This past Saturday night during the WSU Breaking Barriers 2 Internet pay per view, the company turned a lot of heads when it was announced that TNA President Dixie Carter will be inducted into the WSU Hall of Fame next March.
Speaking for the first time on the decision to induct Carter, WSU promoter Sean McCaffrey told us last night on the premiere episode of DD360:
How many female promoters are out there? How many female promoters have there been? There haven’t been many. I can only name two or three off the top of my head. Dixie Carter, no matter what you want to say about TNA, stood the test of time. She gives people jobs. I don’t necessarily agree with the way they do things there [in TNA], but the fact is, she’s a female promoter, she’s keeping wrestling alive. If it wasn’t for her, there’d only be one national company. She’s giving people a place to work. She’s giving wrestling fans an alternative, if you want it. Whatever you want to say about TNA, she’s very successful as far as keeping her company alive for 10 years. I mean, how many times have we heard, “Oh TNA, is going to go out of business?” They’re still kicking and as a female promoter in a male-dominated world, she’s still up there. She’s head above shoulders.
When probed further about whether this could be a somewhat political move in order to have a better working relationship with TNA, and perhaps have more access to their talent, McCaffrey is adamant that this is not why WSU is inducting Carter.
He says:
Whether we have a good relationship with TNA or not, we’re not going to use their people no matter what. We don’t have it said in writing that we can’t use their people, we just won’t use them. For us, we’re storyline based and and we can’t book people regularly with them. They could pull people off your shows. Just going back to 2008, we had all these plans for Nikki Roxx when she was our champion, and then TNA pulled her off our shows because they had house show dates that they gave her a week before. So you can’t do your long term booking with them. And also, they jack the prices up so much with them [the talent] that it’s not financially profitable. Also, with the iPPVs and and now we have the new national DVD that was released this week, you can’t have their talent on your national stuff, so we couldn’t use them anyway. So, that was not a factor when it came to this decision.
Regarding whether Dixie will be in Deer Park, New York for the Hall of Fame induction on March 3rd, 2012, Sean adds:
She knows about it. We don’t know if she’ll be there as of right now. If she shows up, she shows up. If she doesn’t, she doesn’t. I guess the one thing I do want to make clear is that, some people actually emailed us this too, “Oh, this is a publicity stunt, they’re going to bury her.” We’re not going to bury her. There’s not gonna be a swerve. If she’s there, she’s there. If she’s not, she’s not. We’re still inducting her in. As regards to the Hall of Fame, we’re going to do it in a classy manner. If she shows up, even better. If she doesn’t, we’ll send her plaque in the mail.
Current TNA Knockout and former Knockouts Champion, Tara aka Lisa Marie Varon, also weighed in Dixie’s induction. Speaking to us on DD360 last night, Tara said that the induction is deserved.
Tara says:
I think it’s deserved. I mean, the first female promoter, right? Is that correct? And a successful [one], launching off this huge show. I’m supportive of it.
The former Knockouts Champion continues:
It was very refreshing when I came over to TNA, especially having a woman as a boss. She knew the importance of our female segments on the show. When I came over, there was like two to three women’s segments on the show and there was one show that was all girls. I’ll be honest, I was taken aback. I was like, “Oh, my gosh!” When I first got there, I had three segments on the show — a backstage segment, me walking in the back and then a match in the ring — and I wasn’t used to that. I was like, “Holy moly, this is insane!” It was an awesome feeling. I think that comes from having a female as a boss and she knew as women being very empowered female athletes that could be sexy and be great wrestlers, and she appreciates that we are good athletes.
And in person, she’s a really cool person. Very easy to talk to. Most of the time when she comes backstage, I’m at work. We land the day of the show and we go there and it’s like, hustle, hustle, hustle. We’re all pretty busy but she always takes the time to say hello and see how we’re doing. If she hears of any problems, if we have any miscommunication in the lockerroom, like our girls’ lockerroom, she’ll have a meeting and make sure that we’re all on the same page, so it’s nice.
