With a pay-per-view scheduled for this Sunday, TNA's ownership saga appears to be coming to a head ...
According to multiple reports, WWE is interested in buying TNA, and a potential sale of the company could come as soon as this week, while TNA prepares for its Bound for Glory pay-per-view, which is scheduled for Sunday evening.
TNA majority owner, Dixie Carter, has been financially troubled over the past several years. In order to keep TNA alive, she has sold off portions of the company to minority owners, including Billy Corgan, who helped finance the Slammiversary pay-per-view in June and received a minority stake in TNA. That move also helped Corgan become TNA president earlier this year. Meanwhile, Aroluxe, the company TNA uses for production, also owns a piece of the company.
According to reports from The Wrestling Observer, PWInsider, and Forbes, WWE is interested in buying TNA mostly for its tape library, although it’s also likely WWE absorbs some of TNA’s talent roster, but certainly not all of it.
Corgan, meanwhile, wants to purchase the company and keep it alive. In a recent interview with ESPN, he said he would re-brand the company, including changing its name, but he also said a potential bid for TNA might take a few weeks to come together.
That’s the problem now … TNA doesn’t have a few weeks, if you believe these reports.
Ultimately, wrestling needs competition. While TNA doesn’t put a dent into WWE’s market share, it’s still a place for wrestlers to go work and make money. If TNA goes away, it’s a bad thing for pro wrestling. Mock the company all you want, and it deserves most of the criticism it has received under the Carter regime, but TNA being sold to WWE and closing up shop is not good for the pro wrestling industry. It’s not good for the wrestlers.
Carter has dug her own grave, though. TNA is a shell of its former self, and this all happened under her direction. Perhaps that’s the biggest problem TNA has had over the years … it has lacked a direction.
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Under Carter, the creative direction of the company seemed to change a few times per year. At times they were trying to snatch up all the former WWE talent they could find. Then they were trying to re-live the Attitude Era, they tried to restart the Monday Night Wars with Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff, and they also tried to raise ECW from the dead a few summers ago.
Creatively speaking, TNA has been a very good show for most of the past year. Corgan has seen his influence become greater and Matt Hardy and Jeff Hardy have been terrific in writing their own storylines. The actual product has been excellent.
The problem, for now, is that TNA is toiling away on Pop TV. About 400,000 people are watching the show on a weekly basis, which is a lot, but it’s less than half of what it was receiving on Spike TV.
Why isn’t TNA on Spike TV anymore? You might ask? … Reportedly, Spike didn’t want former writer Vince Russo to be running the creative of the program, so Carter had him secretly serving as a consultant.
Who knows if that’s really true. It’s hard to separate truth from fiction most of the time in the wrestling business. But if it’s true, it’s perhaps the epitome of Carter’s inept ownership.
In the short term, there’s supposed to be a live pay-per-view on Sunday and there’s supposed to be several days of television tapings after that. Right now, all of those things are up in the air while the ownership saga sorts itself out.
In June, TNA Chief Financial Officer Dean Broadhead wrote on his personal Facebook page that it was a hectic few days prior to Slammiversary trying to secure financing to keep the company afloat. Corgan was ultimately the savior there.
If TNA can’t run Bound for Glory, it will be in breach of its contract with pay-per-view providers as well as some international television providers, according to reports.
So here we are. TNA and Dixie Carter are at a crossroad. The moves she makes over the next 48 hours will likely leave an everlasting mark on the pro wrestling industry.