Ultimate X is one of TNA/IMPACT Wrestling’s most popular match concepts and it turns out that Disco Inferno had a hand in making the match come to fruition.
During a new interview with Tom Hannifan to promote the company’s Slammiversary pay-per-view, IMPACT Executive Vice President Scott D’Amore spoke about the early days of TNA Wrestling and how fans and the media would predict the company’s demise year after year.
“We were in a dog fight every week to stay alive, and we knew it. We maybe didn’t talk about it openly all of the time, but we knew. We had a passionate group that was young and energetic and passionate and just — it’s almost like we’re too dumb to know we’re not supposed to succeed, we’re not supposed to still be there,” D’Amore explained, “but we went out there week after week and did what we could. Sometimes we did amazing, awesome things, and sometimes we did some really awful stuff.”
D’Amore went on to talk about one of the good ideas the company had, which was the Ultimate X match. D’Amore noted that Don Callis is sometimes given credit for the match since he cut the promo for the match, but it was actually Disco Inferno (Glenn Gilbertti) who came up with the idea.
“One of the things if we look back 20 years later, I was there. Let’s dispel a rumor right now — as much fun as I’ve had over the years, we love to joke about how Don Callis invented Ultimate X because he’s the one who did the promo, I hate to say this and it’s going to pain me, I might ask Garrett to cut this out,” D’Amore noted, “but the genesis of Ultimate X comes from the Disco Inferno. Once he came up with the idea — and he’ll always be the one to say, ‘I’ve got 100 ideas, and at least 98, maybe 99 of them are terrible. But one of them might be OK.’ Well, Ultimate X was one of those ideas.
“We had to work with it, we had to refine it, figure out how to build it, which was a whole ordeal and could be a whole podcast itself,” D’Amore added, “but we made it work and brought a match that was uniquely ours.
D’Amore also said that the King Of The Mountain match gets criticized too, but it’s also a unique match that’s only in TNA/IMPACT Wrestling and that’s what they were aiming for.
Gilbertti has taken credit for the Ultimate X match concept in the past, explaining in interviews that it was a good example of a gimmick match that excelled because it became a recurring theme and got its own event. Gilbertti worked as an in-ring talent and agent for TNA between 2002-2008, and has made sporadic appearances for the company since then.
Read More: Chris Jericho Defends Long-Time Colleague Disco Inferno
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