Brothers money. In another world I guess, this might blow up over the media how Nazis are trying to run a wrestling company, but TNA is such a non-entity no one knows where the joke and reality meet anymore.

[supersonic]

It'd be a perfect, unforeseen conclusion for Neo-Nazi carnies to take over, milk the company dry, and then have it fuck off to its death.