Major Disputes At The Top Of TNA Led To Shock Firing
TNA dropped a bombshell with a massive change at the very top of the company and it seems the issues have come down to money.
TNA has been riding a wave of momentum in recent months. The company rebranded from Impact Wrestling to huge fanfare and that helped get bumper numbers for PPV buys when they presented Hard To Kill in January.
TNA got massive exposure when Knockouts Champion Jordynne Grace made a shock appearance in the WWE Royal Rumble. But as ever in the wrestling business, nothing lasts forever.
Scott D’Amore had led the charge of the re-brand to TNA Wrestling and had proved a focal point for the company. That’s why many were shocked when it was announced Scott D’Amore was fired by TNA owner Anthem Sports.
Disagreements Over Money Led To Huge TNA Exit
Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio Dave Meltzer explained what the issues were that led to D’Amore’s shocking departure:
What I do know is with the success the last pay-per-view had and it was really successful – it’s probably over 30,000 buys total. I think he thought it’s time to spend some more money, try and go after some talent, try to build this thing up, we have a little bit of momentum. And the Anthem people were kind of like we don’t want to increase the budget and maybe even cut back on the budget, they definitely didn’t want to increase the budget. There was a stand-off.
Meltzer then explained what Anthem’s goals were when they bought TNA and they didn’t include spending a lot of money on the promotion:
Anthem’s thing was they just wanted programming. It was the number one show on the Fight Network that Anthem owned so they just wanted to keep their number one show. It had some international deals in India and things like that and the idea was to run this thing as cheaply as possible, lose as little money as possible, not really looking for profit as much as providing programming.
They weren’t looking at fighting Vince McMahon and when AEW came along they weren’t looking at being number two. They weren’t even really at looking Ring of Honor, to be honest at the beginning so they languished.
[…] It was coming back, it was becoming more popular but there thing was to have a product, tape television, fulfill your pay-per-views and streaming stuff and essentially do it as cheaply as possible. Whether that is the reason of the split or there was some other thing we don’t know it’ll be out in a couple of days but that was the only thing I had been told, [D’Amore] had that dispute with management.
D’Amore has been replaced as TNA Wrestling president by Anthony Cicione and it remains to be seen if any more cuts will be made by the company.
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