TNA Roster's Backstage Reaction To AMC Debut Episode Revealed (TNA News)
TNA management and wrestlers remain torn on Impact's first AMC episode.
Both Fightful Select and The Wrestling Observer report that "most" backstage at TNA "understood [Impact's AMC debut] wasn’t a good show" last week. The company's bow on a new station saw Mike Santana beat Frankie Kazarian to become brand new TNA World Champion, as well as debuts for ex-WWE stars Daria Rae (Sonya Deville) and Elayna Black (Cora Jade).
General fan reaction to Impact hasn't been super strong on social media. It appears that some behind the scenes share that opinion, but a few did tell Fightful that "others will publicly claim it was the kind of show they ‘needed’ to do" early on.
It's worth saying that reaction to this past weekend's Genesis pay-per-view has been much more positive, both critically and internally at TNA.
However, frostiness related to the negative response for Impact has been explained away by officials due to several challenges they had to face ahead of time. This wasn't included in Fightful's write up, but that's likely tied to visa issues for workers like Leon Slater and Dani Luna - neither was able to appear as expected.
In fact, Slater showed up on WWE SmackDown over in London, England on Friday night instead.
Observer chief Dave Meltzer called the debut episode a poor rebirth for the brand. He specifically mentioned the live crowd, and defended them by saying: "The crowd started out hot, but they weren’t given much until the main event". On the show overall, Meltzer added: "It mostly felt like WWE retreads with no direction at all, and no strong promos".
The beauty of weekly TV is that TNA will get to try again...and again!