Scott D’Amore On WWE-Impact Meeting: “Everybody Benefits If There’s Communication”
The meeting between WWE and Impact Wrestling officials on Sept. 18 made headlines across the wrestling world. While details are still mum, and conflicting reports have come out on who pushed for the meeting, one thing we know is that Scott D’Amore, co-executive Vice President of Impact, was present at the meeting.
Appearing on The Wrestling Perspective Podcast, D’Amore offered a bit of insight into the meeting.
“Since the beginning of the beginning of the year, we’ve done three content deals with WWE. We did the Hardys documentary deal to supply footage to them. We did a deal to supply footage for AJ Styles and Kurt Angle for ‘Table for 3’ and we provided footage for Bruce Pritchard’s podcast on the Network,” D’Amore said. “We’ve done a few deals together. I think WWE is seeing that this is a different day for Impact Wrestling and I think, maybe, on the most minute levels, they see they that it’s a different day in wrestling. There was a meeting, we got together, we talked, and it was nice to be face-to-face and saying hello. It’s 2018, it’s a whole different world and there’s no reason why people should not communicate. There’s really no agenda to it. It’s how the business is now, which is tremendous.”
D’Amore continued by saying, “It’s good for us, not just to make a little scratch for providing the footage, but more than that is the promotion they give us having it on their Network. That’s something that would not have happened two years ago. Finally we stopped with that old school wrestling BS where, ‘Oh, you’re with him. You can’t do nothing with us.’ Everybody benefits if there’s communication and little bit of respect.”
Along with repairing Impact’s relationship with WWE, D’Amore has worked in repairing the company’s relationship with Ring of Honor. Things were tense between the two companies over a decade ago when TNA began pulling contracted talent as ROH moved to pay-per-view. The two companies are on friendlier terms nowadays, working together at All In and the upcoming Chris Jericho Cruise.
“It’s cordial. There’s been no time where we’ve reached out that they haven’t been responsive. We’re not working together, but they were a big part of the broadcast for All In and it was on Honor Club. We certainly wanted to be a part of that and were happy to be apart of that. We’re not partners and we’re not working together, but we’re not enemies. That’s a big step because there was so much bad blood, and it was justified. Over the years, TNA did some not nice things to ROH,” said D’Amore. “When you’re in ROH’s position now and doing tremendous business, why would you ever want to acknowledge or talk to Impact Wrestling? I think it’s great. When we first talked about the new structure, we’ve always been in communication with ROH. There’s no reason, just because you’re competitors, you should wish ill on them. There’s no reason why to ever have bad communication. Good communication is important, even among competitors.”
D’Amore noted that the talent on both sides are excited to work together moving forward. Jericho’s Cruise will feature Impact vs. ROH bouts. He went on to say that he isn’t sure where the relationship between the two companies will go, but, like with WWE, having the line of communication is great start.
