Impact Wrestling Partners With RISE
The future of women’s wrestling looks brighter than ever.
Ahead of the curve in terms of the women’s revolution, Impact Wrestling continues to spotlight and cultivate women’s wrestling by recently announcing a partnership with all-female indie company RISE.
The Illinois-based promotion will not only host seminars with a focus on developing women’s wrestlers, but also create original content for IMPACT Wrestling’s Twitch channel (www.twitch.tv/impactwrestling) and the Global Wrestling Network (GWN) multi-platform digital service.
“RISE was founded on the principle of talent development, so we will combine our efforts to foster the next generation of women’s professional wrestling stars,” said Scott D’Amore, executive vice president of IMPACT Wrestling, in a press release.
On May 11, the new partners will present their first joint live event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: RISE – Lights, Camera, ACTION: The Art of TV! The full-day seminar will focus on areas specific to performance in a television environment and cover a wide variety of topics by some of the most influential minds involved in producing IMPACT Wrestling, including D’Amore, writer/producer Jimmy Jacobs, creative director Sonjay Dutt and Hall of Famer and Knockouts producer Gail Kim.
On May 12, several episodes of RISE – ASCENT will be taped for premiere in May on RISE’s new streaming platform www.riseascent.com as well as future broadcast on GWN. Several prospects will be selected from the seminar to be part of the new weekly series where they will perform alongside the likes of Phoenix of RISE Champion Delilah Doom, SHIMMER Champion “The Queen of Suplexes” Nicole Savoy, Jessicka Havok, Tessa Blanchard, Shotzi Blackheart, Britt Baker, Dust and Mercedes Martinez.
“From our beginnings, we have said that the future of pro wrestling is in collaboration, not competition,” said RISE founder and executive producer Kevin Harvey. “IMPACT Wrestling clearly believes this, too. We can’t wait to work in tandem to build a bridge to a very bright future for women’s wrestling.”
The Knockouts Division began over 10 years ago when Gail Kim became the company’s first Women’s Champion. In stark contrast to how WWE showcased its Divas at the time, Impact Wrestling presented women’s wrestling in serious fashion, highlighting their athleticism and unique characters in similar fashion to the men. As a result, Knockouts matches and segments regularly drew high ratings and passionate crowd response.
Recently, the Knockouts Division has gone through a rebuilding phase, headed by current champion Allie, as mentioned by Dutt during an Impact Wrestling teleconference.
“I think there is so much stuff that can be done and so many characters now that we have integrated into the division,” Dutt said. “I’ll bring up Kiera Hogan, who debuted recently and she’s very young and has only been in the business a few years so the growth there is immense. And Su Yung as a character is very striking. I’ve been on independent shows with her for many years and been in tune with what she was doing and watching her character grow. Diamante just came off an ACL surgery, so she’s cleared and ready to go but she had a rough past six to eight months. It’s about getting to a point where you can step back in that ring and not fear any further damage.”
Fellow Knockout Sienna will serve as a color commentator for RISE – ASCENT. In addition, one talent featured on the RISE – ASCENT series will be selected for an opportunity to perform for IMPACT Wrestling at an upcoming event.
Past events from RISE can now be seen on GWN, including all 2016 and 2017 shows. GWN is available on all major over-the-top (OTT) platforms and devices, including online at GlobalWrestlingNetwork.com, iOS and Android, Xbox, and coming soon to Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Smart TVs. A premium subscription is priced at US$7.99 with a 30-day free trial available for new members.
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