Vince Russo’s Former Partner Issues Statement on Website Closing

– Vince Russo’s former business partner Chris Cash has issued a statement to WZ giving his side of the story involving PyroandBallyhoo.com closing down. It is a lengthy statement and you can read the full thing at the above link.

Cash says in the statement that he began working on the site with Russo as 50/50 partners and that when Russo “lost his TNA money,” Cash agreed to defer his payment so Russo could get back up his feet. Cash says he handled all of the behind-the-scenes website administration aspects of the venture and that Russo was “basically the public face, while I handled literally everything else.”

He continues on to say that he decided about two months ago that it was time for him to start getting paid as he believed their initial agreement was finally being met, but that when he tried to talk to Russo about it Russo “didn’t really want to go there.” He eventually sent Russo an email laying out three options: that they start taking their 50/50 cut from the website per their original agreement, that Russo buy Cash out or that they shut down new memberships and close out the website a month later. Cash says Russo replied and called him “unsupportive” and that Russo wanted someone who was not into it for just the money.

Cash says that they agreed to shut down the website and that the plan was to write a post saying that they would stop accepting new member signups on March 1st, then close the site on April 1st. He then changed the admin password, which he says he did “to protect MY interests. With that account, Vince could have basically taken everything from the site that he wanted and used it for his new project that he said MULTIPLE times he planned to start if PyroandBallyhoo shut down. Rather than pay me, he would just go somewhere else and do it. While I couldn’t necessarily stop him from doing it, I certainly wasn’t going to make it easy.”

This is when Russo publicly said he was locked out of his own site. Cash says he woke up to find that Russo had changed the passwords to everything else associated with the site, which were all properties of the site Cash set up. Cash says he “went through the security measures to regain access and control of those accounts.” He adds that Russo still has access to the PayPal account and “always has had it,” which is counter to a statement from Russo that he was “blocked from PayPal.” Cash notes that he couldn’t have changed the password because Russo’s personal bank account is tied to it.

He concludes, “I don’t want to turn this into a personal attack on Vince. Personally, I think Vince is genuinely a good guy. But, in MY opinion, I was done wrong in this situation. Vince was willing to sing my praises, and he did on many occasions, when it came to the fact that he couldn’t have done any of this without me, but when it was time to actually take the business to the next step professionally, he refused to do it. Most importantly, he refused to offer any rational or realistic alternative or compromise.

“Everything had to be done on his terms, or nothing. His terms were nowhere near fair, and it was clear we needed to part ways. It absolutely should have been done in a better manner, but as soon as Vince went public, a private solution simply wasn’t going to happen.”