Former TNA Employees Voice Their Thoughts On Russo [Archive] - satFIX.to

dishdude714

04-04-2012, 06:24 PM

RUDY CHARLES: I sat in on every creative meeting for three and a half years. I think people were quick to blame too much on Vince, it was a three member booking team. Ultimately Jeff had the veto power, but if Vince felt passionately about something or Dutch did they would explain their side of the story. Sometimes Jeff would say okay let’s try it that way, sometimes he’d say no I really think we really need to do it this way.

PETEY WILLIAMS: So Team Canada broke up and we did our first PPV in Detroit [Bound For Glory 2006]. So I was in a battle royal match, no big deal. I asked Vince, I had just moved to Orlando, I think he had just got the book again, I said hey Vince what have you got for me am I on TV’s [or] whatever, he’s like oh yeah stop by The Impact Zone and we’ll talk if we got time. I was like oh great, I just moved to Orlando and now it’s like I’m getting the cold shoulder, so I’m like whatever. So then I’m the last man in the 20 man Battle Royal, and I come out the place goes nuts. I get in the ring and I do the [Canadian] Destroyer, the place goes nuts. I get eliminated and I come to the back, I’m watching the next match and Vince comes up to me and he says hey Petey good stuff out there, he’s like hey man I have a great idea for you, listen stop by the Impact Zone on Monday or whatever it was tomorrow, he’s like I want to sit down I want to go through some ideas with you, and then he leaves. I’m like is that what it takes, he saw that I was over and that the fans liked me, and that’s when he tried to turn me into a United States character, you know he spent a lot of time with me trying to work on that character and it didn’t go well so he stopped fighting for the character and stuff. A year passes by and at the next Bound For Glory Vince was like you know Petey, we’ve got to come up with a character for you. It was kind of like this is it, if this doesn’t work I don’t know what to do with you. So then that’s when we came up with the Maple Leaf Muscle character, I pitched that to him and he loved it. He gave me some promo time and then he loved the backstage promo and he was like hey Petey listen, he’s like this character that you are doing back here in this promo, if you don’t portray the same character in the ring this isn’t going to work. I’m thinking like man I have a match tonight this is the only time I can do it, so I go out there it was like a four way match Scott Steiner was in there I had some interaction with him. I get backstage and Vince is standing there with a straight look on his face and he goes hey Petey, come here. I’m like oh ****, he goes why didn’t you tell me that you could do this earlier? Oh my god this is great, we could team you with Scotty down the line, and I’m like oh thank god.

SONJAY DUTT: They asked me what I wanted to do character wise and I presented them the character I always wanted to do that Bollywood superstar, I wanted to come to the ring and do a whole dance number like Bollywood movies and this and that and they told me that at the time Ron Killings was imitating Hollywood movies or something and it was too similar, I don’t know. They had some ideas for what they wanted to do with me and Russo personally asked me my opinion what I thought what I felt, from there the Guru [character] was born and we worked very closely from that point on.

CODY DEANER: [Russo] was very open, and very willing to talk with you. It was refreshing for me as a new talent coming into a big company. I’d never really worked extensively with a national company before and I was kind of expecting to have to pitch ideas to a middle man or have to go through somebody but that wasn’t the case. I would talk with Vince Russo himself backstage, I would correspond with him through e-mails. He was very approachable and very willing to be acceptable of creative ideas from talent. He was excellent to work with.

RUDY CHARLES: It’s funny because some of the stuff [internet fans] blamed Russo on was a Dutch idea or Jeff idea. You can’t win sometimes.

PETEY WILLIAMS: Russo used to make fun of [Steiner] right to his face. He’s like you know what we’re taking one take whatever you say, we’re taking it. [Scott] is like no no no, I don’t want to stumble with my words. Vince is like no man that’s good. He’s like you have all this pent up frustration you want to release it. [Scott] is like I don’t want to look stupid! [Vince] is like no this is good this is great.

CODY DEANER: We were handed, I don’t want to call it a script, we were handed a format a quote on quote, with what was the gist of whatever we were trying to accomplish but I was told specifically numerous times from Vince Russo himself that the things that were written down were not my lines I had to memorize and do. He wanted me to be myself, get the same ideas across but in a creative way in a way I thought Cody Deaner would do it. That was really nice because I’ve heard horror stories from the WWE, you know you’re handed a script. I’ve seen [WWE scripts] and I’ve been there because I’ve done work with the WWE and been backstage and seen guys being handed a script, and seeing them walking around backstage and memorizing their lines. TNA is not like that.

RUDY CHARLES: There was definitely some memorable stuff going on at that time, some good stuff I thought some of it wasn’t so good. I think for the most part, Vince’s philosophy I guess has always been kind of throwing an arrow and seeing what lands. I think a lot of stuff was pretty good back in those days, as the ratings were kind of going up and up at the time.