News and Announcements

[Sasuke]

Source: The Wrestling Observer Newsletter

Early projections are that TNA will be "significantly profitable" in 2008. TNA has many revenue streams coming in, including rights fees for iMPACT!, the increase in demand for their talent, the upcoming Midway Video Game, overseas TV rights sales and house shows. With these taken into consideration TNA is expected to turn the corner financially, even with their PPV buy rates being lower than they were.

Panda Energy has not had to put any money into the promotion for over a year, which means that TNA has actually become a self-sufficient company. The feeling is that the company either broke even or made a small profit in 2007.

Jeff Jarrett wants to take the TNA product in a more serious direction, ala the Angle vs. Joe build. Jarrett wants more in ring time and the serious edge, while Vince Russo likes doing more pre-tapes and promos, and adding cute lines to them. Dutch Mantell wants what ever Jeff Jarrett wants.

[Creative Control]

This is great news for TNA has they now have a stronger ability to combat the WWE. I was always in the mindset that once TNA started to turn a significant profit that they would be semi ready to compete with the WWE, with at least ECW or Smackdown. Also, with the rumors of the Smackdown network change this fall there is discussion in returning the promgram back to Thursday nights which would in turn put Smackdown and TNA in competition with one another.

To quote Kevin Sullivan in his DVD of Kayfabecommentaries.com DVD, "Kevin Sullivan and the End of WCW," he says that Vince is only the creative genious when he has competition. So I'm thinking this could only be a good thing for the Wrestling world.