Impact Wrestling's Josh Mathews was recently interviewed by Wrestling Epicenter's Interactive Wrestling Radio. You can see the full interview above, or selected highlights below:
The impact of the new Impact Creative Team of Don Callis & Scott D'Amore:
"I think the impact it is having is tremendous. It has given Impact the forward momentum it has needed for quite some time. There has been so many false starts over the past few years. January of last year sort of came in with a rush and by the middle of the year, things were changing, heading downward. That isn't what anybody wanted. Everyone wanted Impact to succeed. When Scott D'Amore came back to Impact early last year, I was excited. I like Scott. I've had lots of talks with Scott about what Impact could be doing and where it could be going. I think when you look at it now that Scott and Don are in place and the creative is what it is - And Sonjay Dutt deserves so much credit for what he does on the creative side of things. The way it has all come together and everyone has been working so hard to make sure that you're seeing exactly what you should be seeing and things are happening exactly as they should be. Before, things were sort of falling by the wayside. I think a lot of us are not letting that happen. There's extra work that has to be done to make sure that the right messages are being sent and that the message is being sent on all platforms - You know, if something gets mentioned on social media, we make sure that it gets mentioned on the show. If that means going back and changing things just before the show has to go, that is what we have to do. So, the long answer to your question (laughs) is that I'm extremely excited about where we could be going. Just the positive momentum! The ratings have been up throughout the month of March. We've sold more VIP packages for Redemption with still a few weeks to go than we did for January's. So, things are looking in a great direction. We're doing great with our ticket sales for WrestleCon. Everything is looking like we're going to succeed. That is a good opportunity for us to all take a collective breath."
The impact of Twitch and the Global Wrestling Network on the company:
"It is great because when you look at the content, it just isn't being lost anymore. Things like One Night Only aren't being lost anymore. They're being thought of. This is 3 hours of prime time real estate. One Night Only is on the Global Wrestling Network. The packages you see on One Night Only are created by the production staff in Nashville. Eric Thompkins created that.It is just so cool. It is something you're proud to look at and say, "This is a show that I want to watch!" It makes people feel like this isn't just another throw away thing that Impact is doing. They're thought out. The last one we did was March Breakdown and I was there in Windsor with BCW and I thought it was an incredible show. You have so many incredible talents there that are now being exposed to a worldwide audience. Guys like RJ City and Stone Rockwell. Guys maybe you don't know right now but 5 or 6 years from now, those are going to be the household names of Impact Wrestling if everything goes according to plan. With GWN, Twitch... So, you have these One Night Only's. And, you have these monthly events on Twitch, the last one being Last Chancery. And then, of course, we're going to be live on Twitch on April 6th. We're going to announce the main event for WrestleCon Impact versus Lucha Underground tomorrow on Facebook Live at noon eastern. The next one will be Cali Combat out of California. I remember a few years ago, somebody had posted a story that "Impact Wrestling had forgotten they had a pay per view on". One Night Only went up... Maybe we did forget. Maybe it was just one of those throw away shows. That is not going to happen in 2018 and going forward."
