Al Snow On How TNA Can Continue To Rebuild Their Image, ECW’s Biggest Star

Al Snow recently spoke with Sport’s Illustrated’s Extra Mustard blog about working as a producer for TNA and more. You can check out the full interview here along with a few highlights below.

How TNA can rebuild their image: “TNA is on the right track. They’re bringing in new and different talent, and that’s the biggest thing. Everyone was talking about Cody Rhodes leaving WWE and how that was terrible, but it’s not at all. You need to put yourself in a position where you can leave on your terms. I recommend talent if I see somebody out there that I think can do business and do what a wrestler’s job really is.”

“There is a lot of misunderstanding over a wrestler’s job–a wrestler’s job is not to wrestle. A wrestler’s job is much like a movie actor, and it’s the hardest job you can do. A wrestler has to motivate people to leave their comfortable chair in their house, drive to a building, pay a significant amount of money to sit in an uncomfortable chair around people they don’t want to sit around, to watch you do your job. That’s a tough, tough job to do.”

If he’s surprised that Paul Heyman is ECW’s biggest star: “Not at all, not one bit. Paul Heyman was ECW. Paul Heyman manufactured and created ECW, and Paul is a master of reinventing himself–that’s how he has lasted as long as he has. You only serve one of two purposes in professional wrestling. Unlike any other form of entertainment, there is no third option. You’re either the thing that sells tickets, and that’s the thing that motivated everyone to show up at the building that night or tune in on television or buy that pay per view, or you are one of the things that helped that thing sell tickets, motivate people to watch the television show, etc. There is no third option, and Paul E. has been able to adeptly function in those two roles for his entire career.”