More Details On Lou D’Angeli’s Exit From TNA

A new report has additional details on Lou D’Angeli’s exit from TNA last week. As reported on Friday, D’Angeli was among a few people who departed the company last week alongside Dave Sahadi and RD Evans. D’Angeli was working as Vice President of Marketing for Anthem and PWInsider has several more details on his surprising exit.

The report notes that D’Angeli’s role in TNA grew by leaps and bounds over the past year, and that he was set the stage for Naomi to come into the company for a while, which came out of initial discussions with Mercedes Mone. D’Angeli also brought CM Punk in for negotiations for the company and took on a number of creative and production duties in addition to his marketing and live event work.

According to the report, there had been some deterioration in the relationship between D’Angeli and TNA in recent months due to TNA’s slow process in confirming their event dates and locations. D’Angeli had been pushing TNA for a long time to break from their schedule of running cities on back to back nights, but Anthem never changed from that. There were also said to be some issues with dates and cities being related to staff and talent and those plans changing several times. As the person “in charge” of live events, D’Angeli was in the position of being questioned about the situation but not having answers to provide from those above him.

Sources indicated that last week a meeting took place between Anthem executives and D’Angeli, and it was decided that they should go their separate ways. The word is that D’Angeli was contacted by Anthem officials later and and told that the company was going forward without him, and he agreed with the decision.

One source noted that under D’Angeli, live event ticket sales grew annually year over year. The advance ticket sales for Slammiversary have triggered the company’s best pre-sales in a decade. The final shows set up under him are the Against All Odds weekend in Chicago on later this month, which are expected to sell out.

TNA has their live events set through August and are working who will take over that part of the business. They are also working toward a permanent site for possible live TV tapings, which they have been working on for a while. It is said that at least one other member of the live events team also exited the company.

Several TNA talents spoke with the site over the last 24 hours and the overall reaction was that of disbelief and sadness. D’Angeli had reportedly pushed behind the scenes for talents to take on additional roles backstage, something ECW did when D’Angeli was there. One talent noted that D’Angeli appeared to be attempting to set up future roles for talents once they were done with their in-ring career, and pretty much everyone felt the company will be affected at least in the short term by his exit.