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If you haven't see the Braxton Sutter-Laurel Van Ness wedding that aired on Impact Wrestling last night it was pretty entertaining. Maria Kanellis was in another zone, just awesome work. Van Ness did a great job as Bridezilla and it seemed like the first segment the crowd live was into a major way that wasn't a Hardy family segment in forever.
Dutch Mantel announced that he had officially signed to return to Impact Wrestling in a creative and advisory position. As I reported a few weeks back in the Elite section, the creative team going forward will be Jeff Jarrett overseeing a booking committee of Dutch Mantel and Scott D'Amore with Abyss, Jeremy Borash and Rockstar Spud assisting. There has been different stories floating about as to whether long-time creative team member Matt Conway is gone from TNA. There has been talk of hiring a writer who would be responsible for formatting the shows and turning them into scripts for production as well.
The belief is that any parity booking will be done with and a lot more old school elements will come into play. More than one person has pointed out the idea to me that now we will be able to see what TNA "could be like without Dixie Carter", but I think a bigger issue will be for the company to find and lock in talents that they need to develop as the 2017 equivalent of AJ Styles, Chris Daniels, Samoa Joe, Bobby Roode, etc.
The real question I have is how that all the creative changes factor into the Matt Hardy "Broken Universe" material, which has been far and away the saving grace of TNA over the last year. That sort of material is not going to be in the Jarrett/Mantel playbook. As of this morning, Matt Hardy and Jeff Hardy have yet to sign new deals. The belief is Matt's deal has expired and Jeff's is close to doing so. One of the things TNA has allowed for the Hardys is their creative freedom (Matt has been the driving force in that regard) as well as the ability to go out and capitalize on that creativity on the independents, where they can command great paydays and lots of merchandise money. One has to speculate whether the creative changes could result in the loss of that creative freedom, while signing a new deal could also cut off their independent dates, depending on the deal. If signing a new deal means the Hardys lose that creative freedom and/or the ability to book themselves on the independents, there will have to be a choice of guaranteed money over that freedom and the reality is that with the current pro wrestling landscape in 2017, that freedom could be worth more. It will be an interesting story to follow as they are the biggest "names" the company has right now.
TNA still has yet to sign Drew Galloway to a new deal as well, which is amazing to me considering they are about to do the next round of TV tapings from 3/2-3/5 and he was a major part of the last few months of TV.
With John Gaburick out of creative, his push to bring in Alberto el Patron is done. Alberto was scheduled to appear at the last set of tapings but the decision was made to hold him off for March. Last we have heard, that wasn't going to happen. There had been on and off talks with Alberto dating back to the fall of 2016. Gaburick is now working on the production end.
For those who have asked me about Josh Mathews, my gut is he's working everyone on social media with his antagonistic comments.
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