Impact Wrestling (Promotion)
| Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions, LLC
|
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|---|---|
 |
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| legal form | Limited Liability Company |
| founding | 2002 |
| Seat | Toronto , Ontario , Canada |
| management |
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| Branch | Wrestling |
| Website | impactwrestling.com |
Impact Wrestling , until 2017 Total Nonstop Action Wrestling ( TNA ), is an American wrestling league that was founded by Jeff Jarrett and his father Jerry Jarrett in May 2002. In 2016 the company was taken over by Anthem Sports & Entertainment, the former president Dixie Carter only holds 5%, but remains as a member of the board of directors. On July 2, 2017, the promotion was named Impact Wrestling. The company is registered under the name Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions, LLC and is based in Nashville , Tennessee . Impact Wrestling was originally a member of the National Wrestling Alliance and was known in the early years under the name NWA: Total Nonstop Action. The doctorate stepped out of this wrestling umbrella organization in 2004.
The shows are mainly produced at Universal Studios in Orlando , Florida , where the former WCW also had its shows recorded. The promotion's main show, Impact Wrestling , airs every Tuesday in the United States on AXS TV. Since September 8, 2017, Impact Wrestling has been broadcast every Friday from 8 p.m. on the 24/7 channel as well as in the morning from 10 a.m. as video-on-demand and all PPVs LIVE on ranFIGHTING.de in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
After the promotion used an ordinary four-sided ring for the first two years after its inception, the first broadcast of the show Impact! a hexagonal ring was used, which became the trademark of the promotion. In 2010, the hexagon was replaced by a traditional ring, until a fan vote in June 2014 made the six-sided ring the standard again. An ordinary square ring has been used again since January 2018.
history
prehistory
After the WCW and ECW closed in May 2001, the martial art known as Southern and Cruiserweight wrestling lost its main platforms. TNA wanted to take advantage of this gap in the market and thus gain fans who did not like the product of the now dominant WWE (formerly WWF).
NWA: Total Nonstop Action (2002-2004)
On May 10, 2002, J Sports and Entertainment (a company with Jeff Jarrett as CEO and his father Jerry Jarrett as President) founded TNA Wrestling. Total Nonstop Action held its first weekly Pay-Per-Views ( PPV ) on June 19, 2002 in Huntsville, Alabama .
While other leagues, such as World Wrestling All-Stars , who wanted to use the gap after the closure of the WCW and ECW, disappeared again from the scene, TNA was able to assert itself. The formation of TNA was a new opportunity for Jeff Jarrett after he could not find a job with Vince McMahon after the failure of WCW .
After it was founded, TNA lost a lot of money, which led to the fact that HealthSouth Corporation, as the main investor, withdrew financial support (HealthSouth itself had problems, there were investigations into billing irregularities). In October 2002 Jerry Jarrett sold his majority stake to the private company Panda Energy International . On October 31, 2002, Panda Energy and J Sports and Entertainment formed TNA Entertainment LLC under private law , in which Panda Energy owned 71% of the shares (J Sports and Entertainment was later dissolved). Jeff Jarrett became vice president, while Dixie Carter, daughter of Panda Energy chairman and chief executive officer Robert W. Carter, who was a former publicist for TNA, was named president.
However, TNA continued to lose money thereafter (estimated spending of $ 1,000,000 per month excluding revenue), but Panda Energy repeatedly acknowledged its commitment to TNA despite offers to buy from other companies.
TNA's original business model was different from that of WWE in some ways . By avoiding tours and free weekly broadcasts, costs should be kept low. The programming system originally consisted of weekly pay-per-views (PPV) in the cable network. These were on sale for $ 9.95, which is significantly cheaper than the major monthly WWE events. The shows were finally broadcast freely on the Wrestling Channel from March 2004 with a delay of six months, which was the organization's first step into the international market.
Initial calculations showed that around 50,000 PPV purchases per week were needed to break even. The actual numbers, however, were only between 5,000 and 15,000 purchases per week , according to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. After 111 weeks, TNA therefore had to stop the weekly PPVs on September 9, 2004.
Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (2004-2017)
On June 4, 2004, the TV show TNA Impact began to be broadcast on Fox Sports Net . It was at this show that TNA used the hexagonal ring for the first time. However, the show only had a very low audience and was canceled in May 2005. TNA had to pay about $ 30,000 a week for the slot. Then TNA Impact was streamed online for some time.
On October 1st, Spike TV began broadcasting TNA Impact. Up until September of the same year, WWE Raw , the main show of the wrestling market leader, could be seen there and a successor format for the successful show was found with TNA Impact.
On November 7, 2004, TNA hosted Victory Road 2004, the organization's first three-hour PPV, with just over 10,000 purchases.
Until March 2006, the sports drinks company Morphoplex was TNA's main sponsor, paying TNA $ 200,000 a month.
On November 7, 2005, a contract was signed with Midway Games to develop their own video game; the publication of such games had been an important source of income for other wrestling organizations. TNA Impact! released in September 2008 PS3 , Xbox , Xbox 360 and Wii .
TNA held the first on 17 March 2006 house show in the Compuware Sports Arena in Plymouth, Michigan from. It was first signed an agreement with the United Wrestling Federation, whereby one could organize a number of TNA house shows in the states on the Atlantic and in the southeast, the majority should take place in Virginia . This agreement has since been canceled, so that TNA now produces its own house shows.
In April 2006, TNA announced a partnership with YouTube , allowing YouTube to publish exclusive video material, such as summaries of Impact . On YouTube you can watch "TNA Today", an interactive show , several times a week . The show mostly features interviews with TNA wrestlers.
In October 2007, two years after its debut on Spike TV, TNA Impact's airtime was extended to two hours.
On October 23, 2008, TNA introduced the HD format for Impact and its monthly PPVs. To mark the occasion, Impact was broadcast live from the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas. The following broadcasts were recorded in a converted impact zone.
In October 2009, TNA gained wider media coverage with the signing of wrestling legend Hulk Hogan and former WCW President Eric Bischoff . With this step one hoped for a better positioning against the WWE, which one wanted to replace as market leader. The TV debut by Hogan and Bischoff was broadcast on January 4, 2010 - deliberately on a Monday and thus parallel to the competing program WWE Raw . This episode set a record for TNA with 2.2 million viewers. Encouraged by this success, TNA was to be broadcast permanently on Mondays from March in direct competition with the WWE program. At the beginning of May, however, they switched back to the old slot on Thursday after the one-time success could not be repeated and the audience ratings were even significantly lower than before.
The removal of the trademark hexagonal ring in favor of the classic four-sided wrestling ring, announced by Hogan on his debut, met with little approval from the fans. The engagement of other old stars was also viewed critically: Ric Flair , Scott Hall , Sean Waltman and the Nasty Boys had in some cases long past their zenith and were no longer able to convince due to their high fees and limited performance.
On May 12, 2011, the main weekly show, TNA iMPACT! officially renamed Impact Wrestling .
As of November 2011, TNA worked with Ohio Valley Wrestling . OVW acted as development territory so that wrestlers from OVW could be built up for TNA and wrestlers from TNA could use Daniel Briley's promotion for training purposes. The company is best known for its collaboration with the WWE , under whose direction stars like John Cena and Randy Orton emerged . The cooperation ended in November 2013.
In 2011, a promotion was also founded in India with Ring Ka King . The first shows were recorded in collaboration with Endemol in December 2011 and broadcast from January 2012. This serves to expand the program in the Asian market. Jeff Jarrett was the main person responsible for this project. A second season did not take place.
In October 2013, Hulk Hogan's contract with TNA ended. Many other long-established faces also left the promotion in the period that followed, including the greatest TNA originals without a WWE past such as AJ Styles , Samoa Joe , Christopher Daniels , James Storm , Kazarian , Hernandez and company co-founder Jeff Jarrett. With Sting, Bully Ray and Ric Flair they also lost the veterans who could be signed in recent years. These and many other departures as well as rumors of severe financial cuts fueled the rumor mill, according to which the promotion in the years since Hulk Hogan's engagement, in which a lot of money was poured into well-known stars, live broadcasts and tours without successfully gaining new viewers, suffered great losses.
On June 25, 2014, TNA reintroduced the six-sided ring permanently. The fans had previously been allowed to vote on it. This decision and the fact that the fans were allowed to vote on it caused displeasure among the athletes. Various wrestlers from both TNA and other leagues spoke out against the six-sided ring publicly in interviews and on social media. This is firmer and does not spring well, is difficult to navigate and is more likely to lead to injuries.
In December 2014, after nine years and recently steadily falling audience ratings, the broadcast of Impact Wrestling on the TV channel Spike ended. TNA was only able to confirm a month before the last broadcast that it had found a new station in Destination America that would continue the program from January.
Impact Wrestling ran under a new look from January to December 2015 on Destination America. The shorter range of the station and the different programming scheme resulted in a further significant drop in audience ratings. After multiple station changes, it was announced that Destination America would end its cooperation with TNA.
On April 27, 2015, Billy Corgan , the frontman of the Smashing Pumpkins , joined TNA. He got the post of creative and talent development. Corgan later became President of TNA.
As of January 2016, Impact Wrestling was featured on Pop, a broadcaster owned by CBS and Lionsgate . On the new channel, thanks to the more suitable target group, the show was able to achieve higher audience numbers in the first few weeks than on Destination America, but it remained significantly behind the values from the time at Spike.
On October 13, 2016, Corgan sued TNA over unpaid debt. TNA was required to repay his money. Anthem Sports and Entertainment bought an 85% majority stake in TNA in early 2017, while Dixie Carter retained 5% of the shares. She resigned as chairman after fourteen years and joined the advisory board of the Fight Media Group. Anthem's Executive Vice President, Ed Nordholm, became President of TNA's new parent company.
Impact Wrestling (since 2017)
On January 5, 2017, Jeff Jarrett was brought back as a consultant by the new TNA owners. On March 2nd, Anthem announced that it would remove the name Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and replace it with Impact Wrestling. Due to the new leadership and the resulting changes, important parts of the active roster, such as Drew Galloway , Crazzy Steve, Mike Bennet, Maria Kanellis, and even the Broken Hardys , who were World Tag Team Champions at the time, left the company.
On April 20, 2017 it was announced that Impact Wrestling and Jeff Jarrett's new wrestling league Global Force Wrestling had merged. Through this merger, all wrestlers and titles from GFW switched to Impact Wrestling. On September 5, 2017, Jeff Jarrett left Global Force Wrestling due to personal problems and a drug withdrawal. Anthem then released him from the contract, but initially kept the name. On August 14, 2018, Jeff Jarrett sued Anthem Sports & Entertainment because he saw his rights to the name of Global Force Wrestling infringed as he still owned all the rights to the brand he had created. Therefore GFW became Impact Wrestling again.
Impact wrestling reverts to a square ring. The hexagonal ring, once a trademark of TNA and last used, is history again. Since January 2018 it has been a normal "Squared Circle" square ring again.
On December 21, 2018, Impact switched to the Pursuit Channel , a comparatively small network that is only offered by a few cable providers, but in which Anthem Sports has shares. After the PPV Homecoming, the offer was therefore supplemented by a Twitch channel that broadcasts the shows at the same time.
Weekly show
Impact Wrestling is a weekly television show. In the United States, it is broadcast every Tuesday evening on AXS TV. In Germany, the show has previously been shown on Eurosport , Sport 1 and DMAX. When the collaboration between TNA and Destination America ended, its subsidiary DMAX also ended broadcasting on October 15, 2015. Since then, Impact Wrestling has not been seen on German-speaking television. In 2017 Impact Wrestling was able to negotiate a deal with ProSiebenSat.1 Sports GmbH. Since September 8, 2017, Impact Wrestling has been broadcast every Friday from 8 p.m. in the 24/7 channel and in the morning from 10 a.m. as video-on-demand on ranFIGHTING.de in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In addition to the weekly IMPACT episodes, ranFIGHTING.de shows One Night Only specials as well as the Pay per Views Redemption, Slammiversary and Bound for Glory LIVE every month from Sunday to Monday 02:00 in the Black Pass.
Pay Per View Events
Originally, Impact Wrestling held weekly PPVs and avoided free-to-air TV shows. After switching to a monthly model, the first PPV took place in 2004 under the name Victory Road . The main PPV in impact wrestling is Bound For Glory . This plays a similar role for the league as WrestleMania for the WWE and was held in October 2006 as the first TNA-PPV outside of Nashville or Orlando, as it took place in the Motor City Detroit , Michigan .
Impact Wrestling held a pay-per-view monthly until 2012 . After that, only the previous three major events, Lockdown , Slammiversary and Bound for Glory, exist as pay-per-views, as the previous model with twelve PPVs for impact wrestling will no longer work in the future. In order to be able to continue to fulfill previous TV contracts, there will also be three-hour events with the name “One Night Only” under different mottos.
Pay Per View Events 2020
| Event | date | arena | place | Main fight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hard to kill | January 12th | The bomb factory | Dallas , Texas | Sami Callihan vs. Tessa Blanchard |
| TNA: There's No Place Like Home | April 3, 2020 | The Ritz Ybor | Tampa , Florida | |
| rebellion | April 19, 2020 | Terminal 5 | New York City , New York |
Roster
The active roster is made up of wrestlers and officials. In addition to the athletes, this also includes managers, moderators, interviewers, referees, trainers, television producers; Screenwriters and many others. The wrestlers are assigned to different divisions. For male wrestlers, this includes not only the normal athletes but also the X divisions, the so-called high flyers and luchadores . The women are known as "knockouts". Active wrestlers compete on the TV shows Impact! and Xplosion as well as pay-per-views and live events.
In addition to the wrestlers directly employed by Impact, other wrestlers belonging to other leagues also compete. There is an international collaboration with House of Hardcore , Mexico's Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (AAA), Canada's Border City Wrestling and Japan's Pro Wrestling Noah, among others .
Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) serves as Impact's development league. Accordingly, performers from there appear occasionally in Impact's shows.
Hall of Fame
The TNA President Dixie Carter announced the establishment of this Hall of Fame at the wrestling show Impact Wrestling on May 31, 2012.
Title holder
| title | Current title holder | Regent- economy |
Date of title win | Days | place | annotation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Impact World Championship | Eddie Edwards | 2 | 18th July 2020 | 6+ | Nashville, Tennessee, | Slammiversary XVIII:
4 Way Elimination Match: won against Ace Austin, Trey Miguel, Eric Young and Rich Swann |
| TNA World Heavyweight Championship | Mosses | 1 | April 28, 2020 | 37+ | Nashville, Tennessee | Bring back the old title. |
| Impact X Division Championship | Chris Bey | 1 | 18th July 2020 | 6+ | Nashville, Tennessee | won against Willie Mack at Slammiversary XVIII |
| Impact Knockouts Championship | Deonna Purrazzo | 1 | 18th July 2020 | 6+ | Nashville, Tennessee | Defeated Jordynne Grace on Slammiversary XVIII |
| Impact Tag Team Championship | The Motor City Machine Guns:
(Chris Sabin & Alex Shelley) |
2 (2.2) |
July 21, 2020 | 3+ | Nashville, Tennessee | Defeated: The North (Ethan Page & Josh Alexander) in Impact Wrestling Issued: 835 |
Feat or Fired
Feats or Fired is a similar concept to WWE Money in the Bank , only that four suitcases are given out annually, which contain three title matches and a termination (pink slip).
| title | Current title holder | Regent- economy |
Date of title win | place | annotation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feast or Fired Case 1 | Eli Drake | 2 | January 13, 2018 | Orlando , Florida | Got a title match for the Impact Tag Team Championship . |
| Feast or Fired Case 2 | Petey Williams | 3 | January 13, 2018 | Orlando , Florida | Got a title match for the Impact X Division Championship . |
| Feast or Fired Case 3 | Ethan Carter III | 2 | January 13, 2018 | Orlando , Florida | Got the "Pink Slip" and had to leave Impact Wrestling. |
| Feast or Fired Case 4 | Mosses | 1 | January 13, 2018 | Orlando , Florida | Got a title match for the Impact World Championship . |
Discontinued titles
| title | First title holder | Last title holder | Introduced | Discontinued | annotation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TNA King of the Mountain Championship | Booker T | Bobby Lashley | October 23, 2008 | August 12, 2016 | When Billy Corgan Lashley refused to allow the TNA King of the Mountain Championship to unite with the TNA World Heavyweight Championship and TNA X Division Championship , the champion threw the title to the ground. The next day the title was deactivated. (Broadcast on August 18, 2016). |
| Impact Grand Championship | Aron Rex | Austin Aries | October 2nd, 2016 | 4th June 2018 | At the Slammiversary XVI press conference, Aries announced the discontinuation of the title. |
| TNA Knockouts Tag Team Championship | Sarita and Taylor Wilde | Eric Young and ODB | September 20, 2009 | June 27, 2013 | Stripped by Brooke Hogan because Young as a man was not allowed to hold the title. Title has been removed and disabled from impactwrestling.com. |
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Backstage Notes On Another Re-Branding For Impact Wrestling, The GFW Name, Bound For Glory Issues
- ↑ Wrestleview.com: Notes on TNA's debut on Spike TV in October, advertising situation, more. Accessed March 24, 2016 .
- ↑ PWTorch.com - TNA News: Ric Flair interview - why did he join TNA? In: pwtorch.com. Retrieved March 20, 2016 .
- ^ TNA News: TNA Wrestling Talent Believe The Company Is Basically Dead At This Point. In: The Inquisitr News. Retrieved March 20, 2016 .
- ↑ Austin Aries hopes TNA doesn't go back to using six-sided ring. In: Cageside Seats. Retrieved March 20, 2016 .
- ↑ JEFF JARRETT & GFW SUE IMPACT WRESTLING PARENT COMPANY | PWInsider.com. In: pwinsider.com. August 14, 2018, accessed February 24, 2020 .
- ^ Jeff Jarrett And Global Force Sue Impact Wrestling And Anthem. In: Fightful Wrestling. August 14, 2018, accessed February 24, 2020 .
- ^ Heel By Nature: IMPACT Wrestling Secures New US Television Deal With Pursuit Channel. In: Heel by Nature. December 21, 2018, accessed February 24, 2020 (American English).
- ↑ Details On IMPACT Wrestling Streaming Weekly On Twitch. In: Fightful Wrestling. Retrieved February 24, 2020 .
- ↑ Champions . In: Impact Wrestling. Retrieved March 11, 2019.