TNA: Changing Perception “One Journalist at a Time”

Former TNA President Scott D’Amore was recently interviewed by Chris Van Vliet about his time with the company.

During the interview, Chris Van Vliet suggested that for 20 years, everyone had been rooting for TNA, but D'Amore quickly corrected him. Reflecting on his return to the company in 2017, D'Amore stated, "Nobody had good feelings towards Impact or TNA at that time... it was bad." He emphasised that one of their primary goals was to actively change that negative perception.

Watch at: 28:30

Scott D'Amore explained that altering the perception of Impact / TNA first required changing how the media viewed the company. "At one point, we realised that nine out of ten articles about us were negative. We thought, okay, how do we fix this? I sat down one-on-one with journalists and asked them, 'Are you just never going to give us a chance?'"

He continued, "We did a whole media run, primarily in the UK, understanding that it would be a long process. Initially, we talked about winning over fans one at a time, but after that media tour, we realised it wasn't just about fans—it was about winning over journalists one at a time. We had to individually turn the media's perspective to get them to give us a fair shot."

And that's exactly what they did. TNA has long had super strong UK representation, and today, TNA Wrestling's reputation is the strongest it has been in a very long time.