WWE Hall Of Famer Is "Shocked" TNA Is Still In Business, Compares TNA Problems To WCW's Waning Years
On episode 140 of The Ross Report, WWE Hall Of Famer Jim Ross spoke with legendary Four Horsemen manager JJ Dillon. Among other things, Dillon shared his thoughts on TNA and the professional wrestling promotion's ongoing struggles.
During the interview, Dillon admitted that he is amazed that TNA is still in business and insinuated that TNA would have been shut down long ago if it was not treated as a wealthy person's vanity project.
"I don't know [whether TNA can be resurrected]. I've always said, that you only have one opportunity at a first impression and I am shocked that they are still in business after all this time. Somebody with a lot of money, and we can figure out pretty quickly who that was and why it was, wanted to make somebody in the family happy and they continued to fund it at a time when if it had been somewhere else, they would have pulled the plug on it, so I don't know. I don't know what you could do [to make it successful]. By making it a six-sided ring is not the answer. It's still just like movies, concerts, boxing, it's a talent-driven business and there's only so much talent out there."
Dillon went on to compare TNA's problems to those that plagued WCW insofar as the participants may have lost perspective and do not know when to call it quits.
"And then, if you've had that first impression, and that first impression wasn't a real, real good one, and a lot of what you read is the negativity of the people that were there, that left, that weren't happy, I certainly wouldn't want the job of being challenged to try to turn that thing around. It's kind of like the waning years of WCW. I, with Jerry Jarrett, was willing to work however many hours a day it took to try and make that thing work and I didn't want to face the fact that they got so bad that they couldn't be salvaged. And I'm fearful that maybe TNA is in a similar situation."
Dillon continued, "I hope I'm wrong because the more people that are wrestling [the better]. And it would be darn near impossible for a new company to come in and establish their footprint somewhere because you've got 300, 400, 500 channels, so how does somebody get the word out that there is a new product? And where are you going to get the talent from anyway? So it's to the advantage of the business to have Ring Of Honor, to have TNA stay in business because there is a place for guys to work."
Click here to check out the show. If you use any of the quotes from this article, please credit The Ross Report with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
Source: The Ross Report