Hard To Kill in January was the official relaunch of the “TNA” rebrand from IMPACT! Wrestling and was a major success on pay-per-view.
Dave Meltzer reported in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that the show drew around 65,000 buys. He wrote,
“TNA Hard to Kill is now at 20,900 on television alone which is remarkable because based on usual trends of television and streaming they would be well over 65,000 buys in total. That would pass the first Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle match as the largest PPV in company history, which is insane considering they are on AXS rather than Spike and the main event was Alex Shelley vs. Moose.
If anything, it showed the short-term value of the TNA name. It appears to be short-term because there’s no increase in TV ratings that followed such a big number. Only 6.1 percent of the homes that purchased Hard to Kill purchased AEW Revolution, so it’s a completely different audience that TNA drew and grew from than the audience that led to AEW doing well above usual for Sting’s last match.”
