Various News: Wrestling Birthdays, Update on TNA TV Deal in Germany, More

– Ricky Steamboat turns 60 years old today.

– Masato Tanaka turns 40 years old today.

– Norman Smiley turns 48 years old today.

– Matt Morgan was interviewed by former Memphis personality Brandon Baxter, promoting the Impact taping in Jonesboro, Arkansas. You can check that out here.

– There is a new audio interview with Christopher Daniels at this link.

– From Marco Tyssen and Pwinsider.com: Some more details about TNA’s new tv deal with Sport1 ( & Sport1.de) in Germany: Newest episode of iMPACT debuting this Saturday online, free-tv and VOD updates.

TNA replacing WWE on German free-tv was a huge story over here in the last several weeks. WWE losing it’s most important position on free-tv after six years (they remain on Eurosport and with a full package on Sky) is big loss for them, but for TNA a huge chance to finally reach the German market.

iMPACT Wrestling starts airing this weekend on Video-On-Demand at Sport1.de. The newest iMPACT episode (from tonight) will air Saturday morning at 10pm with German commentary – just 32 hours after airing live in the U.S. Next Wednesday a 1 hour version of this episode will debut at Sport1 on German free TV.

Meanwhile iMPACT Wrestling & Sport1 announced the subscription model for their VOD offer, which is also available for fans from Switzerland, Austria, Luxemburg and Liechtenstein. Payments are accepted via credit card, bank, paypal etc.

Their offers are as followes:
– 30 day package of iMPACT Wrestling for 9,99€ (each episode that’s online is available for exactly 30 days at any time)
– 1 iMPACT Wrestling episode will be offered for 3,99€ (also available for 30 days)
– 1 pay-per-view event (One Night Only specials included) will be offered for 12,99€ each (on Sky Select they used to cost 15€)
– a yearly offer package includes all 52 episodes of iMPACT and all of the ppv’s for 149,99€ (compared to the ppv package before you safe 30€)
You can watch all of the content in SD or HD. Currently the Video-On-Demand offer will not include smartphones, androides etc. – but they’ll be working on it. Connecting your PC or Notebook via HDMI with your tv gives you an easy chance to watch it on your tv. If you own a disk recorder perhaps you can record it easily.

The 1 hour version of iMPACT Wrestling will be produced by Sport1 & the german iMPACT Wrestling team, not by TNA. They announced that they want to involve fans as of what content should be part of the cutted version which is a very cool interactive thing and one of the reasons they can succeed. WCW was successful because they fit the WCW product 100% to the german audience – something WWE usually misses with their international one hour versions on free tv.

Must-read wrestling news:
* The Rock says a rematch with John Cena had the most box office appeal
* Who came up with the Jack Swagger/Zeb Colter storyline?
* Chris Jericho: “Triple H is the right guy to take over WWE”
* 411’s WWE Main Event report
* The Top 10 Heels of the Week
* 411 Fact or Fiction: Undertaker’s Return, Punk vs Cena, More