What’s the story?
According to cagesideseats.com, Impact Wrestling’s push to bring in Alberto Del Rio has apparently come to an end.
In case you didn’t know...
The former WWE Champion left the company in September of 2016 when he and the company came to a mutual agreement on his release. At that point, he stated that he would not be signing with any individual wrestling promotion and working a very limited number of dates instead. Del Rio intimated that he would only be working about sixty dates per year for 2017 and 2018 before deciding to retire from professional wrestling.
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He’s had his share of issues with showing up for independent bookings, citing being attacked by a knife-wielding criminal at a restaurant prior to his scheduled appearance at AAA’s Heroes Immortales X event on October 2nd, 2016. He also missed a booking with What Culture Pro Wrestling in November of 2017 due to issues with his flight.
The heart of the matter
According to the report, it appears that Del Rio will not be appearing in TNA. Due to John Gaburick no longer being in a prominent position with the creative side of the company, the idea of bringing Del Rio in has come to an end.
Apparently, Alberto was originally scheduled to make an appearance for the promotion at the most recent set of completed Impact Wrestling television tapings, but a decision was agreed upon to hold off his debut until the tapings that are scheduled to take place this weekend. The report intimates that the rumours going around is that Del Rio will not be debuting, even though the two sides have been trying to come to an agreement since late last year.
Also read: WWE News: Alberto Del Rio said WWE needed him more than he needed them
Also based on the report, it is also rumoured that Alberto Del Rio doesn’t fit with what the Dutch Mantell and Jeff Jarrett regime’s vision is for Impact Wrestling moving forward and/or he’s too expensive for the rebuilding brand.
What’s next?
Impact Wrestling will have their next set of tapings over this weekend and we will have information on the occurences of those tapings as they become available.
Sportskeeda’s Take
In the past week alone, Drew Galloway, Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, Reby Sky, Maria Kanellis-Bennett, Mike Bennett, and Jade have all left Impact Wrestling. While that does indeed free up quite a considerable amount of salary, giving it all to Del Rio in order to bring him in doesn’t make sense from a business standpoint.
While this may be considered a poor move from the standpoint of having a name star moving forward, we don’t feel like Del Rio will move the needle enough as far as television ratings are concerned. A large portion of Impact Wrestling’s audience is said to have only watched the show for the presence of the Broken Hardys, so it will be interesting to see how the company recovers from that loss, as well as how they try to replace those talents...it certainly won’t be with Alberto Del Rio.
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