Brookside and Luna are talents that Gail Kim took a liking to instantly.
Going into the official rebrand of TNA Wrestling, it was revealed that Subculture’s Dani Luna signed with the company. Xia Brookside made her TNA debut at Hard To Kill in the Knockouts Ultimate X match and afterwards, her signing was announced.
The two talents coming into the company were discussed by TNA producer and co-Head of Talent Relations, Gail Kim. She was interviewed by Denise Salcedo and said she sees a bit of Jordynne Grace in Luna. Gail added that she’s had her eyes on Brookside for years.
I think it’s a real collaborative actual effort or decision (to sign wrestlers to TNA). You know, Scott (D’Amore) will once in a while get together and Tommy Dreamer’s also in Talent Relations and Tommy’s always got opinions and everyone sees talent so differently and you always kind of hear the names that are becoming hot on the indie scene or you see obviously WWE just released a bunch of people and you’re interested in some of them or you’re thinking, okay, who would fit in with our company? Who would we like to add to our roster? And normally it’s a collaborative effort and then Scott decides and Dani (Luna) had come in previously with Subculture and I only knew Mandrews from British Boot Camp at that time and D-Lo (Brown) actually, who’s a producer for us, he had been in the U.K., he does a bunch of seminars and he told me ahead of time, he goes, ‘You’re gonna love Dani Luna.’ He just knew my taste in a sense. He’s like, ‘You’re gonna love Dani.’ I saw her and I was like, ‘I love Dani.’ You take a look at some people sometimes, they come in and they just blow your socks off and Dani is one of those people and I just finished saying after Hard To Kill weekend, I said, ‘Wow, Dani’s already on my list of –’ I don’t know. I just see so much in her. She’s almost the next Jordynne Grace but she’s still just Dani Luna and you know, she’s Dani but I’m really excited to see what’s in store for her for the future because she’s a star definitely and Xia (Brookside), I had my eye on her years ago. I mean, I saw her at an indie show. I worked with her, I really liked her. She went to NXT UK. Sometimes that happens. You get your eye on someone and they get scooped up by someone else and that’s great because they can go have that experience and just wasn’t the right time for us. It wasn’t meant to be and Xia, once NXT U.K. was kind of out of the picture, Scott and I started talking and every couple of months, ‘We got to take a look at Xia, we got to take a look at Xia,’ right? And then she moved to the United States and it just happened. It was just like, ‘Okay, let’s get it done’ and she’s already fitting perfectly with our roster too, you know?
Arriving to TNA at the conclusion of Hard To Kill was Nic Nemeth f.k.a. Dolph Ziggler. Gail did not know Nemeth was going to flaunt his TNA shirt while he was hyping up the crowd.
She stated that she began to jump up and down when she saw it. It gave her a feeling of nostalgia that reminds her of when Kurt Angle and Christian Cage arrived to the company.
I think it was a hugely successful night (TNA Hard To Kill) and to think that we kept, in this day and age of social media and spoilers, we kept Nic (Nemeth) as a surprise was amazing. I love that, I love that. Imagine if we knew about Nic going in. It’s such a difference, right? Of the impact it has. It had a nostalgic feeling of when Kurt Angle came in and Christian (Cage) came in. When he tore off the shirt, because I didn’t even know that was happening to be honest. I was just watching it purely from backstage just waiting for Nic to come out and I started jumping up and screaming.
TNA is going to be rolling out matches from their Snake Eyes television taping on January 18th. There is another taping in Florida scheduled for 1/20.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Denise Salcedo with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
