TNA Wrestling has survived a lot over the years. At one point, business almost closed shop until a miracle happened. Next they were signed by Spike TV to broadcast a weekly show, but then lost it. Not only this, but they had major talent — and then lost them as well. TNA has been able to keep many others, but due to their popularity and need in TNA, the company is basically going broke trying to pay them.
Spike TV offered a good bit of money for their television deal, mainly because they could offer such a large sum. Meanwhile, the deal with Destination America is by no means as big as what Spike offered, but it is still a place TNA can put content. On top of this, TNA has deals outside of the United States which are helpful as well. The issue is that the contracts out of the country are not enough to keep the company afloat. They have to make more money domestically for everything to work properly.
TNA has Panda Energy to back them, but since last year, Panda has put TNA on a budget . This ended up resulting in TNA losing a lot of top talent such as Kaz, Chris Daniels, and AJ Styles, just to name a few. Additionally, Samoa Joe left when his deal was up earlier this year.
This budget lost a lot of good people, but TNA decided they would sign some to new deals at the start of the year. While this has merit, it didn’t make sense in the long run. Many TNA wrestlers were not getting paid for work as much as two months back on several points, some as much as four months. Production workers for TNA are still waiting for pay. TNA was months behind and the workers even threatening to walk out at one point last year. Luckily for TNA, they paid up before the walk out happened. Yet it took this threat for them to pay? Now more problems are happening this year.
At one point, Matt Hardy posted an image on Twitter to show how TNA was paying people. Yet he had about six checks in the picture that he was about to cash from TNA, proving TNA was behind a great deal in paying him.
Now it seems that many in TNA are already considering the thought of the company closing its doors yet again. According to the Wrestling Observer , after TNA cancelled their Chinese Tour, many have assumed that TNA is basically dead at this point. The tour would have made money, but TNA would only cancel such a tour if they felt that the price to fly people out there and back wouldn’t override the money made.
Destination America also wants TNA to do more shows from America, to fit with the network ideology of course.
According to Cageside Seats , many in TNA feel so strongly that the company will go down that a lot of the talent has reached out to WWE in some form. However, WWE is said to not be interested in anyone from TNA at this point.
Most feel WWE would be full of it in saying such a thing, seeing as TNA does have a lot of talented wrestlers. There are even some like Jeff Hardy who WWE could still use greatly if he wanted to come back. However, WWE is not going to let that sort of thing out. Why would they?
That said, while TNA clearly has a lot of work to make up to become successful, can they? It is up in the air at this point. TNA Wrestling has survived for over a decade. However, they have never been able to become a power in the pro-wrestling business sadly. Now that tons of other pro-wrestling companies will be on TV to compete with, including WWE, TNA may have more an uphill battle now more than ever.
[IMG Credit: Matt Hardy-Twitter, impactwrestling.com]