Impact Wrestling is a company that has battled the odds from day one. Jeff Jarrett’s pro wrestling endeavor, once known as TNA Wrestling, was a long shot when it debuted in 2002. Many fans said it would never work, because WWE had such a tremendous foothold in the business.
TNA was outnumbered, outgunned and out of its league. There was simply no way that another United States based wresting company would be able to function in the shadow of Vince McMahon’s empire. However 16 years later and Impact Wrestling is indeed still alive and kicking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Szm2REKZgc
But evidently, the little wrestling company that could, almost didn’t. Former Impact ring announcer David Penzer recently interviewed Anthem Sports Executive Vice President Ed Nordholm. Nordholm revealed some news on Impact’s recent troubles.
[lawrence-related id=848525]“I would say when we got into August and September of 2017, yeah that was probably coming into our darkest period of that and had to make some hard decisions about whether we could and should carry on. As we come up on Bound for Glory 2018, I look at Bound for Glory 2017 as sort of the watershed of we get this one done, but we better have a better plan for 2018 or we’re not going to make it.”
So, was there a chance during 2017 that Impact Wrestling would come to an end?
“There’s always a chance, if you’re banging your head against the wall and you’re not making progress. At some point you do have to look at what it’s taking out of your organization to continue down that path and sometimes you have to admit that perhaps, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrpYOBcEu5M
But Anthem did indeed have a plan for moving forward with Impact Wrestling.
“As we got into conversations with Scott D’Amore and he brought into the conversation Don Callis, and by that September, October, November period, started to fashion a business plan that we all believed; one, we believed in each other, and two we believed that together we could get it done. We got the confidence to sort of move forward past the last Bound for Glory and charter a path for 2018, which we’ve executed.”
Bound for Glory takes place on Sunday, October 14 and features Austin Aries defending the Impact Wrestling World Championship against Johnny Impact.
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