For years WWE has wanted nothing to do with Impact Wrestling, except for occasionally poaching their most popular stars. Recently, however, the wrestling world has broadened considerably, and old rivalries seem to be softening. There’ve been reports for weeks now about a meeting on September 18 between Impact Wrestling execs Scott D’Amore and Ed Nordholm and some of Triple H’s team from WWE.
Via 411Mania today we have a transcript of an interview D’Amore gave to The Wrestling Perspective Podcast about that meeting and what it means for the state of the wrestling industry.
Since the beginning of the year, we’ve done three content deals with WWE. We did the Hardys documentary deal to supply footage to them. We did a deal to supply footage for AJ Styles and Kurt Angle for Table for 3 and we provided footage for Bruce Pritchard’s podcast on the Network. I think WWE is seeing that this is a different day for Impact Wrestling and I think, maybe, on the most minute levels, they see they that it’s a different day in wrestling. There was a meeting, we got together, we talked, and it was nice to be face-to-face and saying hello. It’s 2018, it’s a whole different world and there’s no reason why people should not communicate. There’s really no agenda to it. It’s how the business is now, which is tremendous. It’s good for us, not just to make a little scratch for providing the footage but, more than that, it’s the promotion they give us having it on their Network. That’s something that would not have happened two years ago. Finally we stopped with that old school wrestling BS where, ‘Oh, you’re with him. You can’t do nothing with us.’ Everybody benefits if there’s communication and a little bit of respect.
Working together does ultimately make sense for both companies. Impact is no threat to WWE’s business, and not treating them like one makes WWE look more confident and less like a bunch of vindictive carnies. For Impact on the other hand, offering WWE video footage and the leak help promote their own brand and streaming service to any WWE fans looking to broaden their wrestling viewing experience. Besides all that, in an era where former Impact Champion AJ Styles is WWE Champion while former WWE Cruiserweight Austin Aries is Impact Champion, the world just makes more sense if each company acknowledges the other’s existence.
