It is very difficult to be a pro wrestling fan for over 20 years and try to dissect the words of Vince Russo in his new shoot video with Kayfabe Commentaries called “Timeline: The History of World Championship Wrestling 2000 as told by Vince Russo“, in which Russo repeatedly states is the last time he will ever appear in the wrestling business or on a shoot video.
It’s difficult because I don’t know what I want to spend time on. Would it be his constant shots at Christopher Daniels not being entertaining? Would it be his booking explanation on how to make Tank Abbott the WCW World’s Heavyweight Champion? Would it be saying Vince McMahon would make extremely small tweaks to Russo’s entire Raw is War script? How about saying he put Ed Ferrara on television as Oklahoma simply because it entertained him and that the only thing that mattered in wrestling was that he was entertained?
Russo constantly tells the ever patient Sean Oliver how he’s done with the wrestling business and wishes to move on and how much he appreciates honesty, only to lie and contradict himself in only minutes of his last statement. Russo continually says how he can’t remember things from Bash at the Beach 2000, a wrestling show he himself wrote 13 years ago but when it came time to remember a quote from Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer about the WWF Raw is War “This is Your Life Rocky” segment he remembers that Meltzer said exactly, “I will never watch another wrestling show again.” This was never stated in the Wrestling Observer (Meltzer wrote about Raw the next week) and there’s only a minute possibility that it may have been said on the Observer radio show. What bothered me even more was Russo stating that the business had now changed completely because you had the Internet to now look up results and read dirt sheets on what’s going on, only to later say that the most important advice he took from Vince McMahon was to ignore the Internet and never read it because it was never the true wrestling audience. Why would you change the product to cater to the Internet’s habits and then claim that you should always ignore it because it isn’t the audience?
Russo also tries to explain himself in accusations of racism against Mexican wrestlers that his thought process was that Mexican wrestlers couldn’t talk and you couldn’t see their faces so nobody in America wanted to see them. This despite the fact wrestlers like Juventud Guerrera and Rey Mysterio Jr. became popular in WCW while wearing masks and speaking limited English. Speaking of Mysterio, he has had a very successful and profitable run in the WWE despite limited microphone ability and once again wearing his mask. Russo’s explanations are infuriating.
It would probably be easier for me to explain what I agreed with him on the video. Russo does express a disappointment in the lack of psychology in pro wrestling today and a focus on high spots instead of building to the high spots. He makes a good point that a lot of wrestlers spend too much time thinking of the next move instead of selling their match to the audience. Russo also said he had nothing to do with bringing in James Brown unannounced and doing that was stupid. It would depend on him telling the truth to his lack of knowledge on the subject. His judgment on WCW lacking in the charisma/character department is true when you think of guys like Billy Kidman. Russo was embarrassed by Ready to Rumble and said the decision to make him and Eric Bischoff a booking duo was a mistake by Brad Siegel. If he isn’t lying, he’d be correct. Russo also states that nothing in wrestling draws a strong rating better than weddings, which while might not be factual in that nothing in wrestling does better, he isn’t wrong in that wrestling fans love a good wedding.
It will take another article to dissect how Vince Russo thinks and books but the discussion here is more about the timeline video itself. I suggest wrestling fans goto Kayfabe Commentaries and purchase a different DVD than this one. Support a wrestler like Diamond Dallas Page in his YouShoot or Sean Waltman’s Timeline on 1994 WWF. Pick up a copy of the hilarious YouShoot with Amazing Kong or the fantastic Timeline by Kevin Sullivan on 1996 WCW. I have watched them all and they are all fantastic. Sean Oliver and Kayfabe Commentaries have some of the most insightful, comedic and informative wrestling DVDs in the business but this one is just going to make you unhappy. It will anger you. It will ruin your day. It will make you sad.
Vince Russo says he’s done with the business. He’s done because people like Lance Storm criticize him (“I was the moron who put three belts on Lance Storm,” said Russo) and people like Ric Flair bash him when he has done nothing but idolize and praise Flair (“All I cared about, my only concern was I do not want to make this man look bad. I will kill myself, I will die before I make Ric Flair look bad,” said Russo, who no sold a Figure Four Leglock from Flair in their televised cage match.) He also said he was done with the wrestling business after WCW was sold to the WWF and only came back because Jeff Jarrett founded NWA:TNA, even though he tried returning to the WWF prior to joining NWA:TNA. In other words, Vince Russo may say he’s a Christian but he sure loves breaking the ninth commandment. It would be like a cancer finally going into remission for Russo to truly leave the professional wrestling business to never return. Aside from maybe Jamie Kellner, no one man has done more damage to professional wrestling without bringing some sort of good than Vince Russo. Watching this video reminded me of this and more importantly, reminded me how unapologetic and dismissive Russo is of his work. Unfortunately, Russo was just a writer. He was employed by someone who let him do these things not once but multiple times. It wasn’t just WCW but TNA Wrestling as well that had to deal with his terrible writing concepts. As much as I want to lay the finger on Russo to blame for the ire of pro wrestling, he never would have been able to write it if nobody gave him the pen.
There are many ways I wanted to end this article so instead I’ll end it in every way I wanted to. Here are the best things Russo said in the video without any sense of irony on the statements:
“People want to make it my legacy to say I failed.”
“How I did all the damage in nine months is pretty impressive.”
“It was me and Ed (Ferrara) against the world.”
“I didn’t care what we did because the next week we would top it.”
“There’s a difference between a booker and a writer. I take a great offence when anyone says they can write wrestling.”
Vince Russo says he’s done with wrestling. Good riddance. Let’s hope this is not his last swerve.
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