Battleground Championship Wrestling on 12/15 in Feasterville, PA at The Sportsplex has Billy Gunn, Sean Studd, Bull James, Matt Tremont, Joey Ryan and Dan Maff appearing. There is a meet and greet at 6 p.m and a live show at 8 p.m.
ECCW tomorrow night in Pitt Meadows, BC at Kazie First Nation Health Building.
Overcome Wrestling on 12/16 in Hamilton, ONT at the Lincoln Alexander Centre.
Kayfabe Dojo on 12/9 in Rochester NY at Pineapple Jack's at 4 p.m.
Adam Rose has a seminar tomorrow at 4 p.m. at the Team Vision Dojo in Orlando and he'll headline a show that night at 8 p.m. at the Dojo.
AAW on Saturday in LaSalle, IL at the Knights of Columbus has Ivelisse vs. Rachael Ellering vs. the winner of the Jessicka Havoc vs. Candice LeRae match for the women's title, Mat Fitchett & Davey Vega defend the tag titles against Shane Strickland & Keith Lee, Hurricane Helms vs. Trevor Lee, Jimmy Jacobs vs. David Starr, Matt Riddle vs. ACH, AR Fox vs. Sammy Guevara vs. Myron Reed, Zema Ion vs. Ethan Page, Dave & Jake Crist vs. Devin & Mason Cutter vs. Trey Miguel & Stephen Wolf and more.
Consistently showing the most weekly Independent Wrestling shows, classics and more than any other wrestling news site anywhere. Nobody does it like WP&P does it, nobody
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Added with Ron Simmons at the CWE legends convention is.......
Barry Windham, Ron Simmons and Jim Brunzell were announced for the CWE Legends of Wrestling Convention 2 on 2/24 in Winnipeg at the CanAd Inns in Garden City.
Rise IPPV cancelled.
The Rise iPPV scheduled for tomorrow night was canceled. They said their test of the broadcast on the Internet failed and didn't want to risk doing a show, so they scrapped the iPPV plans and have refunded money to everyone who ordered.
A show with Sandman, Terry Funk, Kevin Sullivan and Stan Hansen? Whoa.....
Terry Funk & Sandman vs. Warbeast managed by Kevin Sullivan is headlining a show in Wilmington, CA tomorrow night that also has Penta 0M vs. John Hennigan, Douglas James vs. Zack Sabre Jr., Willie Mack vs. Ethan Page, Brian Cage vs. Hammerstone, ACH vs. Mecha Wolf 450 and Brody King vs. Joe Graves. Stan Hansen will also be there...
One of the Indy feds I look forward to watching every week. S01E08 SEASON FINALE - Absolute Wrestling: Uprising
Published on Nov 29, 2017
Tonight's episode features a huge match when Mark Coffey takes on Rampage Brown. Commissioner Brian Flynn also confronts the Forgotten!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62s8wup0CqM
What did I tell you, the catching up to me has begun. ProWrestling.Net is the first. :)
Boom. Always love watching the so called 'bigger news sites' play catch up to me. Really awesome.
https://prowrestling.net/site/2017/11/30/nwa-video-billy-corgan-confronted-jocephus/
https://prowrestling.net/site/2017/11/30/nwa-video-billy-corgan-confronted-jocephus/
Jerry Lawler On Most Difficult WrestleMania Celebrity, Vince McMahon Instructing Commentators
Recently on The Ross Report, 'Good Ol' J.R.' Jim Ross interviewed his former WWE announce partner, Jerry 'The King' Lawler. Among many other things, Lawler talked about the most difficult celebrity guest at WrestleMania. Additionally, Lawler shared a story about confronting WWE Commentator Michael Cole for a less than flattering call.
In Lawler's estimation, Aretha Franklin was the most difficult celebrity to deal with at WrestleMania. 'The King' went on to describe 'The Queen Of Soul' as a royal pain.
"Aretha Franklin is still alive. Remember what a pain in the butt she was at WrestleMania that year? Oh my gosh! Way passed her glory days, but still the biggest diva that we'd ever seen. Very high maintenance, Aretha Franklin."
Also during the podcast, Lawler shared a story about how he chewed out Michael Cole for saying that 'The King' had suffered "anal bleeding" from a slam delivered by Mark Henry. Apparently, Cole told the legend of Memphis pro wrestling that the call was WWE Chairman Vince McMahon's idea.
"We could do a whole show about the things we know that Vince either told [Ross] to say or told Michael Cole to say. The most embarrassing one that I can remember, and later on I went to him and I went, 'what the hell, man?' and he said, 'I swear, Vince told me to say it. I swear. You know I never would have thought about it.' And it was the time Mark Henry picked me up, and I don't know if I was wrestling Mark or what happened, but anyway, he picked me up and slammed me through the announce table and they carried me out or whatever. And then, after the break, he said, 'we want to give you an update on 'The King'. He's not doing too well' and then he says, 'he's suffering from anal bleeding.' So that's when I went to Cole afterwards and said, 'what the hell are you doing.' He said, 'I swear, Vince told me to say it.'"
"Aretha Franklin is still alive. Remember what a pain in the butt she was at WrestleMania that year? Oh my gosh! Way passed her glory days, but still the biggest diva that we'd ever seen. Very high maintenance, Aretha Franklin."
Also during the podcast, Lawler shared a story about how he chewed out Michael Cole for saying that 'The King' had suffered "anal bleeding" from a slam delivered by Mark Henry. Apparently, Cole told the legend of Memphis pro wrestling that the call was WWE Chairman Vince McMahon's idea.
"We could do a whole show about the things we know that Vince either told [Ross] to say or told Michael Cole to say. The most embarrassing one that I can remember, and later on I went to him and I went, 'what the hell, man?' and he said, 'I swear, Vince told me to say it. I swear. You know I never would have thought about it.' And it was the time Mark Henry picked me up, and I don't know if I was wrestling Mark or what happened, but anyway, he picked me up and slammed me through the announce table and they carried me out or whatever. And then, after the break, he said, 'we want to give you an update on 'The King'. He's not doing too well' and then he says, 'he's suffering from anal bleeding.' So that's when I went to Cole afterwards and said, 'what the hell are you doing.' He said, 'I swear, Vince told me to say it.'"
TWO PROMOTIONS ADDED TO IMPACT'S GLOBAL WRESTLING NETWORK
Future Stars Of Wrestling has reached an agreement to join the Global
Wrestling Network. FSW will provide GWN with thousands of hours from its
extensive library, featuring Impact Champion Eli Drake, Matt Hardy, John
Morrison, Kenny King, Reno Scum, Willie Mack, Lance Hoyt, Kevin Kross, Sami
Callihan, Brian Cage along with the many superstars FSW has had come thru its
doors including Ricochet, Rich Swann, AR Fox, Tony Nese, Chris Sabin, Austin
Aries, Keith Lee, Kevin Nash, Chris Masters, Paul London, Brian Kendrick, Davey
Boy Smith Jr, Roderick Strong, ACH, Young Bucks, Trevor Lee, Shane Strickland,
Jeff Cobb, and more. To see more FSW footage go to www.youtube.com/futurestarswrestling.
Defy Wrestling announced that not only will a match between Randy Myers and Sami Callihan from DEFY9 be shown on this week's Impact Wrestling but the Washington state-based promotion will be a part of the Global Wrestling Network.
Defy Wrestling announced that not only will a match between Randy Myers and Sami Callihan from DEFY9 be shown on this week's Impact Wrestling but the Washington state-based promotion will be a part of the Global Wrestling Network.
May have to make Dave Meltzer (Wrestling Observer) look like an idiot again.
The man just can't help himself I guess. Just can't keep from making dumb comments that make him look like a total fool.
The fact he keeps replying to a reader of this blog but has yet to contact me about how stupid I keep making him look? is amazing, LOL.
More on this later tonight.
The fact he keeps replying to a reader of this blog but has yet to contact me about how stupid I keep making him look? is amazing, LOL.
More on this later tonight.
FLOSLAM DEAD
Flosports made the decision today to shutter their Floslam streaming service,
laying off their staff and closing the door on its attempt to become a
destination for professional wrestling fans.
Officially launched in October 2016 and based out of Austin, Texas, Floslam had been designed to become a major streaming subscription content hub with the idea of signing deals with a number of top independent professional wrestling companies and placing them under one umbrella.
Despite announcing in August of 2016 that its parent company Flosports had "received $21.2 million in new funding to accelerate the online sports network’s growth into new sports and expand its existing verticals" from a number of investors, including World Wrestling Entertainment, the attempt to build a Floslam just never clicked.
On paper and from a financial standpoint, the concept should had everything going for it to the point that some expected Floslam would have the backing to change the landscape of pro wrestling. The theory went like this: Floslam would pay a top premium price for indy promotion content and possibly even professional wrestlers (by putting specific wrestler under contract and farming him/her out to Floslam partner promotions.) By doing so, they would drive up the worth of independent wrestling content. In execution, it never really got out of the starting gate.
Despite its best efforts, Flosports were unable to secure deals with Ring of Honor or New Japan Pro Wrestling, both of which would have been major attractions for the service. An attempt to reach a deal with Pro Wrestling Guerrilla (which was never even an option given the way PWG's business model works, as the promotion is set up as a nexus that exists just outside of contractual obligations for various promotions) was equally fruitless. No deals with any of the major lucha groups were signed.
Instead, the service ended up hanging its hat on a seven figure deal with WWNLive, Inc. That deal led to WWN producing five live events per month for the service, becoming its cornerstone. As well documented, that relationship ended just a year into the signed five year agreement with Flosports alleging in a lawsuit that WWN had misled them on how many iPPV buys the company was doing on its own streaming service, leading to WWN being overpaid for their content. Whether Floslam was tricked into wrongly overpaying or not is a matter for the courts to decide, but at the end of the day, they put all their eggs in the WWNLive basket and it didn't pan out. In fact, all the WWNLive deal really accomplished out of the gate was sparking WWE signing deals with PROGRESS and ICW for a potential WWE Network tiered-system that still has yet to launch.
Other promotions, including House of Hardcore, had agreements that saw multiple events streamed live via Floslam before moving on, while others streamed their events as unique, one time specials. While there was great excitement early for the concept of the service among independent promoters, especially when word made the rounds about WWN's seven figure deal, that was greatly tempered when it was obvious the major money went to WWNLive as they were first in line to sign and everyone that followed were getting lesser and lesser deals. In fact, there were a few independent companies that turned their offers down, feeling that locking themselves in to deals that could potentially see them lose access to ROH and other companies' talent wasn't worth the risk, even short-term.
The pricing was an error from day one in my opinion. Priced at $20 a month ot $150 for a year (more than most major streaming services, including Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime AND the WWE Network), Floslam was going to be a hard sell unless it had top, premium talent. Without the major groups signing on, that price point was out of wack with what fans were realistically willing to spend. When the company raised the monthly price to $30 without notice, they likely went past the point of no return when it came to servicing their potential audience. WWE had changed the price point for what fans were willing to pay for top notch, slicky produced pro wrestling content with the WWE Network - how could Floslam realistically expect fans to pay $20-$30 for independent wrestling shows that had no real production value or lighting, despite costing double or triple of the industry leader?
The rollout for the service was, in many ways, completely haphazard one as well, absent of any sort of promotion or marketing plan for the service (for example, PWInsider.com never received ONE press release from Flosports about the service and never once received any email inquiries returned) and featured a confusing rollout that saw Flosports' Roku platform crash depending on what Roku device you would be using, a failure to expand to other streaming device platforms, a basic interface hat made it impossible to easily seek out specific content. Staffing changes in management only helped to fuel a vortex that never allowed the service a chance to even course-correct. They had put a plane in the air without any landing gear and proceeded to then shove the pilots out the door.
None of these made the paid subscription service something that was going to earn positive word of mouth and as noted, there was no major marketing or advertising campaign to create awareness of the service. Whatever buzz and following Floslam had, it was based specifically on whatever buzz there was for that week's WWN and House of Hardcore event, not the other way around. Once out of the gate, other than providing a home for the live streaming events, there was really nothing done to increase the reach of Floslam by Flosports. Not only was the plane in the air doomed, everyone shrugged once they realized it was.
After the lawsuit against WWNLive was filed, Floslam made all of the WWN content free for all (possibly in an attempt to hurt the value of the content elsewhere), all of the streaming content's live events schedule was canceled and in recent weeks, it acted as a site that featured news, columns and podcasts. In what is a completely maddening and unfair turn of events, the staff that was hired to populate Floslam with content was laid off today, despite the fact that none of the deals and none of the fallout of those deals had anything to do with them. To me, that's a completely disgusting situation. I don't know any of the staff that were hired on any level, but these were people who were trying to feed their family with their work and believed they were getting into bed with a legitimate streaming provider that was going to be in business for a long term. They were sought out by Floslam and made the decision to take the plunge. All they did was go to work and in the end, they got screwed over - weeks before Christmas. I feel horrible for them on a personal level, despite having never spoken to any of them. They deserved better than Floslam gave them and everyone involved in the treatment of the staff should be Goddamned ashamed of themselves.
Back in 2016, a few people wrote, "There has been some great excitement within certain circles as to a new money player putting some money into independent wrestling promotion. Over the next week or so, we should have a greater understanding of exactly what this all means and how much, if at all, this will be change the landscape of the independent realm, but it is certainly an interesting development."
At the end of the day, Flosports changed the landscape, but for the worse There were hopes Floslam was going to change the business for the better on the independent scale. Some decreed that was going to happen before the service signed one deal.
Instead, the story of Floslam will just be another story we recount about "what could have been" if the right people had been involved, if the right deals had been made and had they actually tried to make it work instead of spending some money and waiting for everyone to rush to subscribe. Instead, what's left? A lot of money spent, a lawsuit against WWN, a situation with Joey Styles that left him so disgusted he fled pro wrestling for good, missed opportunities that for some promotions may never come back around, goodwill on all sides that has been destroyed and most importantly, a group of wrestling fans who got their hopes up only to have those hopes ruined, disappointing all who cared to invest their time and money on the service.
What's left is yet another big crater of regret in the minefield that is professional wrestling. What's left is a huge trail of doubt and destruction that will no doubt give the next potential big backer reason to give pause before wanting to better professional wrestling on an independent level. That will be the legacy of Floslam, whether anyone involved wants to personally admit it or place the blame on the next person.
Floslam: 2016 - 2017.
Officially launched in October 2016 and based out of Austin, Texas, Floslam had been designed to become a major streaming subscription content hub with the idea of signing deals with a number of top independent professional wrestling companies and placing them under one umbrella.
Despite announcing in August of 2016 that its parent company Flosports had "received $21.2 million in new funding to accelerate the online sports network’s growth into new sports and expand its existing verticals" from a number of investors, including World Wrestling Entertainment, the attempt to build a Floslam just never clicked.
On paper and from a financial standpoint, the concept should had everything going for it to the point that some expected Floslam would have the backing to change the landscape of pro wrestling. The theory went like this: Floslam would pay a top premium price for indy promotion content and possibly even professional wrestlers (by putting specific wrestler under contract and farming him/her out to Floslam partner promotions.) By doing so, they would drive up the worth of independent wrestling content. In execution, it never really got out of the starting gate.
Despite its best efforts, Flosports were unable to secure deals with Ring of Honor or New Japan Pro Wrestling, both of which would have been major attractions for the service. An attempt to reach a deal with Pro Wrestling Guerrilla (which was never even an option given the way PWG's business model works, as the promotion is set up as a nexus that exists just outside of contractual obligations for various promotions) was equally fruitless. No deals with any of the major lucha groups were signed.
Instead, the service ended up hanging its hat on a seven figure deal with WWNLive, Inc. That deal led to WWN producing five live events per month for the service, becoming its cornerstone. As well documented, that relationship ended just a year into the signed five year agreement with Flosports alleging in a lawsuit that WWN had misled them on how many iPPV buys the company was doing on its own streaming service, leading to WWN being overpaid for their content. Whether Floslam was tricked into wrongly overpaying or not is a matter for the courts to decide, but at the end of the day, they put all their eggs in the WWNLive basket and it didn't pan out. In fact, all the WWNLive deal really accomplished out of the gate was sparking WWE signing deals with PROGRESS and ICW for a potential WWE Network tiered-system that still has yet to launch.
Other promotions, including House of Hardcore, had agreements that saw multiple events streamed live via Floslam before moving on, while others streamed their events as unique, one time specials. While there was great excitement early for the concept of the service among independent promoters, especially when word made the rounds about WWN's seven figure deal, that was greatly tempered when it was obvious the major money went to WWNLive as they were first in line to sign and everyone that followed were getting lesser and lesser deals. In fact, there were a few independent companies that turned their offers down, feeling that locking themselves in to deals that could potentially see them lose access to ROH and other companies' talent wasn't worth the risk, even short-term.
The pricing was an error from day one in my opinion. Priced at $20 a month ot $150 for a year (more than most major streaming services, including Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime AND the WWE Network), Floslam was going to be a hard sell unless it had top, premium talent. Without the major groups signing on, that price point was out of wack with what fans were realistically willing to spend. When the company raised the monthly price to $30 without notice, they likely went past the point of no return when it came to servicing their potential audience. WWE had changed the price point for what fans were willing to pay for top notch, slicky produced pro wrestling content with the WWE Network - how could Floslam realistically expect fans to pay $20-$30 for independent wrestling shows that had no real production value or lighting, despite costing double or triple of the industry leader?
The rollout for the service was, in many ways, completely haphazard one as well, absent of any sort of promotion or marketing plan for the service (for example, PWInsider.com never received ONE press release from Flosports about the service and never once received any email inquiries returned) and featured a confusing rollout that saw Flosports' Roku platform crash depending on what Roku device you would be using, a failure to expand to other streaming device platforms, a basic interface hat made it impossible to easily seek out specific content. Staffing changes in management only helped to fuel a vortex that never allowed the service a chance to even course-correct. They had put a plane in the air without any landing gear and proceeded to then shove the pilots out the door.
None of these made the paid subscription service something that was going to earn positive word of mouth and as noted, there was no major marketing or advertising campaign to create awareness of the service. Whatever buzz and following Floslam had, it was based specifically on whatever buzz there was for that week's WWN and House of Hardcore event, not the other way around. Once out of the gate, other than providing a home for the live streaming events, there was really nothing done to increase the reach of Floslam by Flosports. Not only was the plane in the air doomed, everyone shrugged once they realized it was.
After the lawsuit against WWNLive was filed, Floslam made all of the WWN content free for all (possibly in an attempt to hurt the value of the content elsewhere), all of the streaming content's live events schedule was canceled and in recent weeks, it acted as a site that featured news, columns and podcasts. In what is a completely maddening and unfair turn of events, the staff that was hired to populate Floslam with content was laid off today, despite the fact that none of the deals and none of the fallout of those deals had anything to do with them. To me, that's a completely disgusting situation. I don't know any of the staff that were hired on any level, but these were people who were trying to feed their family with their work and believed they were getting into bed with a legitimate streaming provider that was going to be in business for a long term. They were sought out by Floslam and made the decision to take the plunge. All they did was go to work and in the end, they got screwed over - weeks before Christmas. I feel horrible for them on a personal level, despite having never spoken to any of them. They deserved better than Floslam gave them and everyone involved in the treatment of the staff should be Goddamned ashamed of themselves.
Back in 2016, a few people wrote, "There has been some great excitement within certain circles as to a new money player putting some money into independent wrestling promotion. Over the next week or so, we should have a greater understanding of exactly what this all means and how much, if at all, this will be change the landscape of the independent realm, but it is certainly an interesting development."
At the end of the day, Flosports changed the landscape, but for the worse There were hopes Floslam was going to change the business for the better on the independent scale. Some decreed that was going to happen before the service signed one deal.
Instead, the story of Floslam will just be another story we recount about "what could have been" if the right people had been involved, if the right deals had been made and had they actually tried to make it work instead of spending some money and waiting for everyone to rush to subscribe. Instead, what's left? A lot of money spent, a lawsuit against WWN, a situation with Joey Styles that left him so disgusted he fled pro wrestling for good, missed opportunities that for some promotions may never come back around, goodwill on all sides that has been destroyed and most importantly, a group of wrestling fans who got their hopes up only to have those hopes ruined, disappointing all who cared to invest their time and money on the service.
What's left is yet another big crater of regret in the minefield that is professional wrestling. What's left is a huge trail of doubt and destruction that will no doubt give the next potential big backer reason to give pause before wanting to better professional wrestling on an independent level. That will be the legacy of Floslam, whether anyone involved wants to personally admit it or place the blame on the next person.
Floslam: 2016 - 2017.
Watch PWInsider, Torch and the rest play catch up. Jocephus Confronts NWA President William Patrick Corgan (Aka Billy Corgan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iziyfnvmXBw
Published on Nov 29, 2017
This confrontation just occurred between Jocephus and William Patrick Corgan (AKA Billy Corgan - President of the NWA - National Wrestling Alliance) at a music recording session. Tim Storm’s Journey as the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion has been documented via Ten Pounds of Gold including the most recent episode that covered the five day span that Tim defended the title against Nick Aldis and Jocephus.
After the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Title match against Jocephus at Tried N True Pro Wrestling, Jocephus claimed that Tim Storm used some sort foreign substance to rub in his eye.
Earlier today, the NWA announced that Tim Storm would be returning to Championship Wrestling From Hollywood this Sunday for their Milestone event. Upon this news,Jocephus demanded a meeting with the NWA President William Patrick Corgan. Our team was there at Mr. Corgan’s recording session when Jocephus arrived. We present this video to report what happened in this meeting.
Follow the story this Sunday via all of the NWA’s social media channels including http://www.Facebook.com/NWA, http://www.Twitter.com/NWA, http:/www.Instagram.com/NWA and http://www.Youtube.com/NWA.
After the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Title match against Jocephus at Tried N True Pro Wrestling, Jocephus claimed that Tim Storm used some sort foreign substance to rub in his eye.
Earlier today, the NWA announced that Tim Storm would be returning to Championship Wrestling From Hollywood this Sunday for their Milestone event. Upon this news,Jocephus demanded a meeting with the NWA President William Patrick Corgan. Our team was there at Mr. Corgan’s recording session when Jocephus arrived. We present this video to report what happened in this meeting.
Follow the story this Sunday via all of the NWA’s social media channels including http://www.Facebook.com/NWA, http://www.Twitter.com/NWA, http:/www.Instagram.com/NWA and http://www.Youtube.com/NWA.
MAJOR CHANGE WITHIN IMPACT WRESTLING GOING FORWARD
Told you they pretty much had no choice, lol. They angered too many people and in the end looked pathetic, and they know it.
It's not exactly Christmas yet, but all Impact Wrestling talents will soon be receiving a gift from management - the rights to their characters and all everything that goes with them, lock, stock and barrel.
After digging in their heels on the ownership of the Hardys' "Broken Universe" for the last year, Impact Wrestling, under Anthem Media, has made a complete about-face on their position when it comes to ownership of characters. So going forward, all contracted Impact Wrestling talents will be given and retain complete ownership of their intellectual property.
What this means, using EC3 as an example, is that should EC3's deal expire and he decide not to sign a new contract with the company, he would be able take the rights to his name and all the IP associated with it (mannerisms, moves, catchphrases, etc.) to his next destination, whether that be WWE, Ring of Honor or elsewhere.
We are told this week's decision was one made by Ed Nordholm. There is no word yet what sparked the decision, but it opens the door for the company to try and mend fences with fans angered by the company's former stance against the Hardys. Impact management had claimed they owned the "Broken Universe" trademarks and attempted o trademark the associated IP, despite the fact that the IP was essentially worthless without Matt and Jeff Hardy's involvement.
The ongoing back and forth, online and behind the scenes, certainly hurt what momentum came with Anthem taking the company over from Dixie Carter's Impact Ventures LLC and certainly painted Impact in a negative light vs. The Hardys, who have a sizable fan base online.
The move also appears to be made as a way to open things up between the company and its wrestlers in a way that has never been done before by a major, national promotion. It would allow the company to partner with its contracted talents to build characters and intellectual property together, as opposed to Impact claiming ownership of those characters if and when the talents move on at the end of their Impact run.
This would allow Impact to be positioned as a company that is trying to foster talents, not control them. It certainly softens the company's outlook from a moral standpoint and opens a bridge for talents, new and established alike, to use Impact as a blank space where they can work and maintain ownership in what they develop.
In a statement to Sports Illustrated earlier today, Impact Wrestling made it clear they intend to make this IP ownership provision to former talents as well, allowing them to own and utilize their former TNA/Impact Wrestling hallmarks if they choose to do so. Hopefully, that doesn't mean the return of the Johnsons!
It's not exactly Christmas yet, but all Impact Wrestling talents will soon be receiving a gift from management - the rights to their characters and all everything that goes with them, lock, stock and barrel.
After digging in their heels on the ownership of the Hardys' "Broken Universe" for the last year, Impact Wrestling, under Anthem Media, has made a complete about-face on their position when it comes to ownership of characters. So going forward, all contracted Impact Wrestling talents will be given and retain complete ownership of their intellectual property.
What this means, using EC3 as an example, is that should EC3's deal expire and he decide not to sign a new contract with the company, he would be able take the rights to his name and all the IP associated with it (mannerisms, moves, catchphrases, etc.) to his next destination, whether that be WWE, Ring of Honor or elsewhere.
We are told this week's decision was one made by Ed Nordholm. There is no word yet what sparked the decision, but it opens the door for the company to try and mend fences with fans angered by the company's former stance against the Hardys. Impact management had claimed they owned the "Broken Universe" trademarks and attempted o trademark the associated IP, despite the fact that the IP was essentially worthless without Matt and Jeff Hardy's involvement.
The ongoing back and forth, online and behind the scenes, certainly hurt what momentum came with Anthem taking the company over from Dixie Carter's Impact Ventures LLC and certainly painted Impact in a negative light vs. The Hardys, who have a sizable fan base online.
The move also appears to be made as a way to open things up between the company and its wrestlers in a way that has never been done before by a major, national promotion. It would allow the company to partner with its contracted talents to build characters and intellectual property together, as opposed to Impact claiming ownership of those characters if and when the talents move on at the end of their Impact run.
This would allow Impact to be positioned as a company that is trying to foster talents, not control them. It certainly softens the company's outlook from a moral standpoint and opens a bridge for talents, new and established alike, to use Impact as a blank space where they can work and maintain ownership in what they develop.
In a statement to Sports Illustrated earlier today, Impact Wrestling made it clear they intend to make this IP ownership provision to former talents as well, allowing them to own and utilize their former TNA/Impact Wrestling hallmarks if they choose to do so. Hopefully, that doesn't mean the return of the Johnsons!
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