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Ed Nordholm On What Makes GFW Different From WWE

During a recent interview, Anthem’s Ed Nordholm talked about what made GFW and Impact Wrestling different from WWE.

“Our tagline is ‘Less Talk More Action.’ It’s a style of wrestling that focuses more on the action in the ring than in the storylines. Not to take anything away from WWE, that is their product and they obviously do a spectacular job. But we have a very good show with talented wrestlers, athletic wrestlers.”

He also talked about choosing Ottawa to host Bound For Glory over Anthem’s home of Toronto.

“It’s the nation’s capital, it’s a good place to make a statement in our inaugural effort to bring our premier event outside of its traditional home in Orlando. No slight to Toronto … we’ll get there, too, I’m sure, sometime along the way.”

Cody Rhodes Finally Signs With Ring Of Honor

After saying he wasn’t looking to sign any contract with any promotion, it looks like Cody Rhodes will finally be inking a deal with Ring Of Honor. This makes sense, especially since Cody is the current ROH World Champion.

The press release about his signing says (in part):

THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE FINDS A HOME

Cody to sign a contract with Ring of Honor Wrestling

September 23, 2017 – LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – After an incredible run like no other this past year that saw Cody compete all around the world in promotions such as New Japan Pro Wrestling, Impact Wrestling, The Crash, APW, PWA Canada, and Northeast Wrestling just to name a few, The American Nightmare has decided to ink a domestically exclusive contract with Ring of Honor Wrestling, where Cody is currently the World Heavyweight Champion. The official signing of this contract will take place tonight at the ROH Television Tapings at Sam’s Town in Las Vegas and it will air in October.

Just one month ago on Dinner with The King (Jerry Lawler’s Podcast), Cody stated “Ring of Honor hates the fact that I genuinely remained a free agent; I did not sign a contract with them. I signed on for various dates, and I have many dates left with them. I really like Ring of Honor. But I’m not going to be exclusive anywhere. I did exclusive.” After much deliberation, the hottest free agent in professional wrestling has had a change of heart.

When asked about this, Cody said “I grew up in this business, I’ve seen its peaks and valleys…I know we are entering an unprecedented time in pro wrestling/sports entertainment and it’s time to put my flag in the sand. Joe Koff and his team put together such a generous offer…with some non-wrestling projects on the horizon that I hope to announce soon, and the potential of starting a family down the road…it was a perfect fit. Myself, Marty Scurll, Hangman Page, Matt and Nick Jackson…it’s the dream team…like the 1992 dream team. I have several goals in mind for myself and for ROH and I can’t wait to get started.”

The exact terms and length of the deal cannot be disclosed, but it is the most generous offer in Ring of Honor history and Cody will be in an ROH ring for the next several years. Cody will still be able to compete internationally around the world while calling ROH his home base. He will also continue to work with New Japan Pro Wrestling who has a partnership with ROH.

Ring of Honor General Manager Greg Gilleland said, “When Cody first started competing in ROH, we knew we wanted him to be exclusive, but respected his wishes to try out the rest of the industry. Finalizing this deal is another big step in his career and a great step in the continued development of the Ring of Honor brand, delivering the best, real professional wrestling to a rapidly growing and the most passionate fanbase around the world.”

The post Cody Rhodes Signs With Ring Of Honor; Ed Nordholm Talks Impact/WWE Differences appeared first on TopRopePress.com – Wrestling News, WWE News, TNA News, Wrestling Results.

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With all of the rumors swirling around this week about Anthem, Impact Wrestling, and GFW, Ed Nordholm appeared on Wrestling Observer Radio yesterday to address the current situation and where Anthem and GFW go moving forward.

How The Company Will Change Moving Forward

“The good thing that came with Jeff was he brought in some good young guys. Sonjay Dutt and Scott D’Amore, they’re guys that are totally plugged into the independent wrestling scene and the Japanese wrestling scene and the style of wrestling they’re selling today. So frankly, as unfortunate as it is that Jeff’s not available to us right now, his lieutenants are there, they’re excited to have their moment in the sun, they’re going to pick up the ball and run with it, and I think you’ll see a somewhat different style because they’re more tuned into an action-style wrestling and probably a little less talk and a lot more action. But fundamentally as far as the biggest change in the short-term, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself because I’m hopeful that Jeff has not gone long.”

His Goals For The Company

“Well number one, make it profitable. It is a challenging business and candidly, perhaps a little bit more complicated than we realised when we decided to go from being just a broadcast company to being in the content creation business, as hardcore as this is. But we knew coming in that the company had lost a lot of money last year and was losing money when we took it and we didn’t have any misapprehension that just because we put our name on the door that suddenly it was going to be profitable, that it would be a process. It’s been a year, there’s been lots of things, we’re just trying to knock them off, breaking big rocks into little rocks and my objective is at every taping, at every quarter, that we have accomplished something that is moving as closer and closer to a break-even position. And you all know there’s two ways to get there. One is to get more revenue and the other is to have less cost and find the spot in between. We’re obviously needing to grow revenue but there’s no surprises that revenue isn’t going to appear overnight. So that’s a process of rebuilding the brand and rebuilding the audience and the dollars will follow. In the meantime, just looking for ways to incrementally reduce our costs and find more efficient ways to do things, find more interesting ways to do things, and you’ll see that at every taping. We’ll do something a little bit different and we’re just trying things and what’s working and what’s not working and reassess and retool.”

Global Wrestling Network Streaming Service

“Well I think of it as the alternative wrestling network, it has our ambition. We’re obviously a long way to get there. We’ll launch with our own content. We have a nearly 3,000 hour library and of that about 850 hours of it is up, ingested and ready to go. So when we launch next week, there will be about 850-900 hours of Impact content available. But do expect in the very near future to be bringing on our partners as well. It’s not branded as an Impact app because we want it to be a generic place where, whether it be AAA or NOAH or if we can persuade New Japan or anybody, that we can find a place that will have an efficient place for the aggregation of wrestling content that’s not related to the WWE.

Obviously the tentpole is the library we have. It’s a large library and what we also have is, not going to pretend that we have the digital footprint as the main provider of wrestling content in the industry, but we do have a billion views, a million subscriber YouTube channel and a lot of content available as a tentpole piece that others can leverage off. And it should help everybody if we can sort of aggregate ourselves, our audiences across a platform, all boats should rise off that. We look at our TV deal in much the same way. The way I look at Pop TV, I think that’s a great platform for us. We’ve got a national broadcast license that they’re successfully making the transition away from the TV Guide channel and they’re getting themselves into hi-def and they’re getting themselves into OTT applications slowly but surely are increasing their presence and it’s a place where our partners that are working with us, we can all sort of get advantage of that ability to get exposure to a broader audience.”

GWN Platforms, Cost, & Availability

“At launch, it’ll just be the big iOS, Android and web-based application. We’re working our process for Apple TV, Roku and all the other platforms. The app that we are basically building at office is the Fight Network and FNTSY Sports apps that we already have so we know those are pretty broadly distributed into the various platforms but just the process for getting approvals for all that just takes a lot longer. We wanted to get the app out and in phase two we’ll start building it into the conventional smart TVs and other distribution channels.

“It’s $7.99 a month basic subscription, 30 days free. There will be a free tier and a pay wall tier. Most of the content will be in the pay tier. It’s hard to make a business work in the digital world off free stuff, off an ad-based product. There will be stuff available on the free tier but mostly you’ll want to go into the pay tier if you want to see the archive.

“In North America, it will be available in the free tier 10 days after it’s aired on Pop.”

Selling TNA Library To WWE

“I know full well how the WWE Network would monetize the content and what they could pay for the library. Monetizing it there makes no sense for me to sell it for that kind of price. I would rather keep it and put it up on the app and monetize it myself.

That’s the outcome that arises if the decision had been that, “Shit, we don’t want to be in the wrestling business, shutter down and what do we do with that asset on the liquidation sale”. We’re investing in this company, we’re growing it, we know it’s not going to turn around tomorrow. Selling the library is not on our cards.”

The post Ed Nordholm Talks Global Force Wrestling, Jeff Jarrett, Global Wrestling Network, & WWE appeared first on TopRopePress.com – Wrestling News, WWE News, TNA News, Wrestling Results.