So what was Dixie Carter's excuse for shooting a mystery angle that was purportedly to lead to the reformation of the Main Event Mafia only for Kevin Nash and Booker T to be signed under TNA's own nose by WWE to appear at their recent Royal Rumble PPV. To her credit Dixie Carter answered this awkward question in a Q&A session for the TNA website a few days ago:
Booker was not available for any MEM angle. Kevin Nash was under contract with TNA and was just recently released for reasons I will not disclose. From the beginning, if we did a MEM angle it would not have been with the original group and it would have been a short-term story to get to something else. To see "THEY" tune in TONIGHT on SPIKE. I'm pretty sure the fans will be happy. I know I am.
That Dixie wasn't interested in bringing back Booker for the "They" angle was certainly believable, given that he treated her promotion as a joke for much of the two years he was with TNA and left in a highly unprofessional manner, refusing to put over Matt Morgan and walking out on a house show match in Zurich when fans got a little too rowdy for his liking but were soon calmed down. However, it was hard to believe that Dixie had Nash under contract and willingly allowed him to jump to her main competitor, even though there had been rumours that he had indeed re-signed with the company at some point before his Royal Rumble appearance, especially as Dixie was disingenuous when she claimed that there had never been any plans to do a MEM reformation angle with the original group. Moreover, Dixie had killed her credibility last year by lying to her talent about the reasons for moving Impact back to Thursday nights and pretending that Paul Heyman was coming into TNA for the Victory Road PPV. Surely Dixie was just trying to save face here with her tall story about the circumstances behind Nash signing with WWE?
Amazingly, according to Dave Meltzer on his February 6th subscribers only Wrestling Observer Radio Show, she was actually telling the truth and had indeed signed Nash's contractual release from TNA on the Friday morning before the Royal Rumble. Dave had "no logical explanation" for this mind boggling situation, openly wondering why Dixie would bother signing anyone to a contract if she' s just going to let them out of it as soon as WWE comes calling. However, it fits her rep for being far too nice to ever be a successful wrestling promoter, she doesn't seem like a woman who would stand in the way of someone who had a better contract offer elsewhere, even if she had no legal obligation to do so. More importantly, with Dixie's mother Janice being in charge of additional funding, money being tight, the company clearly having lost a ton of money last year due to increasing their payroll for what soon turned out to be an ill fated Monday Night Massacre, and claims that even a top star like Ric Flair is owed money, Dixie might have been secretly relieved to have been able to offload a fat contract while doing the right thing by her veteran talent.
Meanwhile, Kevin Nash for his part has also been honest about his business relationship with Dixie Carter:
If I had of walked into an office and went to Dixie and said this is what I want to do and this is what will make me happy, Dixie would have signed off on it in 30 seconds.
If you're going to do dinner theatre in Poughkeepsie you're not going to get the same response as you do on broadway. Nothing against Poughkeepsie.
I could go back to TNA and wrestle for them tomorrow, they just can't put me in a video game - oh wait, they don't have one. They couldn't do a doll, well they could. They could do a doll with a likeness that Vince owns. They put out a doll of me with long brown hair. My contract with them said they would market my TNA likeness. I asked Terry Taylor to show me a picture of when i ever worked in TNA with long brown hair. Jakks said "Sorry it was a dye problem from China" ... you have to look at the doll. Jakks had a 2003 Ruthless Aggression Diesel doll and they slapped a Nash logo on it with the same Diesel head, and it was just bogus man.
For those of you who are interested to find out who "They" turned out to be, after TNA had to abort their original plans, watch the YouTube video after the jump.