Eric Young comments on the success of TNA Wrestling's recent events, and their partnership with WWE.
Young, who finds himself as the brand new host of AXS TV original series Vinyl Obsession season two, recently sat down with me to chat about his new hosting job and we touched on the latest surrounding TNA Wrestling.
Young has been a huge part of TNA Wrestling's history. Not only is he a former two-time TNA World Champion, he has also held the X-Division Championship (1), TNA Tag Team Championship (4), and several others. He has also been with the promotion for several runs, as early 2004. He left between 2016 and 2020, to work with WWE, then returned back to TNA at Slammiversary 2020.
TNA SELLING OUT LIVE SHOWS
The first TNA topic I brought up with the success the company has been seeing this year, selling out events.
Some of the shows that have sold out this year include: TNA Against All Olds (June 15) TNA Slammiversary (July20), TNA Emergence (Aug 30), TNA Victory Road (Sept 13).
Young credited the promotion for making the right decisions and putting the "right people in the right place" and sticking to what TNA stands for, explaining that TNA is a pro wrestling show, "written and produced for pro wrestling fans."
"I don't think it's something that's happened just recently. It's it's this has been going on for two
or three years, maybe longer, its, you know, doing the right decisions and putting the right people in place and just kind of sticking to what TNA stands for. And TNA is a pro wrestling
show, written, produced and shown to the world for pro wrestling fans in those people's minds,
we have them in mind when they're writing the show, when I'm performing or when they're writing or I'm cutting a promo, I'm thinking about people that consume the show, and those people are pro wrestling fans."
WWE'S PARTNERSHIP WITH TNA WRESTLING
One of the recent occurrences in the pro wrestling world that has both WWE and TNA fans buzzing is the recent partnership between both promotions. We have seen TNA Wrestlers appear on WWE programming including Jordynne Grace at the 2024 Royal Rumble, Joe Hendry, The Rascalz, Frankie Kazarian, Rosemary, and Alex Hammerstone.
Given that Young has worked for both TNA and WWE respectively, I asked him about his thoughts on this recent collaboration. The first thing, Young mentioned is that the partnership is really "good for pro wrestling" because it has fans wondering who will be showing up next on either show. He also believed that so far, we've just seen the beginning of it.
"And I think really that this is just the tip of the iceberg, right? It's cool now, but we're really just seeing the beginning, the genesis of it."
One of the biggest success stories to come out of this partnership so far is Joe Hendry. Hendry did massive numbers for WWE social accounts and YouTube channel, and has since seen his star rise, with fans consistently bringing signs with headshot to almost every WWE show. Young, spoke about how beneficial it was for WWE to have someone like Hendry appear on their show.
"So the thought of, you know, like already we've seen Joe Hendry showing up on NXT that does a lot for them, Joe Hendry is one of the most popular wrestlers in the entire world right now with him showing up on their show adds a legitimacy to their show because it is populated by a lot of young inexperienced people. I've been young and inexperienced, you can't gain experience, by not doing it. but they're learning as they go and having people like Kazarian and even now they had Hammerstone and Jordynne grace showing up several times That only adds to them.Them coming over to us and us being in a partnership. The partnership only adds to our show. And what it does is it has people's interest and it has people talking about what could happen.And the beautiful thing is, is it could happen. It's not just a conversation. It's real.So it's a really cool thing to be part of. It doesn't come to any surprise to me that those guys are in control.And now this is happening. It's a joint it's a joint venture, a joint business agreement that is beneficial to both sides and for it
to not be happening would be foolish. So, yeah, it's great."
You can check out my full interview with Eric Young below.
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