Eric Bischoff arrived in TNA on the LIVE January 4, 2010 edition of IMPACT, where he – along with Hulk Hogan – were introduced as business partners of TNA President Dixie Carter. As “good guys”, Hogan and Bischoff exercised control over the company in an attempt to help it succeed.
Addressing the rebrand during a recent edition of his Strictly Business podcast, the WWE Hall of Famer said:
“I understand. I can understand why they did it, I certainly haven’t talked to you about it. You know, there is an argument to be made — I’m not sure I buy into it 100% in this particular case, but there is an argument to be made that tapping into nostalgia is a good thing. But let’s be honest here. Not wanting to offend anybody or hurt anybody’s feelings, but TNA was always a pimple on a pig’s ass. It had a very small — loyal, but small, relatively speaking — market share in terms of television. It was never a big property. It was an emerging property, and it was exciting for a while because it was new and there was a new car smell, and all the same things that we see with Dynamite or AEW I should say. But I just don’t think that brand had enough value ever so that bringing it back is going to have any kind of, no pun intended, impact,” said Bischoff.
Bischoff also outlined his belief that there needs to be significant changes in the presentation of the product to coincide with the rebranding. Continuing, the 68-year-old touched on IMPACT’s ratings, saying:
“How many people are watching it? 300, 200,000 people on an episode consistently? That’s — you know, I could do a YouTube show of me cooking a f***ing steak and do that many views. It’s just not — nobody’s watching it. It’d be a fantastic property. That’s what I mean about presentation. You know, presentation also includes where do you see it? Otherwise, it’s a tree that falls in the forest and nobody hears it or sees it. And that’s what IMPACT is. Regardless of the talent, the roster, how good the show is put together creatively, it’s got to look and feel significant in order to expect to see any kind of uptick in audience reaction.”
H/T Lewis Howse of Cultaholic.
On May 3, 2011, company would change the show name to IMPACT Wrestling and adopt the color scheme of blue, white, and grey.
This was while Eric Bischoff was running TNA. On a May 2021 episode of 83 weeks podcast, here’s what he said about the name change:
“The ideation of TNA was juvenile, prepubescent. In my humble opinion, it was stupid to start out with, it was even dumber to hold onto to it when you’re trying to become a national promotion on a high profile cable outlet in prime time when you’re trying to appeal to advertisers. It was as stupid as any idea that I’ve seen perpetuated for an extended period of time. It was time to drop TNA but people in TNA didn’t want to, they felt like oh my gosh, we invested so much in this brand, yes and it was a stupid brand to invest in!
“Finally, Spike pumped the brakes and said sorry, if we’re going to continue with this show and try to sell it, we have to rebrand it. It was a tough battle, there was a lot of push back internally, mostly from the people who didn’t have anything to do with running the business on a day to day basis from Texas, that being Panda Energy. Mommy and Daddy, mostly mommy, didn’t want to spend the money so Spike did! Spike paid for the rebranding, Spike paid for the research, these are things the company should have been doing for themselves but they didn’t and wouldn’t so Spike said alright if you won’t, we will.”
H/T Sanchez Taylor from WrestleTalk.
Bischoff worked for TNA in both an on-screen and backstage capacity between 2009 and 2013.
At the end of the Bound for Glory PPV we got the official announcement that IMPACT Wrestling will be rebranding to TNA Wrestling moving forward, starting in January of 2024.
Previously announced matches for TNA Hard To Kill PPV:
TNA KNOCKOUTS WORLD TITLE
–Trinity (c) vs Jordynne Grace
TNA WORLD TITLE
–Alex Shelley (c) vs Moose
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