Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I closed the chapter, I'll say, in the book with TNA in 2013, literally within, it was under 30 days - it was 20, 25 days - I was already into a production agreement with a production company based out of Los Angeles.
Whether it's a song you write or a television show or a movie or professional wrestling, there are three components to IP law. There is publishing, there are writers, and there are performers. The publisher is always the owner.
When WWF and WCW came along, they weren't the only game in town, but to make a good living, you had to work for one of the two organizations. Without a true Number Two, there is no such thing as a Number One. You're just it; you're just there.
To look back and reflect on the career and sort of look at the seasons of it before I got to the WWF, working the territories and Japan and Texas, Puerto Rico, and then the WWF and WCW, then obviously the TNA years - it's been quite a journey, I'll say that.
I worked seven years in territories in Japan and Puerto Rico and worked my way up to the main events on those cards, then went to the WWF and spent a little while there before I got into the Intercontinental run and a main event runs with Shawn Michaels and Kevin Nash.
Vince McMahon - he's third generation, and his enormous empire, he ran it much like the territories. The buck stopped with him; he made the decisions. That's how a company should be run. Feast or famine, right or wrong, the WWE is driven off his decision making and always has been.
In my early formative years, back in the territory days, if a guy didn't get along for whatever reason or didn't get over or things didn't work out, or he just wanted to relocate, he had other territories to go to to make, if not the same amount of money, substantially more or less.
If I had to give my advice to someone else starting the business, my standard answer is so, so true, and that's to learn the fundamental basics of this business. If you don't have a fundamental base to build upon, your house will fall, and you will never truly achieve the status you desire.
During intermission, we reward the loudest, rowdiest fans with backstage passes, so we have a meet-and-greet, and then, at the end of the night, we give all the fans an opportunity to actually get up in the ring and have their picture taken with a TNA star. So we're very, very fan interactive.
Our product, our brand of wrestling fits a videogame better than any other form of wrestling. From our X-Division to our signature matches, just the whole gaming nation, a whole generation of people out there are going to experience TNA for the first time, so we're really looking to do some creative, innovative things with our game.