Vince Russo

Very interesting interview of Vince Russo by James Guttman at worldwrestlinginsanity.com. I recommend you check it out. Interesting is the operative word. Russo is a very good speaker, and if you don't push him very hard, what he says will make sense. Of course he's still out to lunch in a number of ways, but he definitely has his points. He's still doing the deal where he says he was turning around WCW in a positive way in fall of 1999, and the ratings were on the rise. He's still under the impression that his time in TNA was good television and not a car wreck. But he also properly sees some of the things wrong with the wrestling business. One point that was kind of weird is he obviously doesn't watch WWE, because his gripe with WWE is that they are producing 70s wrestling and they are stuck in the past and aren't in touch with what fans want today. And the problem is pretty much the opposite. They've lost all touch with the basic tenets of wrestling booking, and have instead handed the reigns over to a bunch of people that can't book wrestling. Of course, they also are out of touch with what wrestling fans want today and with current culture, but that's a second and lesser problem. One thing that's kind of scary is that when Vince Russo briefly returned to WWE, I thought that was like the ultimate sign that WWE had completely lost its way. And yet, interestingly, I'm not sure they wouldn't have been better off with Russo than with the people they have employed instead. Then again, maybe I've just (thankfully) blocked out Russo's wrestling enough to where I don't remember how bad it was. During my break I'll pop in some tapes of TNA PPVs from 2002-2003, and see how they look now. I haven't watched any of them again since their original airings, but I remember I got some of their more "interesting" moments.