Vince Russo

Vince Russo (right): Former WCW World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion.

"I'm going to tell you something right now that you will absolutely not agree with, but I've been a wrestling fan my whole life and I will live and die by this. It's hard enough, believe me, I write this shit, it is hard enough to get somebody over. You will never ever, ever, ever, ever see the Japanese wrestlers or the Mexican wrestlers over in American mainstream wrestling. I'm an American. If I'm watching wrestling here in America, I don't give a shit about a Japanese guy. I don't give a shit about a Mexican guy. I'm from America, and that's what I want to see."

—Vince Russo, WCW booker (1999).

"Do you know how many [copies of The Death of WCW] I've autographed [...] and when the people come up to me with the book, they're scared to death! And I'm like, "are you kidding me, gimme the book, I'll sign it!"."

—Vince Russo being a good sport (2006).

Vince Russo is a head writer for the WWF, WCW, and TNA, and is one of the most controversial figures in Professional Wrestling history (and one of the few non-wrestlers in the business who generates such controversy).

Russo's biggest success was when he (along with Vince McMahon) was able to turn the WWF around during the Monday Night Wars with its "Attitude" branding, resulting in the company's biggest period of success since the Hulk Hogan era, and a resurgence in popularity for the industry as a whole.

He would try to emulate this success when he, along with writing partner Ed Ferrara, jumped ship to WCW in 1999. However, without McMahon's editing and input, his storylines were...variable in their quality. And that's putting it kindly. Not only that, he failed to realize that the WCW audience had different expectations than the WWF audience: instead of catering to them, he attempted to transform WCW into a poor man's WWF, which alienated the existing fanbase and put off any new viewers (who just switched over to WWF). Although Time Warner promoting Jamie Kellner, who made no bones that he hated wrestling, in charge of their programing was probably the mostly likely factor in WCW's death, Russo's booking during 1999 and 2000 didn't help.

Having been a Professional Wrestling fan for so long that he proclaims to have "seen it all", Vince Russo's booking ethos is to try to shock and surprise the fans with something new. Unfortunately this usually amounts to something that doesn't make sense rather than something that is original, or something that the fans want to see. There is a reason why he is the Trope Namer for Shocking Swerve. Another issue is that he constantly tries to fool the Smark fans: the problem here is that the Smarks- being Smarks- don't buy it, and regular fans are just confused by things like wrestlers "breaking character" or references to backstage incidents that only hardcore fans would know.

His infamy is such that when it was announced that he had been re-hired by the WWE in 2002, the rest of the writing staff threatened a walk-out. His tenure at WWE ended a few days later, after a "big idea" he proposed bombed horribly (rumor has it that it would have been a restart of WWE's own failed WCW "Invasion" angle led by Eric Bischoff; as a point of interest, Bischoff was hired by the WWE a month after Russo's dismissal) and he was demoted to an advisory role, one that he quit soon after.

After this, Russo came on board to TNA, and has been a regular booker (for the most part) since the company started business. Russo was a member of TNA's booking committee. His reputation is such that, in response to a series of (very real) backstage incidents between Jeff Jarrett and Kurt Angle over the latter's ex-wife, many observers first believed that it was all an angle devised by Russo and refused to believe it was real. In 2012, Dixie Carter announced that TNA and Russo had mutually parted ways and he was replaced by Bruce "Brother Love" Pritchard. However, it was already formally announced that Russo had left TNA in October 2011.

Ultimately, Russo's "creative" output will give an observer the idea that his writing is done from a play book (or trope book, if you prefer) the size of a religious pamphlet, and that he has relied on this limited source of potential ideas for the majority of his career within professional wrestling, rehashing the same concepts and ideas in multiple companies with multiple (and sometimes, the very same) characters.

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Vince Russo provides examples of the following tropes:

• And the Fandom Rejoiced: When Vinny Ru got fired from TNA legitimately for the second time.
• Arch Enemy: Jim Cornette hates Russo so badly, he stopped eating his Trademark Favorite Food Wendy's triple cheeseburgers and went on a diet. Why? So he can live long enough to outlast Russo so he can piss on the man's grave.
• Attitude Era: One of the architects, along with Vince McMahon.
• Author Appeal: For some unknown reason, Russo loves pole matches.
  • Not only pole matches, but pole matches for the strangest things. A pet rat, a pinata, Viagra, Judy Bagwell (no, really; though this was on a forklift), and the keys to Mick Foley's office are just a few of the things that have been at stake in those matches.
    • One particularly strange storyline from towards the end of Russo's time with WWE revolved around The Big Bossman kidnapping and cooking Al Snow's pet dog Pepper. This inevitably involved a "Pepper on a Pole" match.
• Author Avatar: Especially throughout his run in WCW, and his 2002-2004 run in TNA.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Let's see. He still insists the Montreal Screwjob was a work, he defends giving himself the WCW World Championship, he defends giving David Arquette the World Championship, he insists that no American wrestling fan wants to see non-American wrestlers, and he doesn't believe in Face and Heel.
  • He defends the David Arquette title reign by arguing that since people are still talking about the angle nearly a decade later, it was a success and a "money-maker". Because no-one ever talks about or makes movies about bad things that have happened in history...
  • He more recently defended his love of pole matches by proclaiming that it's impossible for any one non-gimmick singles match to be better than any other non-gimmick singles match.
• Creator Backlash: After he became a Born-Again Christian, Russo hated that angle in which Stone Cold Steve Austin was crucified on The Undertaker's symbol in 1999.
• Discontinuity Nod: When Rey Mysterio, Jr. won the 2006 Royal Rumble as the #2 entry, the WWE said it was the first time that someone won the Rumble as the #2 entry. This was a reference to the widely hated 1999 Royal Rumble where Vince McMahon won the Royal Rumble. The booker for the 1999 Rumble was Vince Russo.
• Even Russo Has Standards: Whilst the angle would appear to be his doing, Russo isn't actually to blame for the Immortal angle. In a ReAction interview a few weeks ago, even he said he didn't like this storyline, and was just being pressured by Hogan and Bischoff to keep going with it. When Vince Russo, the worst wrestling booker in existence, doesn't like a crappy idea? Chances are you should not do it.
  • Unless him disliking convinced them it must be good...
• Follow the Leader: What Russo tried to do in WCW is to copy the WWF product into the company, but he failed.
• Fun with Acronyms: Does the WWF's Terri Invitational Tournament, WCW's Saskatchewan Hardcore International Title, or TNA's Sports Entertainment Xtreme and Voodoo Kin Mafia^[1] ring a bell to anyone?
  • He's also credited with creating the name for TNA; he chose the acronym to help differentiate the company from WWE as a more adult-oriented product, since the company originally broadcast shows strictly on pay-per-view.
• Gimmick Matches: Russo doesn't believe that one regular match can be better than another. Therefore, he uses these at a damn-near obsessive regularity, especially "[X] on a Pole" matches, as stated above.
  • Sometimes he'll even make a match with two separate gimmick matches stacked on top of one another, and usually with ridiculous stipulations attached.
    • For instance, the Knockouts Battle Royal at TNA Sacrifice 2008. Ten women started in the ring, and the last two not tossed over the top rope Battle Royal-style would compete in a ladder match for a Women's Knockouts Championship shot; the loser of this ladder match would have her head shaved. Gail Kim had won immunity from having her head shaved on the Impact episode prior to Sacrifice, so since she was one of the two women competing for the title shot, the last woman eliminated during the Battle Royal portion of the match (Angelina Love) would have her head shaved if Gail lost the ladder match portion of the match.
• Grey and Gray Morality: Russo believes that wrestling should be like this - that all characters should be shades of gray with no purely heroic faces or purely villainous heels.
  • The big problem is that frankly he's not that good at it. If he had faces who were averting Boring Nice Guy and heels who were Noble Demons, that would be more Grey and Gray. However, his idea is more salt and pepper morality, having a person be 100% face one episode then 100% heel the next. It doesn't create Grey and Gray Morality, it just creates Mood Whiplash.
• Incompetence, Inc..
• Misblamed/Scapegoat Creator: TNA fans chant "Fire Russo!" at poorly-received matches or skits, whether Russo is involved with it or not.
  • The first time the chant was invoked (Turning Point 2006 during the Sting vs. Abyss Last Rites match, which featured a casket suspended from the ceiling which they called a Deathbed), Russo wasn't actually at fault. Dutch Mantell, later pegged as the guilty party, was most likely laughing during it.
    • Dutch defends himself.
  • People also forget that Vince Russo is usually not the only person involved in writing or booking. In an interview regarding his disastrous decision to put the WCW World Heavyweight Title on an actor^[2], Russo recalls that he proposed the idea (originally from an off-hand comment by Tony Schiavone) at a booking meeting filled with industry veterans and staff workers alike. They all enthusiastically agreed that it was a great idea.
    • Funny that Arquette himself hated the idea; as a wrestling fan, he thought the idea insulting.
    • Also, everyone involved not named Vince Russo recalls the room erupting into laughter at Tony Schiavone's joke--and it was only afterwards that Russo decided that the joke was actually a great idea.
  • Russo himself claims that all the times the "Fire Russo" chant has been heard have been with segments he's not involved with. Of course at the same time he claims that all the negative things attributed to him during his stint in WCW is wrong, and he defended the "No contest in a steel cage match" fiasco.
• Post Modernism: Frequently attempts this by blurring the line between Kayfabe and reality, but rarely succeeds because Professional Wrestling is built on a foundation of Suspension of Disbelief.
• Smart Mark: Is one, and his attempts to shock other Smarks into thinking wrestling was real never worked because Smarks are, well, Smarks.
  • Hypocritical Humor: As much as they hate the guy, go on any wrestling board with a Book Your Own Angle thread and you'll you find a disturbing amount written by Smarks who seem to have the same booking sensibilities as Russo.
• All Viewers Are Smarks And Thus Are Geniuses: Russo's belief when he was booking WCW.
  • Except that he believed they could be easily fooled and swerved.
• Take That: After Russo left WWE, he's apparently been obsessed with bashing them every chance he gets, both in WCW and TNA.
  • And before that, he was doing the same thing to WCW when he was working for the WWF in 1997-1999.
• What Could Have Been: Near the end of WCW, the Stacy Keibler pregnancy angle was started, that ran to nowhere. But rumor says that Vince Russo planned to book himself as the father of the child.
• Worked Shoot: Especially during his time in WCW.
  • His public firing of Hulk Hogan at the 2000 edition of WCW's Bash at the Beach event is his Crowning Moment of Awesome, though it resulted in Hogan suing WCW. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed in 2002.
    • According to Eric Bischoff's book, Russo firing Hogan was a shoot. He'd gone into business for himself and screwed up what was to be a major angle in the process.
    • According to the Wrestlecrap book, it was a worked shoot turned real shoot. The whole thing was planned to get the belt on Booker T, but Russo's promo against Hogan was so much more vicious than they had agreed on that Hogan filed a defamation of character lawsuit against Russo for it.

1. ↑ Vince Kennedy McMahon
2. ↑ DAVID ARQUETTE!