Ring of Honor announces deal with Destination America, will serve as TNA lead-in

On Wednesday, Destination America announced that it will be bringing Ring of Honor to the network beginning June 3. The weekly program will run at 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday and will serve as the direct lead-in to Impact Wrestling, perhaps better known as TNA Wrestling.

Last week, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer reported that Destination America, which became the new home of TNA just this year, was planning to cancel Impact Wrestling in September, at the end of the current “season.” At the time of Wednesday’s announcement with Ring of Honor, no TNA talent had been made aware of any impending deal with another wrestling company.

This could very well be the writing on the wall for TNA, as its home channel already has a (much cheaper) replacement product already in the fold. The fact that ROH will be debuting on the first night Impact Wrestling moves to Wednesdays may boost ratings for both shows, but could also be serving as a means to condition people to watch ROH on that night, rather than Impact.

Ring of Honor previously had a national television deal with Mark Cuban’s HDNet, airing a weekly show on that channel from 2009 to 2011. In May 2011, ROH was purchased by Sinclair Broadcast Group. Since 2011, ROH has aired a weekly television program on Sinclair owned-or-operated stations and has been running via syndication on certain Sinclair affiliates. This Destination America deal marks the first national deal for the company since its HDNet contract expired.

ROH has been running events nonstop since 2002 and has produced nationals stars such as former Ring of Honor champions Daniel Bryan (Brian Danielson), CM Punk, Seth Rollins (Tyler Black), Kevin Owens (Kevin Steen) and new WWE/NXT signee Samoa Joe. In fact, Samoa Joe, whose current NXT deal does not exclude ROH bookings, may well be soon appearing both on nationally televised ROH shows as well as on the WWE Network.

In other words:

Neither Destination America nor TNA president Dixie Carter have issued a comment as to the future of Impact Wrestling on the network beyond the impending move to Wednesday nights.

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