Josh Mathews On Anthem Purchasing AXS, Crossover Possibilities With New Japan And WOW

In Josh Mathews' five years with Impact, the promotion's weekly TV show has bounced around to four different networks. It appears to finally have found a permanent home with Anthem Sports & Entertainment buying AXS and Impact moving to AXS TV last week.

Mathews talked about Anthem purchasing AXS when he spoke to Wrestling Inc. on our WINCLY podcast.

"It was interesting being a part of Impact before then Anthem era as Anthem was our Canadian partner and I would talk to people a couple of times a month from the Toronto office to keep in touch. When everything went down with Billy Corgan on who would gain control, there was a lawsuit in Nashville and I went," revealed Mathews.

He wanted to find out the real story of everything going on with Impact and being in court would be the best way to find that information. There he also met Ed Nordholm.

"Fast forward to [Anthem] taking over. We went to Toronto and we're in this boardroom together, and where we are now, it's been a wild ride. There's been doubts along the way, but we're in a great spot now," stated Mathews.

Impact has aired on both Pop and Pursuit this year and Mathews talked about the advantages of moving to AXS TV.

"Being here on AXS and having the flagship show air every Tuesday night is great. I think we're gonna see more programming and different kinds of programming and that's where I get to have fun in regards to sending concepts to Scott. 'Hey, what if we do this? Or what if we get on the road and do this?' So, it's different and unique," said Mathews.

One of the advantages in Impact moving to AXS is there are more production elements to utilize for their show and Mathews talked about those.

"We have a great production team in Nashville that works super hard and don't get the credit they deserve," said Mathews. "But we get to play with more toys. It's funny, studio shows have become the new in vogue thing and we've been doing studio shows for years. Bottom Line and Aftermath and all of those WWE shows and now everyone wants to do a studio show?

"In Nashville we didn't have this, so it's great to have those new toys to play with."

AXS TV already airs programming for New Japan and Women of Wrestling and Mathews was asked about potential crossover opportunities amongst the companies.

"I think it's too early to tell. Clearly we're all on the same network now and two weeks ago Scott and I went over to WOW, watched their production, sat in the truck and experienced that. I happened to get there when Tessa was wrestling so I was able to see her work," stated Mathews.

"I think there will be but it's a matter of figuring all of that out. It was a matter of figuring out where we were gonna be, what time we were gonna be, what the show would look like. Now it's time to kinda move on to what that next part looks like."