Another Shocking Departure From TNA Wrestling

With then-President Scott D'Amore shockingly fired back in February, TNA Wrestling has now had another major loss in the form of Lou D'Angeli.

As first reported by PWInsider, D'Angeli - who ECW fans may remember as Sign Guy Dudley or Lou E. Dangerously - was part of a round of releases that took place on Thursday. What makes this exit a particularly surprising one, is that D'Angeli served as the Vice President of Marketing for all of Anthem - TNA's parent company - and was one of the highest-ranking officials in TNA.

A meeting took place last week between D'Angeli and Anthem executives, where it was decided by both parties that they would go their separate ways. D'Angeli's assistant, Lily Arenallo, was another who also exited the company, which comes on the heels of RD Evans resigning from his role on the creative team and also the departure of David Sahadi, who was the long-time head of production.

On all of this, Dave Meltzer noted on the latest Wrestling Observer Radio how TNA now "have no marketing team, they have no live events" and don't have any shows booked past the first weekend of August. Meltzer put these departures down to Anthem simply wanting to "spend less" and that the organisation wasn't happy with "whatever the losses were".

Lou D'Angeli's TNA Role

Where Lou D'Angeli is concerned, he played a huge part in the growth of IMPACT/TNA across the past year or more, being involved in the creative and production side of things in addition to his main role of marketing and driving live events. On top of that, D'Angeli was a pivotal player in CM Punk having discussions with TNA, was involved in the company bringing in Naomi/Trinity, and even had talks with Mercedes Moné about her working a rivalry against Mickie James.

From speaking to sources within TNA, PWInsider reports that there was a "fraying" of the relationship between D'Angeli and Anthem in recent months, with one element of this being due to the company's "slow process" when it comes to confirming dates and cities for shows. D'Angeli had purportedly pushed to have TNA move away from the strategy of running the same cities on back-to-back nights, but no changes were made on this front. There were also times when "numerous" scheduling changes were made on dates and locations, with D'Angeli in the position of being questioned about this by talent and staff, but not being able to have any answers for them due to those decisions being made higher up the food chain.

Prior to joining IMPACT/TNA, Lou D'Angeli worked for WWE from 2006 through until 2010, serving as Director of Live Events Promotions and Booking and later Director of Promotions and Event Marketing. He also has experience working as Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the Cirque Du Soleil.