Bully Ray & Tommy Dreamer Discuss Relationship Between WWE & TNA

The difficulty in booking wrestling crossovers is that no company wants to appear weaker. What "weaker" looks like is subjective, but on "Busted Open Radio," Bully Ray and Tommy Dreamer assessed how the handling of talent involved in the current "WWE NXT"/TNA agreement was impacting both brands. Bully said he's not a huge fan of how WWE has featured TNA talent, but it doesn't mean it hasn't been worthwhile for TNA.

"60-40 in 'NXT's favor," Bully said. "And I think that's good for TNA. Because it's 'NXT,' the bigger company, allowing TNA, the smaller company, to play in their sandbox. And if you can play in their sandbox, and you're getting 40% of the shine, I think that's really good. Because it would be very easy for TNA to come into 'NXT' territory and 'NXT' basically say, 'Hey, this is the way we're doing it whether you like it or not.' ... but I think 'NXT,' I think Triple H, the powers-that-be, are being very gracious." Bully said one minor way 'NXT' is doing a better job protecting their talent is by not showing footage of their stars losing on TNA programming. TNA, conversely, rolled the tape of NXT Women's Champion Roxanne Perez beating TNA Knockouts Champion Jordynne Grace on theirs.

"These are different ways of taking care of your talent," Dreamer said. "Because you're not gonna say, 'Hey, we lost the Super Bowl' ... when they review the losers, what do they do? 'Man, when we landed, we had 40,000 people at the airport celebrating us, celebrating what a game we had.'" Many within the industry have lauded the agreement as beneficial to both parties. And Dreamer acknowledged TNA's improved ratings since it began. "The ratings [for TNA] were the highest they've been for a long time," Dreamer said. "I pay no attention to that stuff ... but I know networks do."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Busted Open Radio" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.