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The following trailer has been released by Wrestle Talk TV in the UK. Vince Russo has shied away from answering these kinds of questions in the past (and actually pulled out of an interview with our own Mike Johnson when it was made clear softballs would not be lobbed his way). Russo has instead gone to people that wouldn't ask him the hard questions. As you will see by this trailer, that is not the case in this interview.
That part of the interview will air next week, and I will be checking it out for sure. This week he talked about Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan coming in to TNA. That one is not as interesting to me.
Martin H has sent along this recap of the entire piece, which can be seen by clicking here.
Vince Russo was a guest on "WrestleTalk TV" that aired on Challenge TV this past Sunday February 1.
In the studio, Russo said he admired how CM Punk walked up to Vince McMahon and quit. He said if someone is unhappy in the workplace, you should not do anything in life if you're not happy. He said the locker room would be affected if there are many people unhappy in the workplace.
Russo said wrestling fans would never tune out of wrestling, but the casual fan that WWE doesn't have - if those fans had to make a choice of wrestling or UFC, they may choose UFC over wrestling.
Russo on CM Punk in UFC. He said CM will be 37-38 when he fights. He won't be a "young spring chicken" and will be getting in there with people that are 25-26 in the prime of their career who have done nothing but train to be UFC fighters. Russo referred to the Colt Cabana podcast and said Punk will not be going into the UFC fights at 100%. Combining his age and condition (being injured in the past) - those two things concern Vince.
Sit-down interview with host Ben Spindler:
Russo on Dixie Carter hiring Hogan and Bischoff:
"Everything falls fully on the shoulder of Dixie Carter. There was a time when I was writing for Jeff [Jarrett]. Literally overnight, this Karen Angle/Kurt Angle/Jeff Jarrett thing blows up. I was on vacation and get an absolute call from Dixie out of panic 'Jeff's being sent home. We need you to write our television'. At that point, it was just me and Matt Conway. From a financial point-of-view, the best thing for the company at the time is we need to build this younger talent. Dixie kept trying to bring in the big names. TNA didn't have a lot of money. So, I knew we had to start developing the homegrown talent: AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Eric Young, Bobby Roode - all those guys. Literally, for two months, that was all we were doing.
Dixie never told me about Eric and Hulk. While I'm writing and trying to get the company where it needs to be, behind my back, she was negotiating with Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan. She had every right to do that. It's her company. But I don't think she should have did it the way she did. We are going in this direction. You're bringing in Hogan and Bischoff. I could have told you that they weren't going to go in that direction. They were immediately going to take a left turn, call this guy, this guy, this guy, bring them all in and all your homegrown talent will be sitting at the back of the bus. I could have told you that from the get-go. She never told me about Hogan and Bischoff until they were hired. I said 'Okay, it's your company'.
Sure enough, in they come. We were going this way. It was a sharp left to the point where Eric Bischoff basically saying in a creative meeting 'TNA did not exist before we came here. Everything you've done never even happened before we came here. TNA starts today' and I just sat back and thought 'Okay, really? The seven years that everybody's been busting their butts here with sweat and giving their blood. None of that mattered? Okay, Eric? What do you want to do?'"
Russo's role in TNA 2010 when Hogan and Bischoff were there:
"It was pitched to me at the beginning that 'Okay Vince. You're head of creative. Your job doesn't change. Eric is going to be a part of creative with the storylines concerning Hulk.' I said, 'Okay, no problem'. All of a sudden, Eric is sitting in for the entire creative sessions. All of a sudden, Eric is part of the creative team. Never told to me by Dixie Carter. It just happened. It was myself, Eric Bischoff, Ed Ferrara and Matt Conway at the time."
Russo on Bischoff possibly being superior to him in the creative meetings:
"I didn't think he was superior to me. I knew that we had two different ideas of where the company needed to go. I knew that and I knew that was going to be an issue and a problem. I think it was."
Russo on whether Hogan or Bischoff were good or bad for TNA:
"I think they were a bad thing and I'll tell you why. And it has nothing to do with Hogan and Bischoff. If anyone were to take a pot-shot at Hogan and Bischoff and say 'Hogan and Bischoff killed TNA', it would be Vince Russo to repay all the people that told me I killed WCW. That was not the case at all. When Hulk and Eric came into the company, they really thought they were going to turn the company around. They came from WCW when they had an endless bank account. I tried to explain to Eric early on that 'You're not going to be able to do the things you want to do'
...When you're working for WWE and TNA, you're working for two different companies based on finances alone. Here's a perfect example: when we were doing the WCW invasion [by WWF], for the hell of it, I wrote on the show format 'DX drives rocket launcher up to [WCW] building' never in a million years thinking they would get a rocket launcher. I wrote that to entertain myself to see what the prop guys come up with. Next thing I know, DX is driving up in a rocket launcher. We bought a $50,000 sports car to fill up with cement. That stuff makes good TV. If you don't understand that and don't know the difference between WWE and TNA, and expect ratings to be the same or close, you're absolutely out of your mind.
Eric and Hulk didn't know TNA and felt they could come in and turn the company around. They worked as hard as everybody. They were in the trenches and were really trying. In order to afford them, because TNA didn't have a lot of money. Money had to come from other departments. All of a sudden, you have Hogan and Bischoff which is great. Now you don't have money to promote, advertise, brand because you used that money to pay for their salaries. At the end of the day, it's a catch-22. What good is it to have those guys if you don't have the money to promote that they are a part of the company?"
Next week, WrestleTalk TV is advertised as "The Trial of Vince Russo" where host Ben Spindler really grills him on being largely responsible for losing $62 million in 2000 for WCW, devaluing the title by putting it on himself and David Arquette and much more. Vince says Ben is doing this just for the interview and cannot really be believing what he is saying.
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