Opinion: Why WWE will never purchase Impact Wrestling
Impact Wrestling founder Jeff Jarrett is being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. Former Impact President Dixie Carter was interviewed for a Kurt Angle WWE Network special last summer and WWE recently made a deal with Anthem to air Impact footage of the Hardy Boyz for an upcoming WWE 24 special and Hardy Boyz DVD.
This has all led to some chatter among fans that WWE may end up buying Impact Wrestling, so is it possible? The short answer is no, but here is why it will never happen.
A former Impact employee, Jason Cook, told me if Anthem were to ever sell, it would be for about 20 Million. Anthem has publicly stated that they have no intention of selling Impact Wrestling, and although, that is something that Dixie Carter used to say in the past also, and, eventually did sell, Anthem has invested too much to back out now.
Impact Wrestling, although at one point every bit as good as WWE, if not better, entertainment wise (2006), has just never been competition for WWE, the most they ever were was just an annoying thorn in their side, mostly due to having performers under contract that WWE would have liked to have had, as well as incidents such as invading WWE's Royal Rumble 2005 commercial filming and the Voodoo Kin Mafia angle.
In 2001, Vince McMahon purchased WCW for $5 Million, which was a total steal of a price. At its peak, WCW was worth more than £300 Million. When WCW legends such Goldberg and Sting found out how much Vince had bought it for, they said they would have bought it for that price and kept it alive.
The thing here is that WCW almost put WWE out of business, they were hanging on by a thread. Can you honestly imagine Vince McMahon paying four times that for a company that was only ever an annoyance to him? I honestly can't.
The only piece of Impact Wrestling that WWE would have any kind of interest in is the video library, as there are thousands of hours of content featuring current WWE stars AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Bobby Roode, Eric Young, the Hardy Boyz, Kurt Angle and more, as well as content for legends like Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Mick Foley, Sting, Christian, Booker T and dozens more. But as much as WWE would love to carry all of that, it would not be worth the $20 Million price tag, to them.
I always find it such a shame when I see ignorant fans saying that WWE should just buy Impact Wrestling to ''put them out of their misery''. Such a shame because Impact still put out a very exciting show every week, and aside from that, these 'fans' don't take into account that if Impact were gone, many fans would lose something they love and many people would be losing a job.
Impact may have a very talented roster and some very intelligent people behind the scenes, but that does not mean WWE are interested in hiring any of them.