Bruce Prichard Shoots On TNA, Dixie Carter & Vince Russo
Former TNA head of creative and talent relations Bruce Prichard did a interview with RF video for a shoot DVD. Thanks to TNAinsider.com for the transcript, Check out the highlights down below:
His thoughts on TNA bringing in Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff:
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…
His thoughts on Vince Russo leaving TNA: “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.
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.”
What was the first changes he made in TNA?
“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”.
What is 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.”
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