According to reports, the overall mood backstage at the TNA Impact! tapings last night in Orlando, FL was said to have been “miserable” as there is reportedly a lot of heat on Dusty Rhodes’ current booking. According to numerous sources at the tapings, there were said to have been a few meetings internally about the current state of the company in recent days. On a side note, some of Rhodes’ recent ideas that included Trytan, The Harris Brothers, Phi-Delta Slam and his pickup truck office were not used on any of the three tapings. After all three tapings had concluded, many workers were said to be in a much better mood after discovering that meetings were taking place to better the situation.
It should be noted that much of the people that work for TNA can be divided into two types of political groups – those who favored when Jeff Jarrett was in charge of booking & how things were up to the Turning Point PPV and those who favor the current direction the company has taken since Dusty Rhodes took over in the creative department. Rhodes will still remain the head of TNA’s creative team and will be given a chance to improve the situation, but many feel it wouldn’t be a big surprise if he was gone very soon. From what is being said, TNA officials were not happy at all with the feedback and early buyrate for the last Destination X PPV (which was considered to be the worst of their three hour PPV events so far) and are making sure that anything that needs to be fixed will happen in a rather quick manner.
AJ Styles vs. Abyss at this point will be headlining the Lockdown PPV on April 24. A stipulation has been added to the match where the winner will challenge Jeff Jarrett for the NWA World Heavyweight Title at the Hard Justice PPV on May 15. Also, all matches on the card will be inside the Six Sides of Steel Cage, but will feature different stipulations.
The word making the rounds at the tapings last night in Orlando last night as well was that a much larger focus will be put back on the X Division wrestlers very soon, including those who hadn’t been used for quite some time. This change looks to coincide with a new decision that performers who are currently under contract with TNA will only be used while those working with nightly deals won’t be. So, this could explain why some of the newer talents from NWA Florida haven’t been used as of late
