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Scott D'Amore On His TNA Departure, WWE & AEW Partnership, Kazuchika Okada, Maple Leaf Pro
Scott D'Amore (@ScottDAmore) is a retired professional wrestler and onscreen authority figure. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Detroit to talk about his time at TNA and his exit from the promotion, how he found out that he would be leaving, turning the brand around following previous fan backlash, making things right with Kazuchika Okada, Jordynne Grace and Joe Hendry appearing on WWE TV, his upcoming work with Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling, the first time he saw Petey Williams execute the Canadian Destroyer and more.
Quote I'm thinking about: "...if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." Excerpt from "The Man In The Arena" - Theodore Roosevelt
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"That was our hope, right? I think Jimmy Jacobs was a big one spearheading it. Look, I enjoy banter with talent, we could have some fun. My thing was, if we're going to do it, I didn't want to be Jack Tunney and I didn't want to be like Vince McMahon. So I wanted to be more tongue in cheek, I wanted to have fun with it. The whole thing, if you go and you look at the things I did, I'm really a jerk. In a lot of ways the character throughout, especially through the first few years, near the end was more hey, here's an announcement, we're going to do this, rah rah, especially as we start heading into the TNA stuff. But when I went on TV for impact, it really was like, Hey, we got to get this out. Cool. But then I was like, Oh, I can just stick it to people. And if you watch it, really the only thing that's consistent is whether I'm talking to a babyface or a heel, I'm probably sticking it to them. It's the old, oh, I leave, but I come back to say ‘Oh, and by the way…’ So our thing was if you come to me for something, it's almost like the saying well Be careful when you make a deal with the devil, because I'm going to give you what you want, but I'm going to give it to you in the least advantageous way for you. I sit there and look at the stuff we did with Heath, I'm literally just stopping this guy. Why? Why would anybody dig their heels in this deep on this guy wanting to work for you? Here's a guy who has star power, who's been in WWE, who's literally showing up and trying to sneak into the building. He wants to do anything, he wants a job. And I'm like, Nope, can't have it, sorry. But to tell stories, you have to take some liberties. We just thought that was a fun one, and it led to the whole thing with Heath trying to get a job and his campaign. And has anyone ever used cameos in a more entertaining way than we did? I never thought I would be listening to a Flava Flav promo on a wrestling show with him heeling him to do something."
"One of them's a contract signing. And I'm like, Guys, I hate contract signings, so then they would have to talk me into doing them right. Because, again, I just never wanted to do the mundane stuff of being an authority figure. I really didn't want to be on TV that much because I wanted to focus on the behind-the-scenes. But I also have an ego like everybody else, and I enjoy the fun of doing it. But it was really more I tried to be like, Guys, you figure out where we need me, and then we'll debate on how strongly [I’m needed]. I had such a good team there through the years. Whether it was originally when Don Callis was there, and Abyss and Sonjay Dutt, and then those guys move on. Tommy Dreamer and Jimmy Jacobs, who I've known since he was 15 years old probably, just so smart and so good. Then Robert Evans, who I hadn't known at all, but when Sonjay left. I'm in that room at one point, and I've got Jimmy Jacobs, who I've known since he was 14-15, watched him literally grow up from a child to an adult and, you know, and it's such an amazing wrestling mind. I've got Sonjay Dutt, who we joke, I hired him still when he was a teenager. I've got those two guys have known forever. Then I'd have the Dons or the Tommys or the Abysses I've known forever. Then bringing in Robert Evans was like, Oh, this is weird. I'm sitting in a room with someone I don't know. And he was such a great addition. And he brought a little something different to it, which I always thought was great. So I'm very grateful for the team that I was able to work with while I was there, and that's just on the creative side. There's, so many. I could eat up this whole interview talking about the young, unsung heroes behind the scenes that do so much and did so much to make that company go."
"The funny thing is, obviously not the choice of how I wanted things to play out. Took me by [surprise a bit]. I can't say I was shocked when it actually happened, because I could see the process playing out where we weren't quite on the same page on things. And as I said on Busted Open, I found out two days before Hard to Kill."
"I mean, first of all, Len Asper could have not told me that night. But I knew by that night, I already knew. It was like, okay, I told him you and me are having a conversation, and we had an honest conversation. I said, Look, I disagree with it, I don't like it, but it's your decision to make. And I said, this is what I'll do. I'll get on that plane tonight and go to Las Vegas. I will make sure that we have two amazing kick ass shows in Las Vegas, lockdown with the team. I'll make sure that we go into Orlando and we get you out four TVs so that you're in a position, because you're going to have a lot to deal with. And this way, at least, you're going to have five weeks in the can from when I walk out that door at the end of Orlando, and that was my goal, right? Just going to finish up those shows in Orlando, walk out there and then just either walk off into the sunset or like the old monster movie, like where Godzilla just slowly goes back into the water and disappears, lonely and depressed. It's going to be one of those things."
"A combination of both. Look, it was certainly melancholy, and the hardest part for me was telling people. Part of me wanted to tell everybody, which isn't possible, and part of my conversations with Anthem was there's some people I have to tell that deserve to hear this from me. So I took a small group of people there, and that last day in Orlando, I kind of went around and told a handful and said, you can't say anything, this is what's happening. Then I left there, I went back to my hotel room, a couple of people came by and this was the hardest part. I would tell people and they cry, and when they cry, I cry. I got to my room and almost like, okay, like, here we are. Then a talent reached out and said, Hey, there's a couple who want to come see me. And I was like, Sure. I opened the door, they tear up. I was like, Okay, I can't do this, just being around people, I've got a lot to process, and I didn't process it, this is how I'm built, there's something to do. So when we had that call on that Thursday night before, Hard to Kill okay, this sucks, not happy, but this is the mission, and you have to complete it. And I was almost like if I'm going to go out, if this is going to be the last thing that anybody ever sees, it's going to be one of the best things they ever see. Handling this rebranding was very important to me. I fought for this rebranding. There were a lot of people like, I would have rebranded at TNA day one, except I was told, coming in, we can't rebrand. And we had a conversation. When you look at the history, TNA to Impact, TNA to GFW to Impact… and it's like, Hey guys, let's change the name. It wouldn't work. But how can I nicely say I put my heart and soul into the Impact brand, but only because, to me, it was still TNA."
"I mean, I don't know if I did the greatest job at not taking it personally. I compartmentalized it. There was a lot of anger, and there's a lot of hurt. I tried to offset by saying, look, there was nobody sitting there at a corporate level at Anthem who was going, Hey, let's do something bad to Scott D'Amore. They were making decisions that they thought were right, and I can agree with them or disagree with them on that, but that doesn't change."
"Yeah, and I appreciated it, it was touching. I also knew when there's people saying, hey, like, the talent's gonna walk out. Guys, I've been here, that's, it's not happening like everybody's upset, and they're gonna be upset for a bit, and I said, and they're scared."
"I presented it to them. I actually sent it to them the day that the Jericho Cruise was leaving. I know because I wanted to get it out before going on that cruise, because then I don't know how [the Wi-Fi was]. I was on the first Jericho cruise, and Wi-Fi was really rough on the first one. And people said, no, no, it's better, but I don't want to be trying to do business on the Jericho Cruise. So got the offer out then and then waited for the process to play out for them to say yes, no, or come back and negotiate. And ultimately, it wasn't something that they were looking at, we weren't going to come to a deal."
"By the time we announced the TNA announcement, that's at Bound for Glory. I'm jazzed about what we're doing, but I also know on the corporate side, like we're we've got a couple of things where I'm not overly thrilled. The funny thing was, there was no promo. And the most ironic thing is, of all people, the person who said, somebody needs to say something here was Lance Storm. He was the producer of the segment. And that was just kind of like, Hey, we're going to air this video, and then we're going to come up and the talent's going to be in the ring. Then Lance is like, I think somebody needs to say something. We talked about it for a little bit, and it was Lance, myself, Lou D'Angeli was there, and there was one other person. Lance is like, I think it should be you. I looked and Lou kind of like, and I was like, Okay. I said, I'll say something, and then we did that. That was impromptu. I mean, I had no idea what I was going to say, I was so concerned about so much time and effort went into that reveal video, crafting that, and keeping it a secret, and the whole thing that it was like, let's get through that. Then it's just lights come up, the crowd's going to cheer and chant TNA. Okay, sure, I'll thank the people, or whatever. So I might have been a little jazzed up."
"I think that era [Hogan and Bsichoff] was part of it, and then the era that came after it. Then there was a period where people weren't getting paid and the whole thing. Look, whatever led to it, there was a lot of people on camera and behind it that were very bitter and didn't have kind feelings towards TNA or Impact. So one of the things we had to do was go out there and change that perception, and we worked really hard on it. It was changing the media perception, because you can't change the perspective. We sat there one time and looked at it, 9 out of 10 articles about something we did, something we thought was decent, 9 out of 10 articles were negative. And we're like, Okay, well, how do we fix this? It got to the point where, literally, I sat down one-on-one with some journalists, and said, okay, are you just never going to give us a chance? I get it. This company has mistreated you, lied to you or betrayed your trust in whatever sense. If your position is that you're just never going to give us a chance on anything, even if we do everything right, you're still going to find a way to write it with a negative spin then just say that's what you're going to do. Don't pretend you're a journalist, all I'm asking is give us a chance. I'm not even guaranteeing you we won't screw up, you might end up hating us, but you have to give us a chance, or don't be a reporter. If we do something bad, say it, no problem. But maybe, just maybe give us credit, even begrudgingly, for something we do."
"You saying we suck isn't going to help it. Truthfully I think, and look, we did a whole media run, mainly in the UK, right after we took over, and we literally talked about it. We knew it was going to be a long process, we talked about it one fan at a time. And then we came out of that media tour, and I turned to Don and Ed, and I go, this isn't even just one fan at a time, we've gotta individually turn media to get them to just give us [a chance]. I honest to God don't know what happened in those years to but there was some people who report wrestling, who they just say, Hey, Scott, I like you, I hate Impact, or they call it TNA, I hate TNA. Okay, so can we change that? To go from that to that Bound for Glory with Will Ospreay there, and those great shows in Chicago and that TNA announcement, and getting that out there, and then being able to build in a period of time where we weren't really running a lot of shows. You don't build to a major premium live event by not running shows. But we managed to do it. We built enough about the return of TNA to get it there. And then I thought we delivered at Hard to Kill."
"I thought we delivered at Snake Eyes. Getting Okada there to me, it's kind of, I mean, ironic and kind of cute, in a sense that getting Okada there was the last thing on my list of things about changing the narrative about TNA Impact. Right away before it was even public I flew to Japan, we met with New Japan officials about trying to mend that relationship, because that relationship that was built when I was there booking. It was Mike Tenay, Jeremy Borash, that team and myself. First it was All Japan. We switched to New Japan. We had that continued on for years. Even the Global Force thing, I've had a great relationship there for years. And it's like to be told, Scott, we like you, you're a friend, but we hate TNA, and we can't do business. We're in Japan. We talked to them, and it took a lot, we have to be able to do something. Ring of Honor had its [issues], and probably rightfully so, for some of the things TNA had done to Ring of Honor over the years. Ring of Honor wanted nothing to do with it. We met with Joe Coff and Delirious, and said, Hey, we're here now, and we want this to be different, and that wasn't different. And the New Japan one, it took a while, right? I think you start looking at it, I think we get into just pre-COVID when we start seeing some cracks. We had to show New Japan we're different. I think as we started doing that then okay, now the New Japan people say, Oh, well, New Japan hates them. Okay, well, now New Japan doesn't hate them. So now the product's good, can't say the product's not good. The shows are doing decently. Well, New Japan's okay with him, but Okada hates him. He'll never wrestle for him. Geez. So then it's like, okay, we've gotta have Okada. To me, to have Okada there as a statement, TNA is back, and here on our first weekend, here's the one guy who everybody said no matter what you do, this guy will never [come back], and God bless him too, the whole thing. Just kissing the TNA logo and everything else. He had a lot of fun with it, and I appreciated it. To me, that was like, okay, we're not where I want to be in the sense that I don't like that I'm two weeks away from walking out the door, but I've checked off everything on my list. Got Okada here, TNA is back, and there's buzz. People bought the pay-per-view, some people say a record number, which is mind-blowing. Will and Josh had that unbelievable match. And again, that promo, was impromptu. Those guys, you know, had an amazing match, but went three minutes short."
"We saw things differently as far as how we wanted to proceed. So I think partially, they just wanted their guys in charge. And I mean, I had a good seven years with those guys, but I'm not an Anthem guy. I don't sit in that Toronto office. I have my thoughts, and you could say it's my ego. I just don't think it was the right move, and I don't begrudge them. They're doing their thing. They're still going, and they're going to run that company. I always say that everything is bigger than one person, even me. If I'm gone tomorrow, things will still go on."
"Maple Leaf wrestling is just so uniquely Canadian and was so cool. I'm of the age where I saw the very tail end of it. To me, Maple Leaf wrestling growing up was WWF wrestling. Because they took over in 84 I'm 10 years old. Did I see Maple Leaf wrestling pre-WWF? A little."
"We've got the two shows in October, which I think is going to be a great kickoff, and then I think it's what happens in 2025. We come out of there from October, we do a couple things later in the year. We'll have an announcement, I think by October of some things for next year. But what we're looking to do, Maple Leaf Wrestling was unique in the sense that, and it's very much in line with 2024 because if you go back and look at the history of Maple Leaf wrestling, pre-WWF, WWE, it was like neutral ground. Even back when the territories played nice, they all had their own alliances. Toronto, Maple Leaf Gardens is one of the few places you might see Nick Bockwinkel or Verne Gagne defend the AWA title, and the same card that you see Harley Race or Terry Funk or Lou Thesz defend the NWA World Title, then you might even have Bruno or Bob Backlund come in as the WWWF World Champion. They all wrestled at Maple Leaf Gardens. If you looked at arenas that you wanted to wrestle in back in the 50s, 60s, 70s and into the 80s, there’s Madison Square Gardens, but after that I don't know if there's a place that was more sought after to wrestle in than Maple Leaf Gardens. It's where Bruno Sammartino went when he had his problems and couldn't wrestle in New York. It's where Sweet Daddy Siki set up his home base. When the racial intolerance of him having the nerve to be married to a white woman started ruining his career in some places. He came to Toronto and he's like wait, I can walk down the street with my wife and the person I work for isn't mad at me because I had the nerve to marry somebody who has a different tone of skin? I think we can celebrate that. I want to tell some of those stories, because I think there's some amazing stories of cultural significance for Canadians and connect with people in general. I always say, we talked about my father immigrating here, my uncle immigrated here at the same time. My uncle would say, we didn't have a TV, but if we were somewhere where you could watch a TV, he goes, ‘We didn't understand anything. We couldn't understand a talk show, or we couldn't watch a TV drama or something and know what was going on, we just didn't grasp English. But you turn on wrestling and maybe we don't get the nuance of the things. But I see this guy, he's good. This guy, he's bad. I know the BS, but my doctors say don't get upset. But you know what I watch, and you know they do the thing with a two guy versus the two guy, and these are two guy, keep a cheat behind the referee.’ And I'm going, Oh, this is why your doctor told you you can't watch this. But his whole thing was that's why you look at it and you could understand it. Then the other thing about wrestling is if you're an Italian immigrant, you've got Bruno or Dominic Denucci or Tony Parisi. If you're an immigrant of Latino or Hispanic descent, maybe you've got Pedro Morales, or Tito Santana, whoever you've got. If you’re African American, then you've got Thunderbolt Patterson. You've got Sweet Daddy Siki, you got Tiger Jeet Singh, you have all of these things. Has wrestling historically done representation right all the time? Well, clearly, absolutely not. But it was a place where you could look and say hey, there's something I see myself in and something I can connect with."
"Well we've got Kushida there from New Japan, and from TNA. We just announced that Takeshita is going to be there. The guy's just lighting it up in the G1, he's maybe the hottest wrestler in the world arguably when it comes to match quality right now, and having him come there gives us that AEW representation. We've got Kevin Knight, who's an amazing young talent from New Japan. We just announced earlier this week that ELP, who just had that five star with Takeshita in the G1, he's going to be there. So I think it's really cool. We've got a few people from New Japan. We got a few people from TNA, we’ll have multiple people from AEW. Then we've got the best of the best Canadians like Trevor Lee, who had some time in Impact, went on to Cameron Grimes in WWE, we've got an amazing group of talent together. So, I think that the matches that night are going to be as good as any pay-per-view. I said it over and over again when I was with TNA, with Impact, for these pay-per-views we don't take it lightly. I never take it lightly. I would say that people have to reach in their pocket and pay to watch this in a world where you can get so much on your TV, on your tablet, on your cell phone for free. When people invest in you with money and also their time. Because time's the most valuable commodity we have. So if you're going to sit out and say not only I'm going to both pay to watch this and I'm going to block out my entire evening to spend with your product we want to deliver and make sure that people get their money's worth. So I think people see this card come together and say, Okay, this is a card that I want to see. This is two nights of wrestling that I want to be part of. And I think we have one of the very best, indisputably the best combat sports cross genre announcer, because Mauro Ranallo has agreed to be the voice of Maple Leaf Pro."
"I mean, he's the man. And Mauro has got a passion for wrestling. I met Mauro probably close to 25 years ago in Stampede Wrestling. I was coming in as a heel to feud with Sabu. And he was the 20-21-year-old kid who was doing the play-by-play with Bad News Brown, and we connected then over the years. He loves wrestling. He's the best. You turned on Showtime for any big boxing fight, or you turned on to watch a lot of the big MMA fights with Pride and everything, Mauro is that voice."
"I reached out to somebody at WWE. I talked to Ed Nordholm, Chief Corporate Officer at Anthem, and said I was thinking this. I was talking to a friend and I think the timing's right to reach out. So I reached out to a friend of mine there and said, Hey, this is what I'm thinking, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, I think it all makes sense. We talked for a little bit and they said, how are you going to handle it? I said, Well if you're willing, I would like you to be the person to take it forward and see if there's any interest. I kind of laid out, not a formal proposal. Talked about a little bit, shot something, this is worth having a conversation. I got a text from Triple H, and we set up, had a chat, kind of just said, Hey, it's a whole new world out there. Let's explore things. I think if you look at what WWE and the direction it's been going with with Paul and Nick at the helm. I think you see a lot of changes. I think you see a lot of business being done differently. You would not see this TNA collaboration that I'm proud to have been part of starting go the way it has, the way you've seen it. You wouldn't see AJ Styles over in NOAH wrestling, Marafuji or any of this stuff. It's just such an obvious [thing] that with the changing of the guard, there's been a changing of philosophies on how things should be. So that's really just how it started, then it went from there and it was very much a hey man, we're open. It's a different, different time."
"I'm honored to be part of that and I can look at it and smile. Look, here's Joe Hendry. Joe grabbed me one day and he goes Scott, Did I ever tell you why I chose to come to Impact? And I'm thinking, damn it, he probably did and I don't remember. I was like, I don't think so. And he told me a story. First, he told me a story about he was someplace else and his music was playing, it's like, okay, here I am and it was a big moment. His music has a spot where he comes out and somebody pushed him and said, Go! They pushed him out before it was the moment. He's kind of like, these guys don't get me. Then he goes in that moment as I went to the ring I thought of an interview you did in the UK years ago, I think it was like 2018 19, long before he ended up coming, because he ended up going to Ring of Honor. He goes, you did an interview and they asked you a question about future World Champions, you mentioned Moose, Josh Alexander and Joe Hendry. I was like, oh, so glad I did that. He goes, I heard that, and I was like there's a guy who gets me. He didn't come then, but then when he became free again, he's like, okay, maybe there's more money for me somewhere else, but right now, I want to go somewhere where there's people that that get me, and let me be clear, it's not like I was the only one. But he told me that's the type of stuff that that really makes me feel good. The fact that he gambled on coming to us at Impact, to TNA, because he trusted us that we would handle him right. I think we have and he's obviously delivered. Those type of things make me happy. Having reached out to Jordynne when she was on the Indies and just be like there's something there, let's bring her in. She's a completely different talent back then from what she is now. But there was always something there that was special. Ethan Page is the NXT Champion and he's rocking it, he's somebody else when we talk about Maple Leaf Pro and why it needs to exist, you look at Ethan Page. Ethan Page and Josh Alexander both had to go around and try to sneak into the country to work on shows with different companies, and ended up having various problems with the border. I think my first conversation with Ethan Page was when he called me up. He said, Hey, I got your number from so and so. I hope you don't mind, but I got this thing at the border. We talked a little bit, and I sent him a few pieces of paper. But ultimately, people just as happens, especially in wrestling. Oh yeah, come do the shows, and then we'll get you [a visa] just keep working, the visa never comes, right? Yeah, it's coming second Tuesday of the week, as my father used to say. But, yeah, it took us saying, hey, we can get you a visa, come in work here. We'll get you that visa and the platform. And that's needed still today.
"You look at where Impact was at the time, and this is what frustrates me about social media, as great as it is in some ways, no matter what somebody says, somebody has to make it toxic. Can’t it just be good that the NXT relationship [exists]? Why are you comparing? Well first of all, there's pros and cons to each side. So the NXT thing is obviously super cool that the TNA talent is being incorporated into the NXT broadcast, which is amazing. The flip side of the preferences of the AEW relationship. Well, one we were not in great shape, like the TNA company is so much stronger now in 2024 than Impact was in 2020, at that point we needed a boost. We never got a chance to put Kenny Omega in front of a crowd. We would have been selling a lot of tickets at that point with Kenny Omega."
"Family and friends, 30 plus years in the toughest sport in the entire world and getting to be a part of so many people’s stories."
