TNA Wrestling President, Dixie Carter, is featured in a recent interview with the Tennessean, where she comments on her role overseeing TNA Wrestling, direct competition with the WWE, how the company were affected during the recession, the next trend in professional wrestling, how TNA Wrestling finds it’s talent and other subjects.

Regarding her role as the President of TNA Wrestling, Dixie noted that the company are not just a professional wrestling company anymore, noting that they do their own booking, their own production and their own public relations and that they are a licensing company, specifically noting that the company has toys, halloween costumes, trading cards, everything and are a company that make their own entrance music and all of those things are sold and promoted around the world, whilst they do more than 500 hours of TV per year. Dixie noted that she didn’t originally come to Nashville, Tennessee to buy TNA Wrestling and like a bad country song, she picked up a U-Haul and moved to the city to be in the music business and started her own company. Dixie noted that she was in the city in the 1990’s when things were on fire in the city and that music is still strong in TNA Wrestling, noting that the CEO of the company is a former Sony executive and that a lot of other people in the company have music in their background also.

On direct competition from the WWE, the company challenging themselves to do better and how tough it is to be in this business in 2011, Dixie noted that when a company first starts out, you have to do whatever you can to get into the business and then once you’re established, you spend a lot of time getting out of the bad contracts that got you into the business including deals with companies, bad partnerships or licensing deals and that the company are still working through some of those as they begin to find their footing. Dixie noted that on competition from the WWE, she doesn’t care who you are, from a company standpoint, competition makes you better and that’s why there is a Lowe’s across the street from every Home Depot, the reason a CVS is across the road from a Walgreens and so forth and noted that she believes TNA Wrestling has actually made WWE better, just as the WWE has done for them. Dixie then noted that it is tough to be in this business in 2011, due to the fact that it’s a challenging time for the television industry as advertising dollars are dwindling, however it’s the best time to focus on professional wrestling fans and is one of the reasons that she is in the crowds at events shaking hands, hugging people, holding babies and saying “Thank You For Being Here.” Dixie noted that TNA Wrestling has grown one fan at a time and that she’s been there as a small-business startup, so she knows what it’s like and TNA Wrestling have beat those odds.

The full interview is available at this link.