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WHAT TNA NEEDS TO DO, WHAT THEY SHOULD NOT DO, RUSSO, DIXIE CARTER AND MORE

By Mike Johnson on 2014-12-05 09:50:00

Here's a link to an article in the Independent today where Dixie Carter says she will never close the book on bringing back Vince Russo.  Reading that made me flush all hope for a new TNA TV start right down the toilet.  Given you reported he was working for the company and that led to his exit, how do you feel about the idea he could once again end up working for TNA?  Carter can't be serious, right?  Should she actually be considering this, what would you say to her?

First of all, not that you meant to do this, but even asking me this question puts me in a hard position because no matter what I write, someone is going to claim I am taking a shot at Vince Russo because he's publicly blamed me for his release from his last position with TNA.  So, let's make that clear before I go forward that even responding to this is basically inviting those claims, but you asked, so I'm going to go as deep and detailed as I can on the subject and people can (and will) decipher it however they wish, but understand I actually hold no ill will towards the man personally on any level.

As far as what Carter said, if she meant those comments (she's always been very good at babyfacing the media, she does come from a PR background after all), I would sincerely ask her, "Why?"

There was a time when what Vince Russo brought to the table was fresh and cutting edge.  That time, however, was the late 1990s.  We are going to be heading into 2015.  The style that Russo brought (and brought well during his WWF run) is as passé now  as the "old school wrestling" mentality he claims he needed to change when he joined the WWF creative team as a writer.  He was right in that in needed to be freshened up, but what was fresh in 1997 isn't in 2015.  That's why Iggy Azalea and Miley Cyrus fill Arenas today, not Jewel and Toni Braxton.

Pop culture and entertainment landscapes change and so does the pro wrestling world.  From 1999 on, Vince Russo got far more out of the business than his writing put into it.  From my perspective, that's just the truth.  It's not a personal knock on the man, but if anyone thinks Russo brought WCW or TNA to a greater height from a financial perspective than they might have gotten to without him, in my mind, that person would be gravely mistaken.  

I'm not denying that Russo worked hard or believes he earned every penny he made.  I am sure he never walked into a room and decided to write a show he felt would suck.  I am not knocking his effort personally.  No one is going to like the same thing - pro wrestling is a subjective art form, the same as a piece of art on a museum wall.  I might see a masterpiece.  You may wonder why anyone thinks this painting of peaches in a bowl is so important.  That's how life works. 

In my opinion, for whatever reason, the second Russo moved to Atlanta in 1999, he lost his finger on the pulse of what the audience wanted and he's never gotten it back.  He knew what the WWF audience wanted at that point but failed to recognize the WCW audience, when he arrived, there was different and his stuff didn't translate.  I think Ruso's always still tried to play to the WWF audience he had in the 1990s while also trying to hard to show the "Internet fan" what they were seeing wasn't supposed to happen.  The problem is, none of that ever clicked again for him after he quit WWF and went to WCW.  Perhaps outside factors prevented it, but the results were the same - he never recaptured his past glory.  USA Today covers and New York Times articles are great but at the end of the day, when Russo left the WWF, a good portion of what made him work best remained in Stamford, CT.

I am sure he would argue this (and if I was Vince, I am sure I would), but history has shown that pretty much the same course of events repeated themselves for him in WCW, WWE, and TNA ever since the day he went to WCW.  He was hired, he began doing what he thought was best, was removed from power/walked away/returned (except WWE, where he was removed from power after one meeting and never returned) and left again.  It was a cycle and Russo certainly got more financially out of that cycle than the promotions he was working for - again, in my opinion.

In my opinion, Russo has also been unable to see that he's needed to evolve his own writing style since that time period in the late 1990s.  As the viewing audience's habits have changed, Russo's idea of what a pro wrestling TV show should be remains lost in the Monday Night War era.  Meanwhile, not just wrestling fans but all TV viewers (since that's what Russo wants, the audience outside of the wrestling bubble) are seeking greater and more deeper TV programming. 

"The Walking Dead,"  for example, changed the game for TV, not in just gore and blood but in terms of deep characterizations and long-term story-telling for horror on television.  You can't have the audience exposed to (and fall in love with) a show of that deep quality and then assume they will also then accept "The Munsters" as similar, quality fare in 2104. 

"The Munsters" may have worked when it first aired but if the series was written and produced the exact same way in 2015 for an audience already exposed to "Walking Dead", it wouldn't click.  The audience changed.  In a lot of ways that's what pro wrestling under Russo has been -  It's been "The Munsters" as Russo tried to recreate what brought him to the dance, except the dance craze ended and the club isn't even open anymore.  It's not cutting edge, it's nostalgia and it doesn't work in a world where the audience wants "The Walking Dead."

TNA doesn't need to be "The Munsters", especially when WWE is cornering the market on a certain genre of pro wrestling and has a far wider scope and base to promote themselves from.  TNA needs to try and be "The Walking Dead", but to do so, you can't keep bringing back the guy to bring back his greatest hits from "The Munsters" era.

This isn't a shot at Russo personally.  It happens in pro wrestling.  in 1992, WCW brought Bill Watts, who promoted one of the greatest wrestling promotions of all time, Mid-South, in to turn the company around.  I loved Mid-South and I love Watts personally, but in 1992, the stuff that worked for him as a creative force in the early 1980s wasn't going to work.  The audience had changed.  Unfortunately for Watts, the world had changed.  Just as unfortunately for Russo, the world has changed.

Even throwing that  all of that of the equation, I would also ask Carter why she would bring back, yet again, someone that has publicly knocked her company and it's employees since he departed.  He ripped on SpikeTV while TNA was still negotiating a new TV deal there.  He knocked John Gaburick after Gaburick let him go.    He's teasing he's writing a book about his time there titled "Total Nonstop Agony."  He's said he and his son have written a screenplay that's a parody of TNA about a woman who owns a wrestling company. 

Just this week following his Kurt Angle podcast, Russo knocked creative writers Dave Lagana and his OWN protégé Matt Conway and said they were more concerned with keeping their paycheck then they were trying to fix the company and that he had no "confidence" in them .  No matter whether you believe in the current TNA creative team or not from a fan perspective, the idea that the former head writer is out there knocking them is in my opinion, pretty low and comes across like a guy desperate to get his job back so he's trying to play political games.  

Whne you look at all of this from the outside looking in, none of these screams former employee I'd want to hire back in the fold because he's going to help my bottom line.  It screams former employee who wants attention. Plus, bringing him back would pretty much say that Carter has no confidence in Gaburick and the team he's tried to build for himself since coming in. 

TNA has cut themselves to the bone over the last several years in an attempt to survive and move forward.  Vince Russo, whether you love him or hate him, returning to TNA, is not moving forward.  He's not an AJ Styles, who's potential return would be fresh and provide great matches.   He's a writer who's best work we've already seen, before, decades ago.  He's Bill Watts in 1992, except unlike Watts, he's never moved on to whatever the next phase of his life is. In my mind, Russo is trying to get back to where he was and life doesn't work like that and the wrestling business can't be expected to support that during a time where you have to fight for every dollar you earn.

Dixie Carter once said that sometimes in pro wrestling, you need personalities that are "polarizing figures" and that's why she had Vince Russo working for her.  The problem then was that the "polarizing figures" are supposed to be the ones appearing on the show, not the ones writing it.  That would still be the case today. 

Dixie Carter, on her own website, noted that TNA was in a chance to restart and begin fresh, something that wrestling promotions rarely get to do.  Fresh is not going back to the well with Vince Russo (or any of the other former creative types who have departed the company).  Fresh is actually starting new and not retreating back into what was familiar. 

In my mind, Carter needs to let what TNA was in the past, stay in the past and move forward, or else what the hell was she fighting to save over the last year?  Vince Russo is synonymous with the past of TNA.  He had many years and many chances to help it move into the future.  For whatever the reasons are, It didn't happen and at this point, it doesn't matter.  It's time to move forward. 

Dixie can say anything she wants publicly, but privately, if she isn't looking forward 100% of the time from this point on, what's the point of going forward at all?

So again, I would ask, "Why?" 

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