Josh Matthews did have some concerns but he always believed.
There have been a number of reports throughout the years that IMPACT Wrestling or TNA at the time were going out of business and that the company was running on its last legs. Throughout those hardships and struggles, IMPACT Wrestling is still around and recently made a move to the 'Pursuit Channel' on-which their weekly show will air on Friday's at 10 PM EST. Josh Matthews, who has been with IMPACT since 2014 and is the lead commentator for the weekly program was with the company during some of those rough patches and when he joined the 'Notsam Wrestling' podcast with Sam Roberts, he recalled a few times when he thought IMPACT was going out of business but added that there was never a time when he was not paid on schedule regardless of the situation that the company was in.
“Well, I think I’m more pessimistic than optimistic about things a lot of times. So, there was a few times where I thought, ‘Okay, there’s just no way. It can’t continue’. This is when everyone was in Nashville over at Cummins Station and we switched offices -- we went from the big office down to the basement. We then went to the warehouse for a little while. Just a lot of times, but, I can say this -- as an employee of the company, I’ve never been paid late and I’ve never not been paid on time and I’ve never not been paid my full salary." Matthews expressed. "So, it’s so hard for me to say, ‘I think’ and ‘I thought’ and ‘I was worried about this’ and then… I don’t wanna be disrespectful to those people who made sure that on the 1st and 15th that my money was in my bank account. You know what I mean? Did I ever think it was gonna end? Yeah, a few times, but then I think back to those years in WWE where we did campaigns like Tighten The Belt and expense reports were looked at and you couldn’t spend a lot of money on the road and going through -- probably wasn’t close to shutting the company down but I think that IMPACT or TNA as it were then, probably came close." He said. "Closer than I knew, a couple of times, but there was always TV and there was always a light at the end of the tunnel so-to-speak.”
Fightful has a video posted on our YouTube channel of an in-depth look into IMPACT's move to the Pursuit Channel and also on our YouTube is a clip from Sean Ross Sapp's interview with IMPACT Wrestling creative writer Jimmy Jacobs talking about the aforementioned move.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit the 'Notsam Wrestling' podcast with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
