The barbwire massacre between Sami Callihan’s oVe and Konnan’s LAX was originally scheduled to air on national television. However, the match was deemed too violent for TV, which resulted in the match airing on Twitch.
“You can’t always make the fans happy. Sure, it was amazing. It was an achievement but there were still people that weren’t happy. There wasn’t enough blood, there wasn’t enough this, there wasn’t enough that,” said Callihan Thursday afternoon on the Impact Wrestling conference call.
Sami Callihan. Photo by Andrea Kellaway for Impact Wrestling
“We got pretty violent. In today’s day and age a lot of times you can’t do blood. That’s out of our hands, that’s out of the company’s hands, that’s the terms of the network. This was originally suppose to air on national television. At the last minute we decided to put it on Twitch so that we could show the whole match. Even without blood I think the picture that we told was something absolutely amazing.”
The barbwire massacre match is part of the bigger wrestling picture, which is an evolving product that can gain exposure without network TV.
Companies are changing the ways it does business with other wrestling companies. “The time and age of the territories of people working against each other just won’t happen anymore. Wrestling has to change and I think Impact realizes it. I think the wrestling world realizes that,” said Callihan.
“WWE like it or not has the monopoly on wrestling and they might always have it, but there can be a true alternative, where everyone else works together. It just shows the amount of wrestling fans there are in the world. Last year for Wrestlemania weekend, there was 250,000 people in Orlando but only 80,000 went to Wrestlemania. So there was an equal amount of people if not more there just to do all the other events; the conventions, and watch all the other shows.”
Konnan, who was also on the conference call, echoed Callihan’s words “I’ve been advocating that people should be working together for years. I’ve always been a guy to try to break exploitation and monopoly. Now the power has gone back to the wrestler.”
Konnan has worked with AAA in many different roles including as an agent and was able to give wrestlers control of their matches. In 2013, Konnan appeared to have wrestled his final match. However, Konnan will get back into ring shape after his upcoming operation.
“March 8, I’m going to get my hip surgery and I’m going to go into intensive training with my boy Rey Mysterio, which will be something. I’m going to get in shape and I do want to do a farewell tour. I’d love to do something with Sami. I don’t know if I can get back into shape to do a one-on-one but definitely a trios match could definitely be in the future.”
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