Angelina Love On How Dixie Carter Was A Disaster For TNA, Her Opinion Of Vince Russo
Angelina Love took some time to do an interview with Liam Alexander-Stewart of Inside The Ropes, and during the discussion, she opened up about what it was like working with Dixie Carter in TNA. Love didn't mince words when claiming it was Dixie's negotiations with Spike TV that lessened interest from the network.
"[Working with her was] like a disaster. And you know, coming from WWE and being devastated at being released and stuff like that, and then coming into TNA and then seeing a female president or whatever she was, you know what I mean? But [she] just was not ready, didn't have the knowledge. And she's the reason that we lost the Spike TV deal, like the Ultimate Fighter was on after us," Angelina said. "Velvet and I were going sitting third row ringside at UFC fights. Being on Spike TV is really, I think, what helped made a lot of us TNA people a household name, because we had that exposure.
"I think a lot of people thought she was just very impressionable, maybe kind of dumb, and they could take advantage of her and tell her like, hey, this should be done this way," she added. "And this should be done that way. And she was like, okay, okay. Okay. And she changed too, at some point, because she used to be wanting to know about people's families, and how are your kids and like, I had broken up with a boyfriend at the time and her and I talked in the bathroom for like 10 minutes and it was really nice. And, you know, that was like back in '08, and then come like 2010 – 2011 it was just like, she'd walk by people like they didn't even exist. And, you know, like the money that was being spent in the dumbest ways."
Angelina claims that Dixie was adamant about producing a reality show with Spike TV, but the network wasn't interested. She says that Dixie's attempts at getting "double" what Spike TV was offering is what really put the nail in the coffin of their negotiations.
"In my personal opinion, what I saw on Dixie is that she was so desperate to be just like Stephanie McMahon because she wanted like to have her own reality TV show. And it's like, who would f*cking watch that? Excuse my language, who would watch that? Who would watch a Dixie Carter reality show? You know what I mean?" Angelina said. "Nobody wanted to do that because they knew it would flop and like that was like a big contingency for her and you know this and that, then, you know, Spike TV was going to renew a contract with TNA and she wanted like double what they were offering and Spike TV was like, 'Are you crazy?' But God bless them and I don't blame them. They held their ground until they were like, 'Alright, well, no, we're done.'
"And then all of a sudden, you know, at TV we're filming and all of us are like, are we gonna have a job next month? Like what? Like, it was crazy. It was crazy vibes backstage when that happened, but that was all her."
A person Angelina does have fond memories of working with is Vince Russo. She appreciated Russo's tendency to give the talent some creative freedom with the storylines they were creating.
"I don't know what anybody's problem with Vince Russo is, you'll never hear a bad word about him come out of my mouth, Velvet would never either. He's the reason that we were able to go as far as we were with The Beautiful People, because he always gave us the ball and let us run with it. We could talk to him about anything. He was so personable, he was so easy to work with always open to ideas if we had promos, because you know, we were kind of known for like our backstage segments, too," Angelina said. "And talking on our promos, and if stuff was written down, and we thought we're like, 'I just don't see myself like being able to say this and make you believe because we were so obsessed with being believable.' He would just be like, 'Oh, yeah, make it your own. Just make sure you hit this bullet point, this bullet point, this bullet point.' And giving us you know, like the talent, that kind of creative freedom, that's when you get the best out of your talent, you know?
"So when it was Dutch Mantell, and Jeff Jarrett and Vince Russo like that 2007 to 2009, was our favorite time, and I wish that anybody who's ever been in TNA, especially people who were there like 2014 – 2017 to now," Angelina added. "I just wish everybody could have experienced 2007 and 2009 because they have no idea if they think they have it good now. That's great, but you've no idea how awesome it was. And to me, I quit in 2012 because of the BS. Prichard, Bischoff and Dixie. Hogan, I love Hogan,he was super cool to me. He was very helpful, very nice, Kurt Angle, a lot of people, but definitely the Prichard, Bischoff thing was what did it for me."
One storyline that never had a definitive ending was when Angelina was seemingly hypnotized by Winter, forcing her to turn on The Beautiful People. Angelina appreciates how this storyline helped her grow as a character, however, she thought it was premature to break up The Beautiful People.
"I am totally on both sides of the spectrum as far as like how I felt about that storyline. There was a couple of new girls that were coming into the company at the time, and they were kind of being paired off with girls that had already been there. So I think this was around maybe even the first time that like they were kind of testing breaking up The Beautiful People," she said. "And I remember just being confused as to why she was put with me as far as the new girls that were coming in, like that's just not in my head I would have paired it up. And the storyline – and it's nothing against Winter because she is a sweetheart and she was always very easy to deal with. But I didn't like the storyline. I didn't feel it was the right time. And that was just me personally, as a performer. I just didn't feel like it was the right time to be doing that with The Beautiful People any kind of separation thing. And once again, I just thought it was such an odd pairing.
"I didn't like it and plus there was no finish to it because once like Prichard and Bischoff came in, it was just like washed off the face of the earth like it never happened. And there was no conclusion to it at all. Yeah, so I hated that, obviously. But what I did like about it is it got a kind of like, forced me out of the box a little bit. So in wrestling, and you can see what the way that I wrestle, like you're taught to be like super animated," Angelina continued. "So it's just like, body parts everywhere, hair and your facials and stuff like that. And this character that I was playing, it was like nothing, nothing I was literally like, training myself to not blink. So there was a very natural thing we don't even know we do it you just do it. So I liked that it made me do that because, once again, I'm super animated. I had to train myself to not be at all, try to like be Undertaker zombie like, and that was very challenging but I liked that. That was cool.
"The challenge, you know, and everybody around me just knowing how I normally am and how I normally perform and how I normally look too. I also thought it was really cool that I was able to just basically take what was given to me and just like make what I could out of it. And a lot of people did like that storyline, I still get tweets about the storyline all the time. And honestly, that was Winter's entire thing she did in TNA. Like from the minute she started it was with me, and then whenever they released her she literally did nothing else. That was her entire run and TNA was that storyline."