GFW/Impact In Dire Financial Straits; Will Anthem Sell To WWE?

It’s gone from bad to worse for Global Force Wrestling/Impact Wrestling. Again.

On Tuesday, GFW announced that Chief Creative Officer Jeff Jarrett is taking an indefinite leave of absence in order to deal with personal issues. According to a report from F4W Online, GFW had been experiencing professional problems with Jarrett for months. However, the breaking point came at this year’s TripleMania event:

Jarrett was said to be not in shape for wrestling and stumbled down the ring steps (although, he wasn’t the only person on the show who had trouble with the steps), doing little wrestling in his match. Ed Nordholm, Executive Vice President of Anthem Sports & Entertainment, was on the trip and made the call to remove Jarrett.

But if Jarrett’s behavior isn’t bad enough, the company is also reportedly “hemorrhaging funds.” And according to sources knowledgeable of the situation, Anthem Sports & Entertainment – which acquired majority interest in Impact Wrestling in January and purchased Jarrett’s GFW in June – is ready to withdraw from the pro wrestling industry and sell GFW.

However, despite the financial woes of GFW/Impact, Anthem has an ace up their sleeve: an extensive and valuable tape library that could mean a lot to WWE.

WWE tops the list of potential suitors, as the tape library is extremely valuable. A number of WWE’s top stars, including AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, and Bobby Roode, as well as Raw GM Kurt Angle, all produced some incredibly compelling work in TNA. If the company were ever to pursue Ring of Honor’s Jay Lethal, he also has entertaining work from TNA with his Randy Savage-inspired “Black Machismo” character, as well as his Ric Flair impersonation.

But WWE stands to gain far more than just oodles of new content for the WWE Network. If they opt to purchase GFW/Impact, they would also gain the intellectual property rights to Matt Hardy’s “Broken Universe.”

It’s hard to understate how big of a get that intellectual property would be for WWE. The “Final Deletion” episode of Impact, which aired in July 2016, gave TNA its highest ratings in more than a year. Could you imagine what Broken Matt Hardy could accomplish if he was given a platform as big as WWE?

With Jeff Jarrett out of the picture, I say it’s high time WWE swooped in and put Impact out of its misery once and for all.

What do you think of Impact/GFW’s never ending problems? Do you think WWE should purchase the company? Share your comments below!