“Gail, TNA Hall of Famer, been there for years. When you come into an organization, you have to look at what’s working and what’s not working. Sometimes, you have to make changes because you have to move forward to continue to grow. I had to make a couple of hard decisions, not just with Gail, but with a few other staff, to try and maybe reinvigorate what I think was already going well, but at least, from what I’ve learned in my career over the last 25 years; when things are going a little bit well, that’s not the time to sit and be happy. Everyone is chomping to try and get you. We kind of got a little more aggressive in making changes we thought we needed to make to reinvigorate the locker room, maybe reinvigorate the Knockouts division, which I think we’ve done. Elevate a few people that needed to be elevated and give them more responsibility. That was one of the changes we made. We made a few others in the front office as well. So far, everyone has responded well and we have a great team and some great camaraderie going right now,” he said.
Fightful Select reported that the decision to fire Kim “was met with shock, disbelief, and anger” among those Fightful spoke to.
Asked about the locker room being upset, Silva replied, “In knowing a little bit about wrestling and working with athletes throughout my career, there are always going to be people that are going to be upset. Gail had been there for a long time. Of course, it wasn’t an easy decision to make. It was the most difficult decision I had to make so far in running TNA, but what’s important is what you do after that and how you bring people together and how we bring the locker room together and how we share what’s going on with our talent and help them to feel like they are part of the business. We’ve done a pretty good job with that over the last three or four months and so far, the feedback I’ve been getting is that people like the way things feel now. They like the energy. I’m a big energy guy. I’m a big positive attitude person. I think it makes a difference. We’re trying to inject that into the organization.”
Ariel Shnerner, Rob Kligman and Michael Shewchenko were also released by TNA in March.