Impact Wrestling Vice President Scott D’Amore has opened up about the show’s premiere on AXS TV earlier this week. The show was headlined by Brian Cage versus Sami Callihan in a steel cage match for the Impact World Championship. Callihan defeated Cage to claim the title.

In an interview with Wrestling Inc. before the premiere, D’Amore spoke about how they ended up on AXS TV. He also addressed why Pursuit and Pop wasn’t the right home for the promotion.

“As people probably can understand, this isn’t the type of thing that comes together overnight,” D’Amore said. “It’s been a very long process and it goes back many months. It’s been in the works and one of the hardest things to do is just keep telling people, ‘don’t worry, we have a plan’ but not being able to say what that plan was. So, it was a pretty exciting day when we finally got to get that announcement out about AXS TV.”

He explained that “Ultimately, Pursuit was a stopgap for where we knew we were going. We were still on Pop TV when we knew that AXS was going to be our new home. But without us committing to Pop, Pop couldn’t commit to us. If we would have stayed on Pop, we would have been bounced all over the late night time slots.”

D’Amore shared that he believes Impact’s strength lies in the way they try to tell dynamic, compelling storylines in different ways. He added that this new deal with Anthem (who acquired majority ownership of AXS) gives them a firm home, claiming that “Impact is here and it’s not going anywhere.”