NWA Television champion Elijah “Pope” Burke recently appeared on the Slasher Scotty podcast to discuss the key differences between WWE Chairman Vince McMahon and former TNA owner Dixie Carter, two promoters that Burke worked under in the past. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
How McMahon and Carter differed from one another:
Dixie was different for a lot of reasons. One, because she’s Dixie and she wasn’t Vince. She was different because she was a woman and Vince is obviously a man. Now, that is not being sexist, but Vince just ruled his promotion and everything that he did with an iron fist. Dixie dealt with things more from being a compassionate, personable type dealing with her folk. So while everything ran through Vince from the sound, the music, the lighting, to the pyrotechnics, all that ran through Vince. Whereas with Dixie, that may not and certainly wasn’t the case, but the difference and the atmosphere of both companies were reflective of its leaders and so with Vince, you know, there was a lot of walking on eggshells. With Dixie and the environment that she had set up, more of a family atmosphere, it was just laid back [and] it was cool and the camaraderie of the locker room in TNA was one that was just amazing.
How the NWA reminds him of the early TNA days:
NWA, as I just spoke highly of the camaraderie in the locker room that was in TNA, is very reminiscent of that early TNA that I was a part of because of the camaraderie and The Little Engine That Could mentality we’re all of these guys just sort of put together to reinvent and help bring NWA back to a certain prominent of sorts and to put out a product that is so uniquely different from everything that is going on in the world of wrestling. So uniquely different is the NWA product because it is a throwback to what wrestling was, obviously, with the studio format and just going out there and presenting wrestling in its purest form. The guys go out there and cut their promos and there’s no script and just all that magic that made the NWA what it was but with the new school feel to it as well. It’s just a great thing and again, the locker room, the leadership, Billy Corgan, and everybody is just a machine that’s working together. Like I said, ‘The Little Engine That Could,’ we’re trying to put out something that’s going to stand the test of time.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)