Vince Russo's 5 dumbest ideas

 

Madman or genius?

No one divides opinion in the annals of pro wrestling in the same way as Vince Russo. Russo was a former writer for WWE during the Attitude Era before he jumped ship to WCW at the height of the Monday Night Wars. While he had his fair share of bad ideas during his WWE stint itself, Vince McMahon vetoed the ideas he believed wouldn’t work – and thankfully so, as his WCW record showed us.

As head booker in WCW, Russo ran wild with the intention to create must-see-television. His terrible booking decisions and ideas almost certainly led to, or at the very least began, the decline and eventual death of WCW. It’s also difficult to ignore the negative impact he had on TNA wrestling, pitching some of the worst storylines in TNA’s history.

Even while we criticize Russo, let’s not forget that he had a lot of good ideas during his WWE tenure such as pushing Triple H and The Rock. The problem with Russo was that even though he had a good idea once in a while, the sheer volume of terrible ideas he had needed filtering – something that wasn’t done in WCW because he was the top creative guy there during a major part of his tenure. His obsession for gimmick matches, getting mainstream attention no matter what and “breaking the fourth wall’ ruined most of his good ideas.

If Russo had retired from the business at the moment when he’d left WWE for WCW, he would still be considered a genius today instead of being held responsible for the death of WCW by many and the brain behind some of the worst pro wrestling angles in history.