10 Worrying Signs From TNA Impact Wrestling's Reboot Episode
8. The Bruce Prichard Promo
Bruce Prichard is having one hell of a year. His podcast (“Something to Wrestle With”) is a regular fixture on the iTunes top 10, and has received more than 3 million downloads since the start of the year. It has quickly become the “must hear” show in the crowded wrestling podcast market, and its success has allowed Bruce to parlay his podcast into a televised role with Impact Wrestling.
As Impact’s new on-air authority figure, Prichard was involved in one of the evening’s most problematic segments. He spent the first minute shamelessly shilling his podcast and website, then exasperated Impact’s image problem by needlessly diving into his lengthy WWE tenure: Name-dropping The Rock Steve Austin, and John Cena, Prichard put over wrestlers who will never work for the company, further emphasising Impact’s lowly position in the market.
Bobby Lashley and Alberto El Patron eventually came-out to set the night’s main event up, but Prichard’s opening diatribe was a shambles. This wasn’t the “fresh start” promo management hoped it would be: it was a complete waste of airtime, all for the sake of booking a match that could’ve been announced beforehand. More than anything else, this felt like a desperate attempt at bridging the gap between Bruce’s podcast audience at the TNA viewership.