Earlier this month, Anthem announced that Scott D’Amore had been ousted as the TNA President. Anthony Cicione assumed the role, upsetting a lot of talent.
On a recent edition of the “Busted Open Radio” podcast, former TNA World Champion Alex Shelley weighed in on D’Amore’s shocking exit from TNA.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On D’Amore’s firing: “I’m glad you’re getting to this early, because it’s kind of the elephant in the room to be honest with you. I’ve been at TNA for about 20 years, give or take. I stepped away for NJPW, I was under contract to Ring Of Honor. When we were told about Scott D’Amore leaving the company, I think probably because I’m at the point of being an elder statesman even though I’m only 40 — in TNA, a lot of people came to me and they were very upset and understandably so. Because this isn’t just a change in management, this isn’t just a new booker being appointed and the old one leaving. This is people who’ve had more of a traumatic loss. What they lost was a paternal figure, they lost a coach, they lost a mentor, they lost somebody that they’ve know since they were a teenager.
“The difference is that when you’re around this industry long enough, and I feel comfortable saying this, you get used to this or you’ve seen it before. I think this is probably the sixth or seventh time in pro wrestling I’ve seen the booker or whoever’s in charge upended and taken out of that position. It’s the third time I’ve seen it in terms of outside of wrestling, it happened to me when I was in the workforce in physical therapy too and I kind of look at it from that standpoint as well. Because we lost somebody who wasn’t just the booker, he was in charge of a lot of the administration work and the logistics as well, he’s gone. Scott wore both of those hats.”
On speaking to the TNA locker room about it: “I also had to express to people that often times, the worst case scenario looks like this. It looks like whoever’s in charge is out, somebody else is in, and with that come their crew and the people they trust, and I don’t ever hate on anybody for that. But often, you’d see half of the locker room cut off and you’d never see these guys again. That’s not what’s happening here. I tried to express to everybody in our locker room who came to me for perspective that ‘Scott aimed the gun, but you were the bullet. This is ours, this is hard work. Yeah, we trusted him and he was there for us in so many ways, but you got in the ring and wrestled. It was you, you did this, so try to remember that this is your legacy too.’
“I think when they get that bit of information, they start to think on that like, ‘You know what, you’re right. This is something we created, of course we didn’t do it alone.’ As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that nobody is successful by themselves, you just aren’t, right? Certainly not in pro wrestling. But at the same time, don’t diminish what you did and everybody in that locker room, at least for the past two years since I’ve been back, they were the ones that brought TNA back too. So, Scott’s gone, that happened. We move forward and we deal with this because looking back on it at this point does anybody any good.”
