Jeff Jarrett discusses Scott D'Amore's exit from TNA Wrestling.
As previously announced, Anthem terminated the contract of TNA President Scott D'Amore, and Anthony Cicione was named his replacement.
Speaking on My World with Jeff Jarrett, the WWE Hall of Famer, who co-founded TNA, discussed Scott D'Amore's sudden exit.
“All I can do is share my personal experience, and as I sat didn’t and kind of drilled through everything, without knowing any of the details, and as things trickled out, you kind of hear, and I don’t know what’s true or not, but the one thing that was in there that he tried to buy it. If this is true, he wanted to spend more money. Obviously, I’ve shared this on the podcast, and I take full responsibility for my screw-ups, but the reality was, when I look back on my time, is that I was under the impression that budgets were gonna be bigger. There was gonna be more of an investment. The strategies were gonna be different. So in a lot of ways, I said, okay, that was in 2017. So from 2018 to 2024, six years, I think you have to drill down into, I don’t know the books, but the Asper family is very wealthy. They’ve made a lot of money through the years off of the television industry and cable, AXS, and Pursuit, and they did the merger of the acquisition. All that being said, I don’t know what TNA’s true financials really look like. It’s obviously Len Asper’s sole decision," Jarrett said.
Jarrett then noted that the TNA rebrand gave the company more buzz than it had in years. He stated that the timing was perplexing, but he also emphasized that he did not know the details about the company's finances. Jarrett stated that nobody was irreplaceable, but TNA had their work cut out for them.
"So I asked myself, what did the profit and loss look like over the last six years because there’s no way that you do the rebrand and you have, maybe it’s just the Internet, but it felt like the most buzz on the company in the last three years, four years, maybe longer than that. They had quite a bit of buzz. Just the timing of it all is very perplexing. Again, you don’t ever judge a book by its cover, but I don’t know what the financial picture looks like. But the timing of it all, I’ll say this, they’ve got their work cut out, no doubt. Nobody’s irreplaceable. No talent, no executive, nobody’s irreplaceable in this industry. That being said, what is their plan in place? That’s what I’ve yet to hear. Who is the wrestling guy [that will replace D’Amore?] I think that at the end of the day, that is an enormous component of who is steering the ship creatively. I wish [new TNA President] Anthony Cicione well. It just surprised me, the timing of everything," Jarrett said.
As Jarrett mentioned, D'Amore reportedly approached Anthem with an offer to buy TNA. More information is available here.
Fightful Select reported more information about Scott D'Amore's departure from TNA.
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