TNA Executive On Bound For Glory 2015, GFW, Awesome Kong’s Status, TNA Branding, Live Events, More

– TNA Executive Bob Ryder answered fan questions on the TNA Mecca website this week. You can see all of Ryder’s comments at this link. Below are highlights:

Why Chief Strategy Officer Eric Sherman was hired:

Help in all areas. He will develop a strategy to include branding, where our programming should air, live event strategy, etc.

A possible developmental system:

We are looking for new talent. Not sure how we are going to go about it, but we are going to have more new talent very soon.

Has Awesome Kong been injured:

She is a little smaller having lost some weight, and has had back issues, but she has done a great job for us this run.

If TNA will put out more merchandise:

Working on that. Hope next year is a better one from that standpoint.

Possibly working with ROH:

We have had talks at various times to see if ROH would want to do business with us. They weren’t interested at the time. Maybe we should get aggressive and go after some of their unsigned talent? That would be interesting.

Jeff Hardy’s status:

I think he has several weeks of recovery. Don’t want to rush back from that kind of injury.

TNA running live events:

We are starting back with 3 in September. We have Bound For Glory in October and may add shows the same weekend. May have an international tour in November (waiting on building avail), and could add December shows.

GFW’s future:

Tough to start a new company these days. Will be interesting to see how the tv taping goes.

Will TNA ever take one identity?

Biggest problem we have had in recent years and one I have spoken up about internally. We have done a very poor job of branding ourselves.

Bound For Glory 2015:

Yes. We have a date set for Bound For Glory and an announcement should come soon. Firming up location before announcing.

Bound For Glory is not scheduled for Orlando. Firming up building agreements and announcement soon.