The First Lady Of Wrestling: Interview with Dixie Carter (Issue 51)

FSM: Now, we’ve heard Vince Russo is someone that you personally admire, but he very much splits public opinion (mainly among internet fans). What is it about his work that you enjoy?
Dixie Carter: I think people blame Vince Russo for so much of what happened at WCW, but they really don’t have the true story. Vince is a brilliant writer, but the Vince Russo of today is a much different human being than the Vince Russo of WCW days, and I definitely have the better man. But it’s not just about Vince, quite honestly… I have a handful of guys on our roster who were probably very, very different people when they worked for other companies. And even though they might have been at the height of their careers at that time, I tell them all the time, “I wouldn’t trade who you were then, even though you might be more popular, for who you are today, because you’re a better person, a better man, you’re in this for the right reasons”. To me, that’s more important than anything else.

Do you think you have a healthy balance on the roster between people who have that experience and the younger guys coming up?
I do, and I feel that we’ve made huge strides this year in breaking talent out. Look at the British Invasion – we’ve only been working with them for less than half a year, but look how far they’ve come! Desmond Wolfe, he’s just been with us for a few months and is operating at the very highest level within our company. Beer Money, AJ Styles, Chris Daniels’ rebirth, the Knockouts division, Hernandez and Matt Morgan… I really feel we’ve made giant strides in breaking out new talent who will be the future of our company.

When people criticise the balance, do they understand how difficult it is to establish an international brand in 2009?
I think for every person who criticises one thing, there may be two people who like that thing. There’s nobody that will love everything though. The more passionate, hardcore fans, there’s a common theme in what they want: they want more wrestling, they want the new guys and things such as that. But your broader audience, they may want more of the established stars and they love the character development parts. I think it has to be a blunt. Will we satisfy everybody all the time? Absolutely not. But our goal has got to be to satisfy people much more than not. And if we achieve that, we’ll continue to grow.
What we have to do is make the young guys compelling and exciting for the guys who like the established stars, while also making the established stars hip, cool and edgy enough and the storylines good enough that the people who just want the young guys to at least have respect for what they’re trying to do. From an internal standpoint, the Mick Foleys, Scott Steiners and Stings of the world, they’ve been there to develop the younger stars and that’s what people don’t understand. That’s where I look at it from a completely different perspective. They’re bringing in eyeballs on the product, but they’re helping building the next generation of talent.

Let’s change tack for a moment – a few months ago, TNA broadcast a ‘pep’ talk that you had backstage with the entire roster and it was met with a lot of criticism. Do you still stand by televising that or looking back, would you have handled it differently?
What people don’t understand is that I have a great relationship with our talent. The way they walked out of that meeting, I think was completely different of people’s perception of how they were taking it. All I was doing in that meeting was just telling them that change was coming. I said, “You have to be prepared for it. But I’m not asking you to do anything that I’m not prepared to do, we all have to take it up a notch and I expect that of you. I had that same conversation with the entire company. That’s my job, in my position, to set a tone. Change is okay and I understand some of you are scared by that, but at the same time I’m telling you we have to do that to move forward”. One bad apple can spoil an entire bunch… WCW is the biggest proof of that. You can have one bad apple and suddenly it turns to five, which turns to ten.
We have to be on the same team. If I’ve got publicity questioning creative, creative questioning marketing or this talent questioning what this talent is getting paid… that’s where as a head of a company, it’s your job to keep everybody focused and their eye on the ball. Sure, a chunk of guys on my roster are part of the reason that WCW did fall apart; the demands, the contracts, the “Oh, I can’t perform – I’ve got a hang-nail on my toe”. That’s not for the right reason. That doesn’t help the company, it’s not good for the fans, and it’s not good for the talent. That will not happen under my reign. If I’m not pulling that, then no-one else can pull it.

So would you put WCW’s failure down to how the guys down there were allowed to cultivate this environment by bad management?
To be honest, I don’t know it well enough. I’m different from most people… I won’t criticise something without having all the facts and I don’t have all the facts. All I can do is try and learn from the facts I do have, and try not to repeat those mistakes. One great thing for having Eric Bischoff on the team is that he’s privy to a lot of very useful information, what worked and what didn’t work. I shouldn’t have to fail at something for somebody to hit me over the head and tell me that it won’t work again. If I can learn by someone else’s mistakes, then I need to do that and that’s what we’ve always tried to do: minimise your risks.
In the past we’ve grown steadily – we haven’t had the influx of money that WCW or WWE has had. We’ve had to grow this company literally one fan at a time, and I think we have the greatest wrestling fans of any organisation I think that’s ever been out there. They’ve been passionate, they’ve been our ambassadors, they went out and spread the word because we haven’t had the dollars to go out there and do it through traditional means such as million dollar ad campaigns. We’ve had to put all our money into our talent, into our production, just to keep those things going. However, now is the time to take more risk and see if we can accelerate this process of success. But we aren’t going to be stupid about it and we aren’t going to put the company at risk at any time.

Speaking of the fans, TNA is especially popular within foreign markets. What do you think it is that appeals to fans outside of the United States?
I think that our product is different from our competitor and parts of the world embrace that difference more than others. The UK is one of those places where they do embrace fantastic wrestling. That has been one thing in particular. The other thing is, we have multiple shows. So in the United States, we have two hours, of which out of that 120 minutes, we only have 84 minutes of programming, In that 84 minutes, that’s our only means (besides the people who pay for a pay-per-view) of growing our brand. In other countries though, we have multiple shows and I think additional programming has helped us. That’s a goal for this year. In the past we’ve been tied to a Spike contract where we’ve been exclusive to them, and I think you’ll see TNA on other networks, as well as more programming on Spike in the near future, so that’s gonna help us domestically.
But in the UK I think they’ve appreciated the fact that we do care about our fans. When you come to a show, it’s a very personal experience – you’re going to get to meet people. It’s going to be people not just going through the motions of another payday, but they’re really there to make a serious statement that they appreciate those fans spending their hard-earned money to come and support us. On our first tour over there, the fans said, “It’s so small and intimate, how are you going to grow this and not lose that?” Honestly, it’s a huge challenge for us not to lose that intimacy and still be able to sell 7,000 tickets. But I think we’ve done that, I think it’s because you see the effort that goes on from the starting bell to the last arm being raised at the end of the night. You see people out there signing autographs, you see the fan interactions we have.

Is there any hope for the UK fans of running a TNA PPV from these shores?
It’s not that we don’t want to - we’re working very hard to have one from over there – but we’ve had some limitations with scheduling, with television partners and things. But I will tell you this: that’s my number one goal, to have a PPV over there, but it’s not happened yet.
However, we are going to start making our pay-per-views available live to the UK, streaming them online. We’ve had so many people complain about having to wait so long, avoiding the spoilers and everything else. We’ve just made the decision because there are so many people worldwide who can’t see our PPVs. As far as having a PPV come from there, this might help us in that situation.

Aside from the success of the 4 January show then, have you got any other personal moments throughout TNA’s history that your especially proud of?
Oh, there are so many! Both UK tours have been incredibly meaningful to me on so many levels. The fans are so passionate and know their wrestling so well. How much they’ve embraced the company, and me personally, has been very, very special.
Sting has been too. Not just signing him the first time - he was only going to work with us for one year. But I’ve used all of my persuasive powers for two or three years since that first contract to keep him a part of TNA. And every year he says yes… that means a lot to me, because I know how much the fans love him, and how important he is to TNA. He came to us and when he left WCW he never chose to work for another company before TNA, and I just think that’s a great statement. The great thing is, we’re blessed with so much success and so many great memories of special times, and they keep coming and topping themselves every couple of months.

So can you tell both the fans (and those who don’t follow TNA) what to expect from the company in 2010?
I think the 4 January show… it was our first show of the year, and it was our firing shot for 2010. There are going to be a lot of surprises, a lot of excitement. We’re going to take our game up. We haven’t been perfect by any means, but we’re going to strive harder this year than ever to take this company to another level, to make the fans as excited an passionate as they ever have been in their lives.

Can we expect some more big names on the horizon then…?
Yes! [Laughs] Yes…