A Spike TV official has been backstage at more than one Impact Wrestling taping. They have been described as friendly visits. Obviously, Impact is looking at TV deals outside of the United States but they also need to secure their United States TV deal for 2018. The current deal with Pop TV is a barter deal so, unless Pop is willing to start paying money to keep Impact Wrestling, I think they will probably land on another network next year. Spike TV would be a huge upgrade and would help bring them a larger audience. It does help that Dixie Carter is out of the picture. Many people point to Dixie Carter being the main reason why Impact was kicked off Spike TV and there were business people that did not want to associate with the company as long as Dixie Carter was in charge.
For those unaware, the reason Dixie has lost supporters at Spike was due to her hiring russo behind the Spike officials who did work for Impact (and likely the other sports properties), and it's long been detailed that the officials at Spike who worked with TNA didn't like russo, so when word got out of the secret hiring they immediately decided not to renew the TNA deal in 2014, it was a cunt move on Ditzy's part, and cause a major shift in TNA's financials as Viacom was fitting the bill for a number of assets including high ranked talent, touring, etc. If by some miracle Spike can get TNA back, then they'll be in a hell of a better position than they are now, because even with Anthem helping they're still bleeding financially, because Ditzy's shady bullshit put them so far in the red they nearly was in a position where they could never recover.
Your point being? Viacom owns both Paramount and Spike, as well as Bellator and other properties, you think they're just going to stop showing interest in them due to the rebrand? It's possible but hardly likely. They could very easily still hold interest in TNA if they wanted.
It does seem fake, but I dont get the Paramaount argument.
So channel will have new owners, so? They going to rebrand it? Cause Spike has Bellator and invested a lot into it, and I think a lot of other "men" oriented tv shows. Or the network is bonded contracts with wwe? Or just anti wrestling?
Viacom has literally nothing to do with WWE or any other promotion right now, at one point they were in semi-serious talks with ROH, but they've been very fickle about pro wrestling since dropping TNA, and given how things ended it's understandable, but hopefully the wrestling fans at Spike can realize that not every promoter is an asshole like Vince or Ditzy. They're just trying to make Paramount into an even bigger brand is pretty much the gist I'm getting from this.
Awesome news, hopefully this can give them good production values and a much bigger audience later. Plus, with Eddie Edwards vs Davey Richards ( which started good ),Rosemary and Broker Hardy, they at least got some hype to sell to the IWC and hopefully to the general audience hopefully
If this is true (doubt it) then JJ would be better doing a multi channel/country agreement - viacom owns a few channels in the UK and this could probably be played as a live/semi live feed.
But with that said, in some ways I'd be sorry to see them leave Pop. Yes it's a small channel, but its actually a good fit programming wise. Sadly Pop's ambitions are to stay small time
But with that said, in some ways I'd be sorry to see them leave Pop. Yes it's a small channel, but its actually a good fit programming wise. Sadly Pop's ambitions are to stay small time
This would be great news, their production values on Spike were by far the best. Both Pop and DA just haven't seemed the right fit for a wrestling company to thrive on.
With clearly the business world in favorite of Jeff. I could honestly see him landing Impact Wrestling on a good network and change things around. Then also probably land a deal for GFW and start that brand. They would co exist together in some form or another as a working relationship. This would only be good for everyone. Promotions working together is way better then the wwe only bullshit.
Im really looking forward to see what happens at the tappings. I assume it will be a entire new identity and feel and look to IW brand. I assume by that point TNA will fully be gone and all new line of belts.
If Spike (or Paramount TV, I guess) is still interested in wrestling, IMPACT definitely has a shot at coming back and that is especially with Jarrett back in the fold (who Spike likes doing business with personally and was only Dixie that fucked up relations between TNA and Spike).
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