Looking Back At A 2006 Email From Vince Russo To Dixie Carter
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Being that today has turned out to be a very slow news day, we thought it might be worth giving some context to the email from Vince Russo to Dixie Carter that some other wrestling sites picked up after I tweeted it early yesterday:
Here's 2006 Vince Russo emailing Dixie Carter about TNA needing a "an attractive, sexy, female executive" character: pic.twitter.com/yAr48ZVoRr
— David Bixenspan (@davidbix) May 29, 2015
Various emails surfaced publicly thanks to Konnan's lawsuit against TNA. The above is one of them because Russo cites the LAX stable as an asset to the company. Konnan's lawyer, Cary Ichter (the same lawyer behind the famous racial discrimination case against WCW) was arguing that TNA needed to comply with his requests for more emails in the discovery process and was using this and a number of other emails (all from the 2006 to 2007) to bolster his point. This one was sent October 12, 2006, a week before Kurt Angle's official TNA debut aired on Impact.
While far from the only interesting thing in the email, the highlighted portion sees Russo suggesting that TNA needs "an attractive, sexy, female executive" character as the figurehead authority figure on TV. There are a few ways to read this: He's just spitballing after his burial of Jim Cornette, he's actually pitching a completely new character like the ones Traci Brooks and Brooke Tessmacher/Adams later played, or he's trying to convince Dixie Carter that she should become a TV character. Since it was years before the other characters showed up or Carter became a regular presence on TV, it's hard to tell.
The other two things that have gotten the most attention are Russo's comments about Cornette and the note about Fathead wall decals. The Cornette stuff kind of speaks for itself: Either you agree or you disagree, the question is if you think Russo was being truthful about it not being personal. That said, he was absolutely right about trying to get in on the ground floor with Fathead. The company was just a few months only, which is probably why WWE turned them down. These days, there are plenty of WWE-licensed Fathead products