
Momentum is hard to define but easy to see. One month into the year, TNA appears to be riding a wave of it.
There have been countless death knells throughout its history going back to its first months of operation and the loss of its primary funding only to discover its outsourced PR firm was connected to generational wealth and thus, the Carter family saved and funded TNA.
It gained a major national television partner in Spike TV and lost said network spectacularly in 2014 as it limped its way from Destination America to Pop TV to something called the Pursuit Network. If TNA was a body lying in a hospital bed, the family was probably being called by this point.
The palace intrigue of ownership became a frequent story, often more compelling than the on-screen product.
Company founder Jeff Jarrett fought political battles and even attempted to secure his baby alongside friend and financier Toby Keith without any luck.
Billy Corgan appeared set to take over the company when a battle for control saw Corgan on the outs and the Canadian-based Anthem Sports & Entertainment taking the helm and tasked with reviving a nearly dead brand.
While 2017 was a year of prosperity for the likes of New Japan Pro Wrestling expanding into the U.S. and running major buildings, Ring of Honor was riding a boom period off the strength of The Young Bucks and company, the British independent scene was thriving, and plenty of non-WWE entities were building. Meanwhile, TNA was clinging to life.
Anthem needed someone to operate the day-to-day in the wrestling space and opted to go with Jeff Jarrett, the prodigal son of the promotion. It became a blur of branding as Jarrett was still trying to get his Global Force Wrestling group up and running while marrying it to his TNA duties and fans lost track of what they were following that year.
However, TNA was a mess and a general laughingstock as it tried to get its house into order. The year was marred with bad headlines including a nasty war of words involving The Hardys and control over the Broken Universe intellectual property.
Personal problems that Jarrett has documented forced the hand of Anthem to cut ties. This led to a legal dispute over Global Force Wrestling content and led to most of 2017 being a complete write-off and returning to the start position.
In December, Anthem installed Scott D’Amore and Don Callis to steer the ship by starting at square one gaining ‘buy-in’ from talent, and going through the latest exercise of apologizing to its fanbase from the promotion that cried wolf too many times to count.
If you were placing futures in the wrestling business, no chips were being placed on this company. Its television was nearly impossible to track down without a flashlight, live events were nonexistent; and in a world where WWE’s premium events were priced at $9.99, how could TNA ask for $35 quarterly?
The debate over the brand was an interesting one. You could argue that so much damage had been done that burning it down and resurrecting something anew would be the best step forward, the alternate view was TNA (or IMPACT) had fifteen years of real estate and more importantly, a footprint internationally with several deals that kept it afloat including India and South Africa.
At its base level, there was at least a foundation of ownership in Anthem, which had value in preserving its wrestling operations as programming across its platforms. Its ownership did not come from any professional wrestling background, and hence, D’Amore and Callis were left to their devices, and Anthem ran the business end.
It centered its programming around performers including Austin Aries, Santana & Ortiz, The Lucha Brothers, Sami Callihan, Moose, and Tessa Blanchard. The latter would prove to be a divisive figure in later years, but during this era, she became someone extremely unique and separated TNA in one respect.
Along the way, there were plenty of talents and personnel leaving and most of them found landing positions in WWE and more specifically, NXT.
When you broke down the building blocks of NXT, it focused on the top unsigned talent wrestling a more ambitious and cutting-edge style than showcased on the main roster, in front of a couple hundred fans on a Florida soundstage. It was basically what TNA was on pace to become a decade earlier before trying to become too many things for too many people and watering down its greatest assets.
AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Drew McIntyre, Bobby Lashley, LA Knight, Jeremy Borash, and the list went on of TNA alumni finding success on the main roster and NXT and opening the aperture of WWE fans that there is a lot of talent on the outside and plenty came from the other Orlando-based group.
In the first years under D’Amore and Callis, there were very few wins and it started with just putting together a stronger roster and at least giving fans a quality in-ring product when that component of the industry was escalating every week.
Not to be forgotten was Anthem’s majority purchase of AXS TV allowing them U.S. distribution and a new platform for TNA. During an era when cable was declining and has accelerated since, it was a risky investment and one many found to be a curious move then, and even now. Over the years, the distribution has not been a game changer for TNA in the U.S. often attracting in the range of 100,000 viewers per episode on the times when data has been released, which is nonexistent now.
The pandemic affected everyone, and TNA was not spared, going dark for a period and relegated to an empty setting at Skyway Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, to fulfill its programming and run its operations through October 2021 before venturing on the road.
If there was a bright spot during this dark time, it was an unexpected cooperation with All Elite Wrestling (AEW) beginning in late 2020 which would allow Kenny Omega to hold not just a presence in TNA but its top championship.
It has been debated how much TNA got out of this, but they were hardly negotiating from a position of strength, and the deal allowed them to have arguably the top wrestler in the world on several of its pay-per-views including matches with Rich Swann, Moose, and Sami Callihan.
The big win was reserved for Josh Alexander, although, it wasn’t against Omega. Instead, Omega was beaten by Christian Cage on the inaugural episode of AEW Rampage, which did little for TNA, but Alexander got his win against Cage and the AEW relationship would fizzle, and with it went Callis to join AEW full-time and out of his executive position.
The next sizable achievement occurred in early 2022 when Mickie James, holder of its Knockouts Championship, appeared in the Royal Rumble and opened a door with WWE.
D’Amore cultivated the relationship with WWE, and it was a slow courting process that would include a Jordynne Grace appearance in last year’s women’s match before the floodgates opened.
Last January, TNA seemed on the doorstep of something noteworthy. It had long given up the notion it was a challenger toward the industry leader and was simply carving out its chunk of the playground to occupy and find solid footing.
The company rebranded to TNA and booked The Pearl at the Palms for its first pay-per-view under its former letters and posted great results.
From the Wrestling Observer Newsletter:
To say Hard to Kill was an overwhelming success would be an understatement. It ended up doing 19,700 buys on television PPV. That’s more than double the prior PPV, Bound for Glory, which did under 6,900 on television and that was considered huge. The show ended up doing far more than even the Kenny Omega vs. Rich Swann champion vs. champion show. If you factor in streaming buys, this should end up at around 60,000 which would be the same as the Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle record that was set at TNA Genesis in 2006.
Then, the floor fell from underneath, and suddenly, Scott D’Amore was gone over a difference in philosophies regarding the company’s future, and an unsuccessful attempt to buy TNA led to D’Amore going home.
It felt like TNA had something of a spark and before it could be realized they dumped cold water on it. But TNA found its latest resuscitation through its new relationship with WWE.
If last year was the soft launch, it yielded real results on both ends with the likes of Joe Hendry and Jordynne Grace appearing on NXT programming, The Rascalz being reunited, attendance rising, and showing a spike in its performances on pay-per-view. It culminated with a multi-year agreement formally announced last week.
In a year where the Motor City Machine Guns, Speedball Mike Bailey, Josh Alexander, and Jordynne Grace are either gone or have a foot out the door, TNA stands with the largest amount of optimism behind the brand since the glory days on Spike TV.
Getting in bed with WWE always comes with risk and you’d need to be blind, naive or both to assume otherwise. Could this blow up in TNA’s face? Absolutely but if you’re asking if the risk is worth it, without hesitation, ‘yes’.
Yes, this is a new era of WWE under the leadership of Nick Khan and Paul Levesque and one can point to the cooperation with various promotions, public tweets promoting a pay-per-view, and the veneer of good faith but one only has to examine its playbook against AEW to understand that both still came from the Vince McMahon school of promotion.
TNA has booked its most ambitious plans in years with its Rebellion event on April 27 in Los Angeles and Slammiversary on July 20 at the UBS Arena in New York. These are significant upscales but after putting more than 4,000 people into the Curtis Culwell Center in Texas this past weekend, it’s evident they have a fanbase that is growing and willing to spend money on the letters ‘TNA’.
As this relationship rolls out and we see the full extent, it will become more clear what advantages WWE will enjoy from this partnership.
If there is a central area of focus for TNA, it’s their distribution in the U.S. and that AXS TV is not a player in the space that is going to be effective. Having WWE’s letter of recommendation could open the door for various networks to peek at TNA and assess its appetite for WWE-adjacent programming, which is the best way TNA can sell itself.
Long term, it becomes a question of how well this serves talent. WWE appears to be constructing a vertical pipeline where talent is recruited right off the playing field through its NIL program, locking down independent talent through its ID program, and now having a funnel between NXT and TNA before graduating to WWE.
It’s a major issue for AEW to assess its recruitment strategy because the arms race has just intensified. WWE isn’t initiating these programs to reap rewards in 2025, instead, they are planting seeds for harvest in 2030 and beyond. Fair or not, the perception is growing that AEW is where the older talent goes when they are finished in WWE and it’s a growing number of examples.
Once again, TNA has oxygen, and 2025 will prove how far it can go in this race.