Impact Wrestling: Former World Champion Contacted By Company To Make A Return
Despite a legal battle and new management, Impact Wrestling has aimed to produce quality entertainment for professional wrestling fans. While the inconsistency has caused many viewers to lose interest, characters like Matt & Jeff Hardy (Broken Matt & Brother Nero), Decay (Abyss, Crazzy Steve, and Rosemary), Eli Drake, and EC3 have assisted with keeping viewers locked in. While these names are still going strong in the company, there have been many names who just could not stay with Impact Wrestling.
Over the past few years, Bobby Roode, Austin Aries, Eric Young, and Samoa Joe, among others, have departed from Impact Wrestling to go on to other wrestling ventures. In 2015, former TNA World Heavyweight Champion Magnus left TNA, and proceeded to compete for Jeff Jarrett’s Global Force Wrestling. Magnus spent seven years competing for TNA, and left after his feud alongside Mickie James with James Storm and Serena.
According to Wrestling News, Impact Wrestling is interested in bringing back the 30-year-old former champion.
“It looks like Anthem is interested in bringing back a former TNA World Champion. Dave Meltzer reported on Friday that TNA has made a contract offer to bring back Nick Aldis (aka Magnus). At press time, the deal has not been completed but the talks are said to be significant.”
Right now, Impact Wrestling is trying to stay relevant as a worthy competitor in the pro wrestling industry. Seemingly, the company has tried to find a stable identity since its inception in 2012. Since then, the company has gone through a showcase of the X Division and Knockouts Division, as well as made the effort to return older legends such as Sting, Hulk Hogan, Booker T, Kevin Nash, and Ric Flair, in order to boost ratings.
However, an inconsistency in the management, pay-per-view structure, channel distribution, and weekly airtime, have all led to the company falling away from competitiveness.
The latest company to buy out Impact Wrestling was Anthem Sports & Entertainment. Since the announcement, Impact Wrestling has fizzled out the “TNA” part of the name, as well as have the broadcast team announce the company as the weekly show goes on air. The “Anthem Owl” has now become part of the logo, which has generated a great deal of dissatisfaction from the pro wrestling community regard the design. Even EC3 made a jovial reference during a recent episode of Impact Wrestling, asking the Anthem Owl for advice during a segment with Bobby Lashley.
During an interview with Vince Russo, Magnus shared an incident where he received a concussion during his match with Jeff Hardy. However, he stated that he played it off so well, that TNA Executive John Gaburick did not believe him (h/t EWrestlingNews).
“It was a rotten concussion–one of those where I was on auto-pilot for the rest of the mach. At one point I went to the corner, grabbed Jeff and said, ‘I hurt my head–talk to me I don’t know what’s going on’… Big [John Gaburick] didn’t buy it… like he really didn’t think that I got hurt. I was thinking to myself–why would I pretend to get hurt on the night I won the World Title? What could I possibly be trying to avoid?”
Hopefully, this return does nothing but help the overall brand of Impact Wrestling. Lacking a specific direction for far too long, thankfully it is still around for fans to see the “broken brilliance” of Matt and Jeff Hardy, as well as the continued success in Eli Drake’s character development.
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Although Magnus went through many different shades during his career at Impact Wrestling, he is known to be one of the biggest names in recent history, and the wish is that the creative team has something in store that will gain the fan’s interest more than ever before.
[Featured Image By TNA Impact Wrestling UK/Facebook]
