The Metro in the UK is featuring interviews with Impact Wrestling executives Scott D’Amore and Don Callis talking about the goals the company has going forward in 2018.
Callis was asked why wrestling fans should even care about Impact after a tough last few years of re-branding and talents leaving.
“If I look at it through the lens of a fan, I think any time there is a regime change in a wrestling company, people are curious. We’ve been fortunate that Scott and I have enough equity in the wrestling business based on what we’ve done as office staff, creative and performers. There has been talent here before, but when there’s not a stable environment or creative vision and when the business side and the wrestling side don’t mesh, it creates chaos for the talent, and they can’t get over in the way that they should. We hope that there will be more surprises coming that people like, and we want to be more interactive with fans. Both fans and wrestlers told us that they didn’t like the six-sided ring, so we got rid of it. We’re going to continue to scour the globe for the best talent, because our fans deserve it.”
D’Amore directly addressed the issues with talent leaving the company in mass this year already, including talents like EC3 who’ve made the jump to WWE.
“It’s a false narrative that we don’t have talent under contract. The vast majority of our talents are under long-term contracts. Take a look at the departure of Bobby Lashley. He was under contract to us until almost Summertime this year. When he had other opportunities, we made a decision as a group that we were okay facilitating his release earlier than anticipated. Contracts are going to come up and will need to be renegotiated on an ongoing basis, but there’s only a small number of talent that are going to have deals coming up in the next six months. The talent we’ve been bringing in have been signing one or two year deals. People are always scared of change. EC3 was a great talent, but people are talking as if he’s irreplaceable. What was he before he came to Impact Wrestling? He was a guy who had been in developmental and never really panned out. You look historically at this company and the people who have come here and built a reputation, and when they leave, people think they’re irreplaceable. Well, what was Bobby Roode before he came here? Or Eric Young, or AJ Styles?”