Dutch Mantell recalled asking, “Why don’t we just hang ourselves?” when he learned TNA planned to move Impact to Monday nights opposite WWE Raw.
Speaking on Story Time with Dutch Mantell, the former TNA creative team member said he strongly opposed the decision because the promotion was attempting to compete directly with the industry leader. Eric Bischoff has previously discussed TNA’s decision to challenge Raw on Monday nights.
Mantell recalled his immediate reaction to the move.
When I first heard about it, I said, “Why don’t we just hang ourselves?”
Mantell said TNA had a good wrestling product but was still attempting to compete with the leading company in the industry.
Yeah, I was against it big time because you’re competing with the leader in the industry, and our product wasn’t that much. It was a good product. I think there was a lot of good wrestling, but I don’t think people watch wrestling for the wrestling. They watch to be entertained, I think.
He compared the situation to two football teams in the same city playing in stadiums of significantly different sizes.
So, I think going head-up, it’s almost like you’ve got two pro football teams in a town. The one that’s there goes to the big stadium and you go to the college stadium, head-up to them.
I think you’re going to hurt each other, and we did.
Mantell argued that the move hurt TNA without meaningfully affecting WWE’s audience.
Nothing. I don’t think WWE’s ratings went down particularly very much at all. At times, TNA’s ratings more than halved.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit Story Time with Dutch Mantell, with a h/t to Wrestling Headlines for the transcription.
