Aroluxe Marketing revealed as company negotiating with TNA

Dave Meltzer revealed today in a breaking news audio update that the company that Impact Wrestling/TNA has been negotiating with is Aroluxe, a company that former wrestlers Ron and Don Harris are involved with. The Harris brothers were mid-level stars in both the WWF and WCW in the late 90s and were brought in to TNA by former owner Jeff Jarrett when the company started.

Negotiations are still ongoing. TNA president Dixie Carter was hopeful of securing a deal whereby an investor would purchase 49% interest in the company, allowing her to maintain a majority interest. Whether she finds a company willing to do that or not, the company is in a crunch position as they are essentially out of money and will require a cash influx to get them through their next set of TV tapings scheduled for later this week.

If Carter is not able to find an investor willing to let her maintain control of the company there will obviously be a shakeup in the company and details of that are likely to come out in the next week or so.

Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling started in late 2002 as a weekly pay per view product owned and operated by Jeff and Jerry Jarrett. Father Jerry pulled out of the partnership early and Jeff went to Panda Energy for financing to keep the company afloat. They remained as a weekly PPV property until late 2004, when they secured a broadcast contract with Fox Sports Network and used that platform to move to the more traditional monthly PPV model.

They were at times in their history profitable but ever since spending big money to acquire free agents Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Jeff Hardy, Rob Van Dam and others in 2010 the promotion has been a money loser. They started on SPIKE TV in 2005 and at times garnered audiences upwards of 1.5 million. By late 2014, they were down under a million and on top of the declining ratings, the promotion was secretly employing Vince Russo as a consultant despite the fact that SPIKE executives had made it clear they did not want the company to have any dealings with Russo.

They moved to Destination America in 2015 and it quickly became clear that it would not be a good fit. Destination America announced midway through the first year that they would not be renewing them for a second season, despite announcing a “multi-year” contract  at the start of the relationship. In late 2015 the company announced that they would start the following year on POP TV, the former TV Guide channel. While no terms were announced at the time, it was believed to be an ad revenue sharing deal.

POP TV president Brad Schwartz announced that they hoped that the promotion would return to the 1.3 million audience level with the move to POP. This despite the fact that the show averaged less than half of that number during it’s year on Destination America. With the move to POP, ratings declined even further, settling in around 300,000 despite being available in 80 million homes in the United States.

Also discussed in the breaking news update was the cancelation of the New Japan PPV scheduled for later this month in Kumamoto, Japan. The earthquake was devastating as there are already 41 deaths and 968 injuries attributed to it and over 91,000 people have been evacuated from their homes.