Kayfabe! – YouShoot Live with Dixie Carter

This is the first edition of Youshoot Live, instead of the usual Youshoot format, in the KC studio with Sean, the laptop, the games, the videos, etc. YSL takes place at a Lords of the Ring convention. Dixie isn’t just fielding questions sent in via email and message board. No. She takes them live and in person! Yet another example of KC being ahead of the curve when it comes to originality.

That said, Dixie is the perfect example of something being good in theory and not so much in execution. She’s really not all that outspoken, entertaining, or even really charismatic. You could say she’s the anti Jim Cornette. If you watch some of the better Youshoot selections, such as Cornette, New Jack, and Maria, they all come off like they’re generally just having fun. Dixie seems to be treating the interview like she’s at a major press conference fielding questions from esteemed members of the media, not “esteemed” members of the IWC. Then again, maybe that’s not quite a fair criticism for her, after all, Dixie isn’t an on-screen character or in-ring performer, so it may not be natural for her to be in this setting. A perfect example is when she’s asked if she was aware of the situation at Lockdown where the hard camera was blocked by the cage. She really didn’t seem to know anything about the issue, and more or less tap danced by saying that Lockdown is always difficult to shoot because of the cage.

The questions themselves aren’t anything that one wouldn’t expect, although there’s nothing too outlandish, aside from the usual video submissions by the gimmick fans, such as the Masked Shooter from Memphis and Rocky Balboa from Philadelphia. There’s a whole chapter on the DVD devoted to WCW in the year 2000 and if Dixie realizes just how much 2010 TNA has in common with it. She apparently doesn’t, because her answer is that she “understands” that the problems were due to the talent being selfish. Yeah, it had nothing to do with the so-called creative team at that point booking things that nobody wanted to see like David Arquette as WCW Champion and Goldberg’s heel turn. She also comments, a couple of different times, that although the ratings for TNA Impact on Mondays weren’t that impressive, that they set records overseas with the switch. I suppose that her lack of real understanding of everything that went wrong with WCW, somewhat speaks to her honesty.

Jim Cornette gets to ask the question that I bet KC got hundred of submissions of. Exactly why does Vince Russo have a job with TNA? Cornette is rather diplomatic himself, telling Dixie that he considers everything between them to be water under the bridge and not openly bashing Russo. Dixie’s answer is that Russo is a very polarizing figure (agreed) and that people either love him or hate him, and that’s what makes him successful. I’d agree with all of that, if she were talking about AJ Styles, Scott Hall, or the Pope. You know, a wrestler and an on-air talent. But she’s talking about an off-screen character. She does address the chants of “Fire Russo” and explains that the chant was always at something that he had no part in, and it got to the point that she threatened to fire someone the next time one of those chants broke out.

Dixie also addressed issues of drugs, health insurance, and Employee vs. Independent Contractor. She says that they’re very stringent with their drug testing and that she even tests herself, despite it being a waste of the money (sidenote: I wonder if Vince takes wellness tests?). She mentions that they do test for pot and there are heavy consequences for a test failure, which I find amusing considering who the TNA Champion is at the time of this writing. As far as health insurance goes, she says that TNA wrestlers do have some sort of “policy” for injuries, but doesn’t get specific. Finally, as contractors they can wrestle for anybody, except WWE, as long as scheduled don’t conflict. The only rule about working indy feds, and it’s by contract, is that they can’t participate on a DVD that will be sold in mass retail. Which is a rule stipulated by TNA’s DVD distributor, not by TNA directly.

There are a few interesting tidbits and stories from Dixie that make their way into the interview. One of the Luchadores who was involved in the World X Cup actually gave her his hotel room key. She doesn’t give any more details other than that though. She also retells the story from the TNA Year One DVD about how she and Jeff Jarrett were actually next door neighbors in Dallas. Dixie was also a wrestling fan in her youth and admitted to being a Hulkamaniac. But those are more the exception and not the rule with this sort of thing. The best thing that came out of her mouth is her flat out admitting that the six sided ring was a pure gimmick strictly to get TNA some attention. All the talk about how the X-Division guys could use it to fly higher and jump further was all total bullshit. But, things like that are more the exception and not the rule. The most amusing thing of the whole DVD is when Sean reads a quote from Vince McMahon (the one where he called TNA Tawdry) and does a hilarious impression of him, that right there is more amusing that anything out of Dixie.