– Impact Wrestling Spending Up To $20,000 On Background Actors To Attend Their TV Tapings, ECW Legend Reveals What They Should’ve Done With That Money
During a recent edition of “The Taz Show” podcast, ECW Legend Taz & PWInsider’s Mike Johnson discussed Impact Wrestling paying people to attend their TV tapings. Below is their discussion:
Mike: It’s not the first time a wrestling company has done this. Back in the 1990’s, Paul Alperstein’s American Wrestling Federation which did not last very long, but was syndicated in a bunch of major markets including New York and Chicago and LA.
When they taped their TV, they paid extras to come and then directed them how to cheer, how to boo, things like that. So it’s not the first time this has been done.
I guess they’re worried about they’re not going to fill the house in Ottawa and that they want to make sure that there are enough people there. So the television presentation looks good.
So they went to a local casting company and that casting company sent the word out publicly via social media and through their own intermediaries that they are looking for people to come and basically play wrestling fans, hold up signs, cheer and boo, watch wrestling.
And if you do this, it’s a four-hour taping, you’ll get paid $12.50 an hour. So it comes down to like 50 bucks a day.
So they are looking for people to do that for every day of the taping. So I did the math and the breakdown. 50 to 75 people a day is they’re gonna hire.
Which means paying 75 people that much money over the course of four or five days, I think comes up like 20 grand. So they’re actually willing to invest up to $20,000 in this. And where I scratched my head is they had some people who were willing to pay. Obviously people who bought tickets for these shows because they’ve been selling them for months.
It might have made more sense to just sell the ringside tickets, make the general admission free and maybe invest that $20,000 in bringing in some of the wrestlers who are not being used this week even though they’re already under contract.
Taz: Here’s the thing dude, what they should have done with that 20 grands, and this is the problem with TNA from when Dixie owned it, is the lack of brand awareness, marketing and promotion. The friggin’ money should have went into promoting that they were gonna be there for that many days.
– On This Day In WWF History: A SUPERSTAR Returns!
On this day in 1986, WWF Legend & now WWE Hall of Famer “Superstar” Billy Graham’s return to WWF TV was announced.
Here’s the announcement by “Mean” Gene Okerlund during an episode of WWF Update, including a pre-taped promo by the Old School Legend himself.
– On This Day In Old School Wrestling History: NWA Grudge Matches
On this day in 1986, this Tag Team main event aired on a japanese version of NWA TV.
The team of the two ‘4 Horsemen’ members “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair & Tully Blanchard took on the newly formed team called ‘The Superpowers’ consisting of “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes & “The Russian Nightmare” Nikita Koloff.
In yet another grudge match that aired during the same episode, “Chief” Wahoo McDaniel wrestled his archnemesis Manny Fernandez, who at that point in time had been a proud member of Paul Jones’ army.
