Dave Lagana Becomes TNA's Director of Creative Writing

[Uncle Sam]

Thank You…

I’ve been very thankful for wrestling since 1985. If you’re reading this site, you’re like me – a fan. I would hope after having read my blogs or listened to my podcast, you know the depth I really love wrestling. From being a kid as a hobby, as a teenager as a passion, into my adulthood where it became my job, I’ve always wanted wrestling in my life. That will never change.

Ring of Honor Wrestling came into my life at a time when I didn’t know if I’d ever work in wrestling again. If it wasn’t for Dave Marquez introducing me to Adam Pearce who introduced me to Cary Silkin, I wouldn’t be typing this today. It was the confidence they put in my abilities which lead to me being hired to produce the ROH on HDNet TV show. There I got to learn an entire new skill set beyond writing from Darrell Ewalt, Andrew Simon, and Adam Swift. I got to share my passion of wrestling with Scott Ferrier and Andy Edwards on a weekly basis. I even got to help Dave Prazak endure the slapping of porpoises. I’m amazingly proud of how that show turned out over the two years.

Life is about evolving. Ring of Honor gave me the opportunity to learn an amazing new skill set – social media. I’ve had an amazing time engaging wrestling fans over the last two years via Facebook and Twitter for the company. Every message sent, I read, every question that could be answered was. Wrestling fans have an amazing passion and varying opinions. That discussion is what fuels this business and what I find great about social media. Companies can talk about “getting in the conversation” but if you’re not in the conversation yourself, you’re simply broadcasting and not engaging.

Ring of Honor Wrestling under the ownership of Sinclair Broadcasting is the right step forward for pro wrestling. Joe Koff is an amazing businessman and salesman to lead the business end of the company into the future. Gary Juster will be bring ROH to new cities and great venues. I’m proud to have worked and learned wrestling from Jim Cornette and Hunter Johnston. The future of that TV program, live events and pay per views will amaze you at how great wrestling can be. I’m proud of my three years with ROH and know that they will make you proud to be a wrestling fan.

I leave Ring of Honor Wrestling to tackle new challenges. I’ve accepted a position as Director of Creative Writing with TNA Wrestling. My duties will be to focus solely on the development of new wrestling shows beyond the Impact Wrestling show. I’m excited to see what the future holds and thank everyone for the support over not only the last nine months of this site but through my entire career.

Sincerely,

David Lagana
@Lagana

This gentlemen, I'm told, was fired from the WWE for leaking stuff to Meltzer. Apparently, "They gave him some bullshit story about how Mae Young wanted to wrestle Stephanie's first daughter on her 16th birthday. The story showed up in the Observer and they shitcanned him."

 

[Harthan]

I like his site, always a lot of good content there. Seems like the kind of guy who really loves the business. He's in a pretty meaningless job, though, considering that TNA has been trying to develop new content for the last 5 years and hasn't gone anywhere mostly because of the fact that they don't have any kind of attention span whatsoever. Maybe Lagana can persuade them to bring back Reaction, which was probably the best idea anyone in TNA has had for the last two years.

 

[The Dragon Saga]

Said it in another thread, and I think it's a good signing. He speaks a lot of sense and has a lot of knowledge when it comes to pro-wrestling. He is also very interactive with the IWC through his website, his articles for other websites and his twitter - he may see things a bit differently to others who believe in Eric Bischoff's "10 percenter's" crap.

And if Paul Heyman wanted to bring him in when he was negotiating with TNA, then I for one; as someone who stood behind Heyman's vision for TNA am happy to see someone who Paul trusted come into TNA.

 

[Remy LaCroix]

Hmmmmmm, lasagna. (drools with mouth wide-open)

 

[jmt225]

After hearing what Kendrick and London had to say about him.... this will most likely end up being a horrible decision.

 

[Stormtrooper]

After hearing what Kendrick and London had to say about him.... this will most likely end up being a horrible decision.

and what is it that Londrick said about him? I do not recall hearing it.

 

[Remix]

Well I can't stand that obmoxious IWantWrestling hashtag which he popularised so I'm not a big fan of Lagana. But hey I don't watch TNA and maybe the changes made under the hood will be good.

 

[Stormtrooper]

Well I can't stand that obmoxious IWantWrestling hashtag which he popularised so I'm not a big fan of Lagana.

this exactly. He wants wrestling, then bitches when he gets it.

 

[Thriller Ant]

this exactly. He wants wrestling, then bitches when he gets it.

IWantWrestling isn't necessarily about "wanting" wrestling. It's a movement that encourages people to be active on social media and not be afraid to tell wrestling companies what you want from wrestling, rather than just accepting or bitching about what you do get. It's a different way of looking at how important you or me as the consumer are in the decision-making process for what happens in our favorite companies.

 

[Uncle Sam]

After hearing what Kendrick and London had to say about him.... this will most likely end up being a horrible decision.

Come on - nobody likes a tease.

 

[Gelgarin]

[YOUTUBE]nguPjzdbelY[/YOUTUBE]

I hugely recommend against actually watching this. It's not worth it.

 

[MrHashasheen]

Come on - nobody likes a tease.

To quote this page:

-Apparently, Dave Lagana got fired for sexually harrassing Kevin Thorn, which leads to an amazing sentence:

-"Dave Lasagna, if you're out there, stop molesting gay bodybuilding vampires" - London

http://s15.zetaboards.com/BigEvil/topic/6803997/1/

 

[Gelgarin]

As noted earlier, ECW writer Dave Lagana was fired last week. He was with WWE since 2002 and at one point was the head writer of SmackDown. His firing had been brewing for nearly two years.

While Lagana was on vacation, Stephanie McMahon sent a one sentence terse e-mail to all the other writers saying that he had been fired. Stephanie's e-mail was said to be very cold unlike most e-mails where they at least acknowledge the contributions of a person who is leaving the company. The basic story on Lagana's firing is that Stephanie believed that he was responsible for leaking storyline plans and management information to wrestling newsletters and wrestling websites.

The story on what lead to Lagana being terminated from the company dates back to May 2006 during a creative team meeting. The way the creative team meetings work at buildings prior to television and pay-per-view is that everyone gets together in a room set up like a classroom. Vince McMahon, Stephanie, television producer Kevin Dunn and the lead writers sit together at tables in the front of the room and the low-level writers and road agents sit at desks. The creative team writers go over the show and they do a read-through of the script, and then Vince adds his input. The agents also give their advice on changes that could be made. Lagana often sits at one of the desks with his laptop, usually in the back of the room so nobody could see his screen. On this particular day,people could see his screen, and one person allegedly saw him sending an e-mail to one of the major wrestling websites. Nobody said anything during the meeting, but Stephanie was approached and told what this person. Stephanie immediately confronted Lagana and almost fired him on the spot, but he insisted he was innocent. Lagana managed to get off the hook.

The next week, Lagana was demoted from his head writer position on SmackDown to ECW. WWE tried to paint it as a positive move, but he didn't think that was the case. He worked under Paul Heyman, who he'd known dating back to the old ECW. He was no longer the head writer and would basically just type up the scripts that Heyman recited to him. After Heyman was let go, it was expected that he'd be moved up to the ECW head writer position but they went with Dusty Rhodes instead. Some people inside WWE believe that his confidence started to erode during his time in ECW and things got really bad for him over the holidays.

Lagana also had a bad reputation from his time on Smackdown because a number of wrestlers believed that he talked down them. Also, a lot of people would privately make fun of his appearance as he is said to be a dead ringer for the guy who appeared on Blue Clues, not to mention that they would make fun of his voice as they say he sounds like Dr. Evil from Austin Powers.

There were a great number of storyline leaks from Lagana, including the story on plans for Mr. Kennedy to be named Vince's illegitimate son and details on Chris Jericho's viral campaign. During one meeting in October, Stephanie blew a gasket due to some storyline information being leaked on to the Internet and warned the agents & creative members that there were to be absolutely no leaks and if she discovered a person revealing private information to a newsletter or news site, he would be fired on the spot. Without saying so directly, Stephanie said she thought she had a pretty good idea on who was responsible for the storyline leaks. She looked directly at Lagana when saying it.

Later that afternoon, all the writers got laptop upgrades (everyone has a WWE-purchased laptop and Internet phone). Apparently, the laptops have shadowing software. The belief among some people in WWE is that Stephanie had been feeding him false info on very specific information to see if it would get out on to the Internet, and it eventually did. After she had finally caught him, he was fired.

There was also a thing a few weeks ago where Raw writer Brian Gewirtz went into Lagana's office at Titan Towers and saw a bunch of wrestling newsletters sticking out of his laptop bag. Lagana tried to hide them, but obviously didn't do it well enough. Lagana then claimed that he wasn't actually reading them but they kept showing up at his house because his subscription hadn't expired yet and he'd just happened to pick up all of his mail up from home. Over the next few days, Gewirtz made some snide remarks saying that he wasn't surprised that news kept getting leaked on to the Internet. Michael Hayes, who hates wrestling newsletters and websites, also began to bury Lagana in a really demoralizing manner.

A mildly more convincing version of events from 2008. Smells like dirt sheet fanfiction to me, but it's the best we've got.

 

[Lee]

IWantWrestling isn't necessarily about "wanting" wrestling. It's a movement that encourages people to be active on social media and not be afraid to tell wrestling companies what you want from wrestling, rather than just accepting or bitching about what you do get. It's a different way of looking at how important you or me as the consumer are in the decision-making process for what happens in our favorite companies.

My response to this is best summed up with this post by slyfox696:

I love how Kelly and Nigel try to claim they're "pro wrestling" and not sports entertainment...while simultaneously doing so on a show that spends a greater percentage of time on promos and videos than any other wrestling show on TV. And let's not forget that whole "why did we just watch the first match" thing either.

ROH is nothing but a big phony. And they're not even good at it.

 

[Pay Per Ghost]

Somehow the most interesting thread on WZ this.

Now one question, any of Lagana's ideas make it big time? He was a writer in WWE?

 

[Thriller Ant]

My response to this is best summed up with this post by slyfox696:

 

[Wade's Public Transit Bomb]

Is this that self important douchebag that cries about what he would change about Raw on Twitter?