Scott D'Amore is looking to slowly bring IMPACT Wrestling back to the heights that it once was at.
Promoter, booker, and the current co-executive Vice President of IMPACT Wrestling Scott D'Amore has his sights set on changing the direction of the company. Along with former pro wrestler and current NJPW commentator Don Callis, D'Amore wants to slowly earn back one fan at a time to IMPACT. Over the past number of years the company has been set back a few steps, but D'Amore is prepared for all hurdles as he explained to Sports Illustrated.
"There is no short game to this, there is no magic pill or snapping of your fingers,” said D’Amore, "Our goal is to make a bunch of small decisions and those small decisions are going to slowly lead to things getting better and building a little momentum.”
On April 6th, IMPACT Wrestling hosted a joint show with Lucha Underground where stars from both productions went head-to-head throughout the night in in-ring competition. In the advertised main event for the card, current IMPACT World Champion Austin Aries was set to team with his then-challenger at IMPACT's 'Redemption' PPV Alberto El Patron to take on the duo of Pentagon Jr. and Fenix. El Patron no-showed the event which soon lead to his release from IMPACT.
“It was obviously an unfortunate situation,” said D’Amore. “When Alberto failed to show up to the event we made our decision on a new main event for the show. It was important for us to give our fans in a capacity crowd at the Sugar Mill in New Orleans a great event, and we did not want them to focus on someone who wasn’t there. We wanted them to focus on the match we were giving.”
The scheduled match for the IMPACT vs. Lucha Underground event was converted into a Triple-Threat between Aries, Pentagon Jr., and Fenix. Scott D'Amore stated that the reaction that the bout received lead to officials and himself making the match the main event for IMPACT's 'Redemption' PPV coming up this Sunday. He also spoke on how with Alberto's no-showing, he wanted to give the fans in attendance and watching live on Twitch something to make up for the incident.
“Those three guys went out, were so professional, and put on an amazing match,” said D’Amore. “Then we sat down and huddled.” He continued, "One of the things we need to do as a company is build trus. We need the fans to know that when we say we are going to deliver something, that we’ll deliver it. We did not feel good about advertising something and not delivering it and we were not going to put ourselves in a situation where that could happen again at 'Redemption'. We saw a match that had people buzzing with the live crowd and had feedback through the roof on our live Twitch broadcast and we decided to go with that as a rematch for our pay per view main event. Austin Aries, Pentagon, and Fenix squaring off in a three-way for the world title gives us a great main event on top of an outstanding card. There is enough negativity in the world, we’re not going the negative route,” said D’Amore. “When people watch wrestling, they want to be drawn into an intriguing fantasy world. Nobody wishes anyone ill will, but this is part of building trust. Anyone can make good decisions when everything falls into place. You really start to judge people on how they react when there are obstacles and adversity. It was important to us to show that we were going to deal with the situation and not go on with business as usual. He’s our biggest mainstream star, so the wrestling answer is to work through this and try to deliver the advertised match at all costs. But that’s not what is best for the fans or the product.”
As noted, IMPACT Wrestling will be presenting their 'Redemption' PPV this Sunday. Fightful will have live coverage of the event, and our very own Sean Ross Sapp will be doing a post-event podcast immediately after the show comes to an end.
