— The early estimate for the TNA Lockdown PPV is 17,000 buys. The previous PPV in March, Victory Road, drew a reported 7,000 buys. Lockdown is considered one of TNA’s top three PPVs.
— Dixie Carter recently spoke with the Miami Herald, here are the highlights…
Carter on Ring Ka King: “It’s going good. We’re on a network that the timeslot is probably not best for wrestling, and we’ve had a lot of serious competition. So we knew it was going to be tough going in, but it’s been very well received, and I think there’s a very strong opportunity for Ring Ka King to continue to be seen in India.”
Carter on whether a similar format could work in the UK: “Potentially, but I think England is over-saturated in wrestling. We have a handful of shows there, but WWE has many more than we do. So for such a small territory — even though it’s arguably the second largest television in the world — there’s just already a lot of wrestling programming in that market. In India, it’s not so much, and in other parts of the world, not so much, as well.”
Carter on the new television deal with Spike TV: “When it came down to it, I just said, ‘If we’re going to do this, let’s make it simple, and let’s do it fast,’ and it happened that way. If not, we were going to need to go and do other things. So it was a quick negotiation… There are discussions about [other programming], but we made the decision to keep it out of this deal. We’ve closed this deal and moved forward, and any additional programming that we do would be under a separate arrangement.”
Carter on name recognition: “Spike understands the value of a Bobby Roode and a James Storm and a Bully Ray and an Austin Aries, but some of the networks that don’t have the experience in wrestling, the history and background, those [legends] names do mean a lot.”
