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If you were a fan of TNA or Impact Wrestling, it's no more.
Just a few days before the company celebrates its 15th anniversary at the Slammiversary PPV, The Tennessean is reporting the company will be going under the Global Force Wrestling banner going forward.
"We're a global brand," Jeff Jarrett explained to the newspaper. "We have partnerships in Mexico, Japan, other places. Collectively coming together, we've combined forces and basically the rebrand final touches happen (on Sunday) at 'Slammiversary.'"
Impact Wrestling, initially titled TNA for Total Nonstop Action, was formed in June 2002 by Jeff and Jerry Jarrett as a weekly Wednesday night PPV event with no promotion beyond PPV barker channels and online promotion. The plan crashed immediately, in part due to Healthsouth, a major investor, pulling out almost immediately. Several months into its run, Panda Energy became the majority owner after the promotion's PR rep Dixie Carter, brought the idea of buying the company to her father's attention. Panda became the majority investor, eventually buying Jerry Jarrett out, leaving Jeff as a minority owner Jeff remained an owner even after resigning from the company and launching Global Force Wrestling in 2014.
Panda Energy opted to divest itself of ownership in 2015, with Impact Ventures, LLC, owned by Dixie Carter, taking over 100% of the ownership. Almost immediately, the company ran into the red after being canceled by SpikeTV. After a flirtation with selling to Billy Corgan, Carter instead sold the company to Anthem Media, which also owns the Fight Network in Canada.
Ed Nordholm explained in the article that the decision to change the name was due in part to all the bad publicity the TNA/Impact Wrestling name has garnered in recent years as well as potential marketing partners being down on the "TNA" initials due to the obvious double entendre involved.
The plan going forward, according to Nordholm, is to "export" GFW content to different international broadcast partners and work with those partners to create localized wrestling content with talents native to that area while also using the Fight Network's App as a hub for all of that content online.
According to the article, the company will remain headquartered in Nashville.
To read their report, click here.
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