Source: Ray Mullan of The Daily Dropkick
Recently, Ray Mullan of The Daily Dropkick interviewed iMPACT Wrestling’s Jeremy Borash regarding a variety of issues related to the promotion’s presence in the United Kingdom. Below are some of the highlights from the interview. We encourage you to read the entire interview by clicking here. Enjoy!
[Xplosion’s] new format for the show debuted on Challenge last night and seems to have been very well recieved. The show now contains alot more exclusive content and one of the things I hear alot from fans is whether there’s the possibility of the addition of an extra match-up each week, is that something we can expect down the line?
You know the bottom line when it comes to Xplosion, whether it be a match, backstage interviews or the Spin Cycle is that we really want to gear it up. That started with the move to prime time which opens the show up to a much wider audience and we are working on some really exciting plans over the next few months. We really care about what the fans think of the show and I talk alot in my commentary about the UK fans and your going to see alot more emphasis on that and the program will very much become aimed towards the UK fan base and will become almost “their show” as we expand and move forward.
Obviously Challenge is owned by BSkyB, who have had a long term relationship on some of their other channels with WWE. What’s the relationship like between IMPACT Wrestling and Sky/Challenge?
I think the ratings speak for themselves. In fact I just had a meeting with them a couple of hours ago and we have some really exciting things planned for the end of the year with fans getting involved, incorporating social media and hopefully continuing to extend our relationship. We’re working on some really exciting plans for towards the end of this year, one of which I can reveal is something we will begin work on when I return to the states and that will be the launch of a competition that will see fans from the UK going to an IMPACT Wrestling Pay-Per View event. So as far as the relationship goes, it couldn’t be better, they’ve been great to work with and a Number 1 rated JB on Challenge would be personally very rewarding!
I know you probably get asked this every time you come over to the UK but is there any possibility of holding a Television taping or a Pay-Per View here in the United Kingdom in the near future?
You know I do get asked this question quite a lot and I have a new answer for it that perhaps put things in a little bit of a different perspective. It’s always great to have the attention when you do a live IMPACT or a Pay-Per View from the UK but I’ve always said, knowing this is as fact given the many TV tapings, Pay-Per Views and Live events that I have, the Live event experience is done for the fans that come out and pay their hard earned money to come see us and only for those fans.
However, when you throw the element of television into the mix with cameras, production trucks, time constraints, commercial breaks and all that’s involved with a television show suddenly it’s no longer about the fans it’s about the television cameras and so while the experience of a Pay-Per View or TV is very very cool having been to both many times, having seen the smiles on the faces of fans having attended our live events, its the latter that truly is the bread and butter of our industry, there’s nothing like it. I would think though as we continue to see growth over the next few months, we are going to be doing IMPACT Wrestling on the road in the U.S., we are heading to different cities every month, I would say it would be the next step and I’ve said this going back years now but it’s inevitable we will do it, it’s just a matter of when it’s right from a financial standpoint.
I will say this much, I think at this upcoming tour in January your going to see, if not a television broadcast, your going to see alot of footage from there – whether it be a DVD we make of it or alot of the footage ends up on IMPACT, I think your definitely going to see more television cameras this tour than you ever have before. We want to show everybody back home just what a UK show is about and what it feels like because it’s so different, so exciting and that’s why the guys look forward to it every year. Performing as they do, good crowds can make or break an evening and when you go out and see Wembley for example, with 10,000 rabid fans just going crazy over a performer that’s more rewarding than anything and so the guys always want to be on the UK tour.
Read the rest of this interview over at The Daily Dropkick!
