WWE/Impact Rumor Mill: Surprising details emerge on meeting between WWE and Impact Wrestling execs
What’s the story?
As reported by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, several surprising new details seem to have emerged regarding the recent meeting between executives from the WWE and Impact Wrestling.
Contrary to previous reports, the current belief is that the aforesaid meeting was in fact with regard to the Impact Wrestling tape library and content from said library potentially being utilized by the WWE.
In case you didn’t know…
Over the past couple of years, the WWE and Impact Wrestling have experienced a significant improvement in the business relationship between the two companies.
It wasn’t very long ago that Impact Wrestling was legitimately considered by many to be the number-2 professional wrestling promotion in the world—the WWE’s biggest competitor since WWE bought out WCW in 2001.
However, Impact Wrestling, as an organization, ran into a ton of problems over the past few years—something which led to a change of ownership in the company; that is now owned by Anthem.
The heart of the matter
Interestingly, over the past several months, the WWE has used content from the Impact Wrestling tape library on its programming—including footage of The Hardy Brothers as well as AJ Styles.
PWInsider reported that the recent meeting between WWE officials from Triple H’s team and Impact execs such as Ed Nordholm and Scott D’Amore, wasn’t regarding a possible sale of Impact to WWE or even pertaining to a sale of the Impact tape library.
Notwithstanding, The Observer now notes that the meeting was indeed relating the Impact tape library and the WWE Network.
The idea behind the same, is that Impact Wrestling is currently looking for a good TV deal, as its current contract with Pop TV expires later this year and isn’t fetching Impact a decent sum of money.
As of now, the fact remains that the majority of Impact Wrestling’s revenue comes from its India TV deal—with the UK revenues for the company witnessing a steep decline.
Moreover, the belief is that a ton of content from Impact Wrestling’s tape library is used on The Fight Network that is run by Anthem, hence Impact Wrestling isn’t likely to sell off its entire library to the WWE.
However, that may not stop Impact Wrestling from reaching a deal with the WWE, so as to permit the latter company to use specific footage from its library on WWE programming.
What’s next?
Industry experts believe that despite its recent hardships, Impact Wrestling seems to be in a better place now than it was last year.
On the other hand, the WWE continues to thrive as the top professional wrestling-based sports-entertainment company in the world.
What do you make of the discussions between Impact Wrestling and WWE? Do provide us your feedback in the comments below.