During a recent appearance on ‘Insight’, former WCW World Heavyweight Champion Vince Russo revealed his opinion on modern day professional wrestling and explained how the business has changed since the Attitude Era.
Here’s what Russo had to say:
“It’s all about the fake match and has nothing to do with the characters and the story. I mean, that’s it bro, you know, back in the day going all the way back to Bruno, man.
It was all about characters and story. That’s what draws the casual fan. Wrestling matches don’t draw a casual fan, that’s why I did crash TV.
Five to eight minutes, the matches are over, boom, boom, what’s next, boom. You turn it on today then the main event of RAW starts at 10:30.
Bro, if I’m not a wrestling fan of in-ring action, I’m not watching it, because the reality of the situation is whether we want to believe it or not, fans of the in-ring action, that’s a very niche audience.
That’s why I knew when I started writing WWE, bro, I had to open that up. Because if you didn’t like wrestling, you weren’t watching the show.
So, how was I going to get people to watch the show? Real simple, create characters that they fell in love with and they were emotionally tied to, and then give those characters story, because now you gotta, you got them hooked, now they gotta tune in every week.
All that is gone, it is non-existent, and my thing is Chris, I don’t think I would have such a problem if they just changed the name, don’t call it wrestling, call it performance art, or call it something else.”
Vince Russo is best remembered for his time as the editor of the WWF Magazine, that eventually got him a promotion to being part of the WWF creative team by 1996 and becoming the WWF head writer in 1997.
By October 1999, he jumped ship to Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling, where he had 2 stints as the head writer, but was eventually sent home again in October 2000.
His last major position was being the Head Writer for Total Nonstop Action! (TNA) from 2002 until 2004 and again from 2006 until 2011.
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