In 2010 Dixie Carter probably had her last real chance of making her company relevant and successful. She could have hired two of the greatest wrestling minds in the history of the business, and yet she failed to bring in either one. Jim Ross and Paul Heyman were on the outs with WWE at the time, and Dixie approached both of them to join TNA. Heyman wanted full creative control and to be able to hire and fire any talent he wanted to. He was going to cut the budget, get rid of most of their 40-year-old and up wrestlers, and he wanted a small piece of the ownership. Essentially, he wanted to be the companys Dana White. Dixie was uncomfortable with these demands and passed. Ross met with Dixie, and she gave him a low-ball offer to join the company. Apparently she must have been satisfied with the work of Mike Tenay, instead of possibly the greatest wrestling announcer of all time. Perhaps she wasn't aware that Ross was also the architect behind the WWF Attitude Eras roster. He could have assembled her a new roster with new and exciting talent, instead of letting them all sign developmental deals with WWE. Dixie decided to go with Hogan and Bischoff as part of her inner circle. Yes, Heyman went out of business with ECW, but as he recently revealed in an interview with Steve Austin, he only lost a couple million dollars during the entire run. Thats a minor fraction of what TNA has lost in since its inception. Heyman was also the victim of having nearly all of his best wrestlers stolen by WWF and ECW. With actual money behind him, who knows what he could have done? At the very least, Dixie could have kept Heyman away from WWE where he's cutting the best promos in all of wrestling. Ross and Heyman know the history of the wrestling business better than anyone in WWE, including Vince McMahon. Sure, they probably wouldnt have overtaken their former employer, but you can imagine they would have produced strong enough ratings to not have been cancelled by Spike TV.
As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at."
Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week.
Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com
