Ex-TNA VP Of Creative & Talent Relations Talks Vince Russo, TNA, Contracts Expiring, More

Former TNA head of creative and talent relations Bruce Prichard recently spoke with RF video for a shoot DVD. Here are some highlights.

How closely did he follow the TNA product before joining them:

“I really didn’t. After I left WWE in 2008 I didn’t watch wrestling anymore. I didn’t watch anything for over a year. Then John Layfield called me and was like there’s this guy with this radio show / podcast who’d like you to review the shows and give your thoughts on them. So, it was a way to publicize our product and get my name back out there so I started watching the shows again so that was really my first exposure to TNA, with Hulk (Hogan) coming in. But I’d also been talking to Jeff Jarrett casually throughout that time as I had a non-compete so even if I wanted to I couldn’t go there. It was kind of casual and then it became okay, let’s check out what they are doing to review on the radio.”

At what point did he have contact with people in the TNA office:

“Probably 6 months, maybe a year. I had a office in Nashville so I’d make contact with Jeff to say hello and let him know I had a townhouse in Nashville and that if he was around I’d like to say hello. See what’s up, just to touch base…see if there’s any interest.”

When did TNA express interest:

“Jeff (Jarrett) had interest since day one but we just had to wait for the non-compete and everything. Then all the internal landscape in TNA had changed with Eric (Bischoff) and Hulk (Hogan) coming in and Jeff no longer being part of the day to day operations.”

First impressions of Dixie Carter upon arrival:

“Dixie is a nice lady, you know? Nice lady.”

What was his role in the company:

“When I first came in I was strictly a freelance producer. I produced backstage stuff, interviews, and give my input at arm’s length on the shows. About six months in they brought me on full-time.”

What is some of the first things he thought about changing with the product:

“Slow down! Everything was going 90 miles an hour and you’re just bouncing off walls. You go this way and then that way and get turned upside down…fall through the cracks. There was direction but it wasn’t necessarily always followed. So it was to slow down and tell a story”

Was Vince Russo receptive of the idea or no? Who had more power? Vince Russo or Eric Bischoff?

“They shared power equally.”They were both receptive to ideas. Vince came to me and asked me to help him. He was receptive and would listen to make changes or tweaks. So much of it was a tweak here or a tweak there and slow down. You don’t have to start a story in the first hour, you can finish it by the fifth segment”

As his responsibilities increased what difficulties did you come across?

“Probably the restrictions of the different types of contracts they (the wrestlers) had. I came from a place where you had a boss and a contract and it was the boss who made the decisions as everyone fell in line. The difference here (in TNA) was everyone had different deals structures. Those that were positioned on television weren’t necessarily available to be used outside of that role. Probably the biggest challenge to this day and I’ve never got an answer to it was what business were they (TNA) in? What business did they want to be in? Do you want to be a television company? Do you want to be a live event company? Do you want to be a pay-per-view company? Do you want to be a production company? What is it that you want to do? What is your goal? Give me the definition of what it is that you want to do. What do you want to accomplish? Sometimes I’d get well we want all that to be successful. Okay, well in order for all that to be successful here’s what you have to do… okay but we have to do this on this side. Okay–so you want to be a television company? Well–no. You can’t have both. I tried explaining this to Dixie Carter and everyone. I think there was an identity (issue) as far as what they wanted to focus on. What business do you want to be in?

If you want to be a television company that’s great then let’s do television but that changes the structure of everything you do. Because if you’re not running live events and you’re not going to be a touring company then we need to figure out a way to have talent be locked up and protected so that you can produce your television programming. If you still want to do pay-per-views then there’s another piece of the puzzle. If you want to do live events then here’s another piece of the puzzle. They all have to be in synergy. I want to do live events but my live events don’t really mirror what the television product is about. I still want to do pay-per-views but–and they can’t compete with the television product. It’s just a simple question…what do you want to do?

If you want to do all of them then you have to figure out the way to make every one of them make sense. It all comes off of television.”

How much compliance did Dixie carter give him:

“In the beginning it was kind of like tell us what you need. I was like a shiny new car for six months. Whatever I said it was like Bruce said it so it must be right. Don’t know if that’s necessarily true or not. Everybody talked about the silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. There’s no single thing that can turn that company around and make it profitable. There are a lot of things that need to be fixed along the way. There’s a lot of things that need to happen to even get it to a point that it has a foundation to build off of. Right now one leg is in the water, the other is in the sand and it’s shaky. They haven’t decided on what direction to go. I was given a lot of lead way but when push came to shove and it came time to go they would be pull back.”

Biggest frustrations in trying to get goals accomplished:

“Well a lot of times communications and lack there of because one hand wasn’t aware necessarily of what the other was doing. There were a lot of assumptions made.

It was like–well you should have known that. You did it didn’t you? I told you remember? Did you send me an e-mail? Well no cause I thought I told you. Well you didn’t. Then people taking it upon themselves to just go do things without telling anyone else. Or if you told someone to do it and they didn’t do it and you get feedback that this didn’t get done or anything like that. There were just so many instances where people would try to help and provide opportunities but the opportunities were never capitalized. Can’t answer on why they weren’t capitalized on as sometimes you just scratched your head on that. You then reach a point where you don’t want to extend yourself because you’re risking one relationship for another that could not be acted off of.”

On TNA’s spending habits:

“Not enough consistency. You had one extreme in one direction and at the other without anything in the middle when it should be balanced. You should really have a balance of where you are. When you’re way up in one area that’s where you should be getting your revenue, most of your return. It was the complete opposite there (in TNA). It was just difficult to wrap your head around.”

On TNA trying to bring in bigger numbers for pay-per-views and attendances to satisfactory levels:

“That really depends on what you consider satisfactory. That’s part of the problem… An example would be going on the road, doing TV on the road. If we sell 2,000 tickets then we break even. So now the goal is to sell 2,000 tickets. But you’re in an arena that seats 5,000 or 10,000 but the mindset is gotta sell 2,000. And if you sell 2,000 that’s a success. That’s not a success. If you have 5,000 seats you want to sell 5,000 seats but when the mandate is gotta break even, gotta break even, gotta break even, so I’ve broke even…I’ve done my job instead of going beyond that and selling out and making money. In a nutshell that’s the mindset.”

Biggest changes he’d make in TNA:

“A. Would let people do their jobs and hold people accountable for doing their jobs. Try to reduce the bottleneck that exists because it goes through a couple of things before it gets done.”

On Dixie Carter being a money mark and if Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff were stringing her along:

“Well I don’t know if Dixie has the money to be a money mark. I think that Dixie is swayed easily and is gullible at times. I know Dixie would completely disagree with me but as an outsider looking in I feel she’s very gullible. It becomes silly when you hear okay I’m going to go over here and milk this person for all their worth because if you do that then what happens afterwards? You’re trying to turn something around and make something work that everyone says couldn’t work and to me that boosts your value. Eric (Bischoff) is a smart guy, Hulk (Hogan) is a smart guy, I don’t think they are just going to go in and go well f-uk let’s go milk this one and then we’ll go find another cash cow and milk that one. There aren’t that many cash cows out there but there are people out there who are willing to make the gamble if you can prove your worth and you can actually turn something around. I do disagree with the sentiment that Hulk and Eric are just milking her for everything she’s got. They both have reputations. Eric’s got a production company and doesn’t want the stink of well he failed over here. To the contrary as he wants to be able to say he we took sinking ship of a company and turned it around and say we did it. Have they done that yet? Remains to be seen…”

On Vince Ruso’s exit:

“I think Vince was tired. I think he was burned out. And I think in his mind it was just time to go. I don’t think he wanted to deal with it anymore and just burned out. They brought me in and it was like okay Bruce, you can referee this and make the decisions, make everybody play nice. It wasn’t that cut and dry or that simple.You really needed to look at business and figure out what’s right and who’s willing to put the time in to get it done. I think Vince was just burnt.”

On Hulk Hogan, Devon, RVD and Bobby Roode’s contracts expiring in 2013:

“Bobby Roode’s notice to renew was sent out. Whether it was a clerical error I have no idea. From my vantage point of where I was I had received every notification that it was done and everything was on track until Bobby called me after the fact and said nothing’s been done and we’re not on track. I’m like bulls–t we are and we start getting into it and then he becomes a he said she said type thing. It was incorrectly reported in the know as every week you’d make sure that everybody’s stuff was allegedly being sent out. Whether it was or not I can’t say as I’m not the person that sent it out. So I can’t say I put a stamp on it and sent it out or Fed Ex’d it but I can say I received confirmation from those that allegedly did. Beyond than that I can’t help you. Hulk Hogan’s had a auto renewal and it was done. That was another misconception on everyone’s part. With Devon his time was simply up and it was time to cut ties as everybody agreed on it. This was the first time around when eventually we brought him back in the Aces & Eights but everyone had agreed on it. It wasn’t a popular decision though but we asked him if he wanted to come back. RVD…That’s one that gets me to this day.

From my vantage point because I wasn’t in the office, I’m told it’s handled. I’m told everything is all good, everybody’s fine and it wasn’t handled, it wasn’t fine. I literally didn’t find out it wasn’t okay with Rob until probably a couple months ago when someone said hey Rob never got this. I’m thinking all along we got him because I remember when I re-negotiated with him and the last conversation I had with Rob he wanted to do reduced dates. Everything was going to be cool. The people that allegedly was suppose to take care of it never took care of it and never called back which was kind of a common theme. I don’t know if Rob was a big loss as he is a phenomenal worker but he wanted to work a limited schedule and for the money it’s like where do you invest that? The part that sucks is the way it was and was not handled. You don’t just not communicate and think it’s going to go away. Usually sh-t just gets worse when you do that.”

On his TNA departure:

“I was told by them that they wanted me to move to Nashville. For a number of personal reasons I couldn’t move to Nashville. I offered to come in and commute and do whatever I needed to do but I physically couldn’t be there. My family had to stay in Houston at that time and it was just the way it is. So we went back and fourth but I actually did some exploring to see if it could work with the family there. When I went back to them and said okay I will explore this but this is the time I need to get it done which was a minimum of 90 days for a lot of reasons, they told me I either needed to be there by the end of the week or we gotta move you to an independent contractor. So I said okay well what’s that deal and when they gave me the offer on the independent contractor it was–you know what? It was insulting, it was insulting. So I told them I couldn’t do it and made that decision. So I said okay so I’m fired if I don’t take the deal? They told me to talk to Dixie. At this point I was dealing with the CFO, and I called Dixie and never heard from her. That night it hit all the dirtsheets and when I work up the next morning it was all over my phone and e-mail so I thank them for their professionalism. It is what it is as they were cutting cost.

Could I have commuted? Yes but the mandate was you needed to live in Nashville and be there full-time. We don’t want you commuting so I said okay. If that’s the mandate then that’s something I just can’t do right now.”

On TNA failing to make a big positive change with talent like Jeff Hardy, Mick Foley, Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan and others in the promotion through the years.

“You have to invest in something you get a return out of. If you’re going to invest in television time and invest dollars in people then you want to get your return somehow. You get your return by having people at house shows, by getting them out in the public, by getting people to actually pay money to see them and not go to a theme park for free just to get from out of the heat and get some air conditioning. Oh yeah by the way I watched wrestling and cheered when the CHEER light came on. To actually get people to pay for your product is the key to this business and when you give so much away you downgrade the product. When it’s free it becomes why should I have to pay? If you’re giving it to me for free I don’t need to pay. That was the general philosophy.”

On X-division matches being mostly three way matches:

“That was a group decision. What’s the X-Division? Is it a Junior Heavyweight division? Abyss was champion at one point, Jeff Hardy, Samoa Joe, AJ Styles. I’ve asked this question for years while I was there and I got different answers. If we can’t explain what it is then how the hell is the audience suppose to know what differentiates this from everything else. You got Austin Aries, X-Division champion…so does that mean he can’t go for the World Heavyweight championship? Why not?

So if there’s a weight limit then make it a weight limit. But then there’s no weight limit so then there’s no limits. Is it a height limit or age limit? There’s no explanation to what the hell it is. And then they have matches where the wooden X is in the middle of the ring. The object of the match is to grab a wooden X, why? Just to watch guys dangle from the middle of the ring and possibly break their neck? Why? What’s the point? So the idea was okay at least let’s make it different from everything else that’s on the show. Otherwise, it’s just another match that’s labeled X-Division. So you make every match a title match and you put three people in it and when one person loses he’s out of contention and the other two will go on and it’s just a revolving competition.

At least it was something different. I don’t know if it’s a good idea or a bad idea but it was something to make it different otherwise it’s just two guys labeled X-Division that’s doing the same sh-t that everyone else is doing. Okay well they got these spectacular moves but yet there’s AJ Styles in the main event doing the same thing. So is he X-Division? We don’t want to label him X-Division, okay so what’s the X-Division? I defy anybody, anybody to tell me what it is cause nobody can. The people that came up with it can’t even tell me what it is. The subject would come up every 3-4 months and we’d argue.”

(Source: TNAinsider)