Back before Impact Wrestling got sold to Anthem, Billy Corgan was, of course, trying to orchestrate a buyout of the company. That, uh … didn’t really go so well. But one of the proposed ideas that Corgan had for the company was to take the roster, the ring, the assets, and the tape library, and rebrand the whole company to try to create a separation between the talent and infrastructure, which are all sound, and the Impact name, which — deserved or not — has a definite stigma attached to it.
Apparently, the new owners of Impact shared this sentiment. Just days after announcing that Anthem has purchased Jeff Jarrett’s Global Force Wrestling outright, the Tennesseean broke the news that Impact Wrestling will officially rebrand as Global Force Wrestling going forward. The weekly show on Pop TV will continue to be called “Impact,” but Impact Wrestling, as a company name, is no more.
Anthem Executive Vice President explained the decision to the Tennessean.
“When Anthem got involved we saw a rare opportunity to get involved with an asset that already had global distribution,” Nordholm said. “It’s a 3,500-hour library, broadcast in 120 countries, existing distribution contracts in India, Africa and now the United Kingdom.
“The timeline to take a ground zero promotion to that kind of penetration was 15 years. The work now is to fix some things.”
This is the second rebrand for Impact in the company’s history. (The third, if you count Total Nonstop Action removing “NWA” from its name in 2004.) While the “Impact Wrestling” moniker has been used more prominently than “TNA” over the last few years, it wasn’t until this year, after the sale to Anthem, that the initials “TNA” were officially retired. Now we’re all going to have to get used to saying Global Force, by which we mean Impact Wrestling.
Somewhat of an unexpected move, but not necessarily a terrible one.
