Pop TV President Brad Schwartz Reveals How The TNA Impact Wrestling Deal Came About

Pop TV President Brad Schwartz recently spoke with The Miami Herald about bringing TNA and Impact Wrestling to the Pop network in 2016. Below is what he had to say on the partnership:

"Dixie and the Impact team were looking for a new home for their series. They had huge success on Spike. Millions of viewers watching every week, and they really enjoyed that success. In switching to another network [Destination America] which didn't have the distribution that Spike had, they obviously noticed a little bit of a hit to the success that they had."

"So [TNA was] actively looking for a new television partner, and I think made the rounds and met with a lot of cable networks to see where a home might be. We were on their list of calls, and they came in [about a couple of months ago], and we had our entire team meet with them and listen to the pitch and listen to what they wanted to do -- where they saw the company going, where they saw [pro wrestling] going. That's how it came to our attention. We had a lot of people in that meeting -- our marketing team, our programming team, our communications team, our research team. We really wanted everybody to hear it. We even had representatives from CBS and Lionsgate in that meeting, so everybody could hear it firsthand."

"I would say the next day we [Pop, CBS, Lionsgate] were all like, 'We got to do this.' I'm not spinning this in any way. It's the truth. When we knew this meeting was happening, there were people like me. I grew up watching wrestling, and I remember going to WrestleMania, and I had my own wrestling name, when I was younger, when we joked around in the basement."

Click Here to read the full interview.