TNA Wrestling President, Carlos Silva, discussed various topics with The Sportster, including the marquee brand value of AMC.
Silva said, “AMC is a foundational network from the last 25 years plus. They’re on the first page of everyone’s program guide here in the States, and it’s a network that’s probably in your bucket of the five to seven networks that you watch on a weekly basis.”
On TNA bringing a different value to AMC:
“I think being there on Thursday night, the excitement that they’ve got around having Thursday Night iMPACT! as a foundational show every Thursday, 9:00 to 11:00pm on AMC is going to be, I think, great for AMC. It’s going to be great for us. The audience growth, the exposure, the integrations that we can do around the shows and the talent as well as the promotion. I think it just is going to propel us out of a great 2025 and into a great 2026.”
On the networks’ desire for live programming:
“I think it’s so important right now in the media landscape to have live and to have premieres every single week. I think for us, it was You always want to have a partner that wants you, and you always want the partner to want you. It was a great way to come together, and I think it’s going to create a great marriage.”
On the future of the TNA+ streaming service:
“If you’ve got AMC+, you’ll also be able to watch Impact. There’ll be a library of TNA shows also available on AMC+ so that their viewers can start to go back and get a little bit of the history and then also be able to watch shows if they missed on AMC+. But if you’re a TNA+ subscriber, you’ll also be able to watch Impact on TNA+. I mean, as much as I’d like AMC to be in 100% of the homes in America, it’s not. Nobody is. And so there’s plenty of people that may or may not have AMC, or they may not even have cable. They might only have a broadband connection, and so they could also get it on AMC+ or TNA+.”
On booking a series of live events in Albuquerque:
“It was a little bit of an opportunity to go to a market that we know is a good wrestling market. All of us that are also Breaking Bad fans saying, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. If the AMC deal happens, how cool would that be that we’re going to go to Albuquerque and there might be some things that we could do with the talent being in Albuquerque around Breaking Bad?’ So it was just part of the last three months as we were starting to lay out the 2026 season and the deal was getting close enough that it made sense. If, for some odd reason, the AMC deal didn’t happen, it would still be great to be going to Albuquerque. But now that we’re together, it just is like icing on the cake. So it’ll be fun and exciting, I think, to be in Albuquerque.”
On his appreciation of AMC’s programming:
“I’m a big Walking Dead fan as well. Daryl, I’m a big motorcycle guy, so everything that Daryl’s done with his motorcycle stuff over the years, too, I think has been great. So I mean, those are probably the top two. I mean, look, Better Call Saul was also, to me, a surprisingly amazing show that they took a character who was so interesting and funny and legally devious and just was a great character, and they turned it into a great show. So I think all of them, there’s a bunch of news shows, too, that are out, and we’ll be working together with them.”
On TNA’s future going into 2026:
“I just think it’s going to keep growing. Just thanks for all the positive thoughts in 2025. You helped us to really relaunch TNA to a big platform. I mean, massively great Slammiversary. Great, great Bound For Glory. Sometimes I’ll be walking around, people will pull me aside and say, ‘I love TNA. I’ve been following it for so long. Thank you.’ This has been a great year. And we just hope that the AMC partnership will give back even more because the audience will be bigger, more people will be able to enjoy it. Just stay tuned. It’s going to be a great 2026. It’s going to keep getting bigger.”
