IMPACT Stars Talk About AXS TV Premiere, Criticize WWE Booking

IMPACT Wrestling makes its debut on AXS Television later this evening, marking a huge step for a promotion that was in peril on multiple occasions, but continued to defy the odds and fight its way into a prime network slot. Forbes recently interviewed VP Scott D’amore, commentator Josh Matthews, and Knockouts champion Taya Valkyrie to hype tonight’s show. Check out their highlights below, which include criticism of recent WWE booking.

Scott D’Amore on Hell in a Cell 2019 finish, and how IMPACT used to book that way:

You’ve gotta know when to lead and when to follow as that goes, and just try to do things that don’t insult the fan’s intelligence. I think this company (IMPACT Wrestling/TNA), unfortunately in regimes past, had a tendency to do that and it is easy to sort of fall off the track as you saw [at WWE Hell in a Cell]. You know, it’s easy to have an old man that’s out of touch go ‘yeah, yeah it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine…’ because it’s always fine. That’s how it works there. It’s like, ‘it’ll be fine—yeah, they complain, but they’ll never stop watching.

Josh Matthews talks WWE’s disorganization:

It’s just not fair to just change the rules completely, right?” said Mathews, who spent years commentating for WWE.

“Like, that used to happen to me on a nightly basis during the show. Sometimes things happen and sometimes they don’t. It’s like watching this football game (points to the large TV screen as the New England Patriots were pummeling the overmatched New York Giants on Thursday Night Football), and if they get to the five-yard line the referee said that’s a touchdown.

Taya Valkyrie on Johnny Impact (Morrison) possibly re-signing with WWE:

I mean, we don’t really talk [about potentially working for two different promotions.] We’re together all the time and I’ve never—in the almost four years that we’ve been together—there’s never been an argument or problem or like a lack of finding time for each other.

Even though we’ve worked together a lot of that time, part of that time—when we first started for example—I was living in Mexico. We were traveling back and forth and we made it work and no matter where he goes on his next step of his journey and his professional wrestling career, it’s going to be okay because we love each other, support each other and I know he’s got my back, I’ve got his back and it’s just part of life.