What's the story?
Anthem Sports and Entertainment Executive Vice President, Ed Nordholm, and new Impact Wrestling Executive Producer Jeff Jarrett spoke to Newsweek. When part of the conversation turned to the “horrible state” that former TNA CEO Dixie Carter left the company in, Nordholm had this to say:
“The buck has to stop someplace and it was with her. The reality is the company got into a dire position and she was CEO, some of the stuff we've had to clean up is monumental”
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Jeff Jarrett and his father Jerry formed TNA Wrestling in 2002. Dixie Carter invested a lot of money into the company, before eventually becoming CEO and President. Jeff Jarrett left TNA in late 2013 and formed his own company Global Force Wrestling.
With widespread reports of staff and talent going unpaid, the company looked for financing from external sources. In stepped Smashing Pumpkins musician Billy Corgan, who made three cash loans to TNA, believing that if the promotion defaulted on those loans due to insolvency, he would become the owner of the company.
When everything went wrong, Corgan sued TNA but ended up settling the case out of court. Here’s what Jeff Jarrett said on the Carter vs Corgan court case.
"It was a black-eye on the industry. It wasn’t fruitful for anyone—whether you’re a fan of, a wrestler, an employee. It was a really ugly, unfortunate situation. It wasn’t good for the industry. It was hard watching that court case on social media of all places, I had guys and girls in WWE call me legitimately worried about everyone.”
The whole Carter vs. Corgan case was made worse by the fact that a lot of it played out via Twitter. As Jarrett himself says, “It was a black eye on the industry”. Anthem Sports then went on to purchase the company from Carter, and one of their first acts was to bring back Jarrett in the Executive Producer role.
The heart of the matter
Here’s what Nordholm went on to talk about how he felt while watching the whole conundrum:
“I was angry with her when myself and Len got the full story of how she ran things. She was putting herself and her family in financial trouble to keep it going.”
Most fans already knew that TNA was in a mess with Carter at the helm. To see the new owners talk about how much of a mess it actually was is slightly shocking. From money troubles to nonsensical tv programming, to mistakenly sending an email criticising the bosses of their tv network, to the bosses of the tv network the weekly show was shown on, it was just a comedy of errors on an epic scale.
What’s next?
Impact Wrestling is looking to become a viable alternative to the WWE once again. With Jarrett back in charge of the wrestling side of things and Anthem in charge of the business side of things, the future looks brighter for them.
The first TV tapings with Jarrett in charge take place in early March, maybe then we will see what direction the new bosses plan to take with the company.
Sportskeeda’s take
There’s no doubt that Dixie Carter has her place in the history of TNA wrestling. It’s just a shame that the majority of wrestling fans will remember her more for the way things ended.
This is a new start for the entire company, but we probably won’t see a whole host of changes in quick succession. Anything that changes needs to be done slowly and put the right people into the important spots on the card, not just reverting to the style of booking that almost killed TNA in the past.
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