{"id":113711,"date":"2022-05-27T10:00:32","date_gmt":"2022-05-27T14:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=113711"},"modified":"2022-05-26T18:04:11","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T22:04:11","slug":"vince-russo-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2022\/05\/27\/vince-russo-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Vince Russo Talks The \u201cOklahoma\u201d Gimmick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During the Monday Night Wars, writer, producer, promoter, and booker <strong>Vince<\/strong> <strong>Russo<\/strong> worked for both <strong>WCW<\/strong> and <strong>WWE<\/strong> during this very pivotal part of wrestling history. Early on in his time working with WCW Russo and longtime friend, <strong>Ed<\/strong> <strong>Ferrara<\/strong> would take to the screen with a character that was both edgy and controversial with the \u201cOklahoma\u201d gimmick. During this time on screen, Ferrara would often imitate WWE commentator <strong>Jim<\/strong> <strong>Ross<\/strong> even going as far as to imitate medical complications from Ross\u2019s Bell\u2019s Palsy. Ross himself came out and said that the impersonation was \u201cpersonal and hurtful.\u201d Fast forward to 2022 and Vince Russo is sitting down with Will Gray, for an episode of his podcast <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCNKgWfWOAlj4-rQx9UTkTXA\/videos\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Botched Spots and Chair Shots<\/a> and the host asks Russo, which story he would take back if he could.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tea and Hot Takes feat. Vince Russo| Botched Spots and Chair Shots | S2:E13\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zTgrPHF9qDQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Vince Russo Interview &#8211; The &#8220;Oklahoma&#8221; Gimmick<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cI have to remind myself, that was the environment back then\u2026 No Punches were pulled.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Russo reflects on the effects and strains mentally that the talent and writers had to face every week during the faceoff for Monday night supremacy. The pull no punches mentality is what led to the formation of the character. Russo would go on and explain that the original idea for the character actually came from WWE creative meetings before departing from the company for the competition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDuring our creative meetings, Ed would do a JR impression and it would pop Vince like every time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So, without missing a beat, in order to catch lightning in a bottle, Russo and Ferrara turned the script on Vince and the WWE and went on screen with the Oklahoma character, mocking Ross, his medical conditions, and the WWE all on air.<\/p>\n<p>Russo would tell the host \u201cI swear to God bro, there was a part of us where it was really an innocent jab at JR, because it\u2019s like okay Vince you used to laugh at this, no we\u2019re on the other side and we are kind of putting it in your face.\u201d The issue wasn\u2019t the heat from the fans or the competition it was the hurtful words and how they made JR feel.<\/p>\n<h3>The Aftermath of &#8220;The Oklahoma Gimmick&#8221;<\/h3>\n<p>\u201cWe never looked at how this was going to affect JR because that\u2019s what we never looked at because that\u2019s the last thing we wanted to do was hurt that guy, which we did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Russo would also explain that the character was a product of the environment of the war between the two companies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat atmosphere and the environment, that\u2019s what really lead to the Oklahoma character. Because again, people will believe whatever the hell they want to believe about me, I really don\u2019t give a **** what they think anymore, but the reality of it is I did not have heat with JR.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Vince would tell Will that he has since apologized to JR a million times. Russo stated they have talked and he even tried to get Ross on board during his time with <strong>TNA<\/strong>! \u201cI put him over weekly to this day,\u201d Russo says about Ross and his work with <strong>AEW<\/strong> as head of their commentary team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBro, I worked in a sea of sharks. I worked in a world of liars and conmen and carnies that would do whatever they had to do to get ahead. They would lie, they would beg, they would steal, and they had no moral compass. JR was the one guy that was always 100% honest with me to my face, nothing behind my back, no political posturing, none of that! That was almost impossible at the level he was at, none of that! That\u2019s why I love the guy to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Vince Russo has famously stated that he hates talking about professional wrestling and proudly states that he only watches modern wrestling \u201cif he\u2019s getting paid to.\u201d There is one thing for certain, of all the terrible things from the Monday Night War Russo was adamant about taking this one back, as the mulligan for his career.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world. As well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the Monday Night Wars, writer, producer, promoter, and booker Vince Russo worked for both WCW and WWE during this very pivotal part of wrestling history. Early on in his time working with WCW Russo and longtime friend, Ed Ferrara would take to the screen with a character that was both edgy and controversial with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4168,"featured_media":10476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[248,112],"class_list":["post-113711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-north-america","tag-jim-ross","tag-vince-russo"],"modified_by":"Dominic Padula","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}