Backstage News On TNA Firing Scott D'Amore

In a sudden announcement today, Scott D'Amore has been fired by TNA Wrestling. 

Anthem Sports & Entertainment, the parent company of TNA, have announced that Anthony Cicione will replace D'Amore as the President of TNA Wrestling. The parent company stated the change was done "to further integrate TNA Wrestling into Anthem's Entertainment Group, of which Cicione is the President, leveraging the entire Company's resources to add more value in areas including production, distribution, marketing, viewership, customer acquisition, digital revenue streams, ad sales and sponsorships, digital tech operations, and more."

Cicione is now also in charge of the day-to-day business operations of TNA. He has been with Anthem for the past 16 years. 

His firing today ends Scott D'Amore's second stint with TNA. He returned to the promotion in 2017, being brought back by Jeff Jarrett as Vice President of International Relations after working in the same role for Global Force Wrestling from 2014. D'Amore and Don Callis were then appointed Executive Vice Presidents of the then IMPACT Wrestling, with D'Amore later being appointed President of IMPACT Wrestling in March 2023. 

The change in leadership came only weeks after IMPACT Wrestling officially rebranded as TNA Wrestling, a move which gave the promotion the most momentum they have had in years, including what was described as a "fantastic" pay-per-view buyrate for Hard To Kill. 

PWInsider reported that one possible reason for the change being discussed amongst TNA talents was that "Anthem wanted the TNA brand to be more in-line with the parent company going forward and that the brand had been too D'Amore-centric with Scott as the face of the company." The decision was said to have come directly from Anthem owner Len Asper. 

TNA held a meeting with talents today to address D'Amore's firing and the meeting doesn't appear to have gone down well after it was stated that D'Amore had "stepped down" from TNA, which isn't the case. This didn't sit well with some of the talent, with one wrestler telling PWInsider: "This wasn't the way to start off." 

New TNA President Anthony Cicione read a "prepared statement" which also went down badly with some, while others noted he was in a no-win situation. Talents were also not given the opportunity to ask questions which didn't help endear wrestlers to the changes. 

At the beginning of the call, some talents were extremely angry while some of the locker room veterans tried to calm the waters. Anthem have a "lot of work to do" moving forward, though, according to one personality within the promotion. 

Others have taken more of a positive approach, noting they are trying to keep the faith as the remainder of the team behind TNA Wrestling is still in place beyond D'Amore.