History Trivia / VinceRusso

** To his credit, Russo admits the terrible “Kennel from Hell” match was a mistake, calling it his fault for not taking into account how the dogs might act. [[note]] The match was built as a ring surrounded by vicious attack dogs. The actual dogs acted more like you’d expect dogs to act instead of anything resembling vicious. [[/note]]

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: His plan for TNA was to offer pay-per-view porn wrestling, with more nudity and sex. Problem was, Women's Extreme Wrestling did the same thing two months before TNA even existed. XPW in 1999 was even closer to Russo's pitch. (Both XPW and WEW went under.) Meanwhile, while Russo was writing for TNA, Carmen Electra launched an "adult" wrestling show, and "Full Throttle Wrestling" premiered. They both went under too. In fact, "adult" professional wrestling ''promotions'' which rely on rings, stages, and crowd attendance are actually far less likely to stay afloat than adult wrestling ''studios'', which sell filmed videos of usually scantily-clad women mat wrestling or catfighting, sometimes set up by self-contained scenarios which hold little to no continuity with each other; making no pretense at all to aim for the same market as televised pro-wrestling. For example, Steel Kittens Productions was founded in 1986, sixteen years before "just another wrestling show" TNA, has over 1000 videos of female and mixed wrestling content available on its website as of July 2022, and it was significantly more tasteful than what Russo got to do in TNA. (Unless you find polygamy, trashcan sex, molestation, forced prostitution, rape, crack whores and incest less offensive than occasional exposure via torn shirt, that is.) History has already shown that shows that stay relatively tasteful and focus on wrestling outlast those that do not, and that "adult" wrestling has been around since before WCW and has ''never'' posed a challenge to WWE.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: His plan for TNA was to offer pay-per-view porn wrestling, with more nudity and sex. Problem was, Women's Extreme Wrestling did the same thing two months before TNA even existed. XPW in 1999 was even closer to Russo's pitch. (Both XPW and WEW went under.) Meanwhile, while Russo was writing for TNA, Carmen Electra launched an "adult" wrestling show, and "Full Throttle Wrestling" premiered. They both went under too. In fact, one of the few "adult" promotions to have more staying power than "just another wrestling show" TNA, nearly thirty years of it at that point, was Steel Kittens Productions, and it was significantly more tasteful than what Russo got to do in TNA. (Unless you find polygamy, trashcan sex, molestation, forced prostitution, rape, crack whores and incest less offensive than occasional exposure via torn shirt, that is). History has already shown that shows that stay relatively tasteful and focus on wrestling outlast those that do not, and that "adult" wrestling has been around since before WCW and has ''never'' posed a challenge to WWE.

** With Wrestling/JimCornette. They both had worked in WWE and [[Wrestling/ImpactWrestling TNA]] at around the same time. Cornette was old-school and Russo was the new kid in town, pushing the Wrestling/AttitudeEra along. Russo went to Wrestling/VinceMcMahon and basically told him, ''Either he goes, or I go'', because they kept getting in each others' way. [=McMahon=] sided with Russo. Cornette also blames Russo for Wrestling/OwenHart's death by putting him in the Blue Blazer gimmick. The feud runs so deep that he made amends with Eric Bischoff (someone else Cornette has a long-standing grudge against) mainly because, as Cornette said, if he hates Russo as much as Jim does, he can't be all bad.

** TNA: There was some speculation as to ''why'' his rehiring was kept a secret: The obvious one was that Wrestle-1's front office didn't trust Russo to use [[Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling New Japan's]] talent wisely (not without merit). [[Wrestling/TheGreatMuta Keiji Mutoh]] also nearly pulled the plug on ''Bound for Glory'' in Japan in 2014 when he found out Russo was still involved with the company. TNA execs had to guarantee that Russo would have zero input in any aspect of the show, or he was calling it off. [[Wrestling/TheWrestlingObserverNewsletter Dave Meltzer]], on the other had, reported that Creator/SpikeTV (who were renegotiating a TV deal for ''Impact!'' at the time) asked Dixie Carter not to rehire him. Spike has denied this, but the announcement that they wouldn't be renewing the deal came shortly after Russo's rehiring. John Gaburick (head of TNA creative) fired Russo days later, likely in a vain attempt to save the deal, and Russo himself later confirmed this. In addition, Spike has tried for a while now to not seem quite so misogynistic and brash. Russo is known to be exactly that: misogynistic and brash. (And they were already dealing with plenty of {{Wrestling/ECW}} alums who were the same.) So it wouldn't be surprising if they told Dixie not to put him anywhere near creative.

** As late as 2014, Vince Russo still complained about TNA becoming "just another wrestling show". This despite the fact much of the WEW roster—Klondyke (Sirelda), Alexis Laree, Valentina, Tracy Brooks, Angel Williams, Talia Madison, Simply Luscious, [[Wrestling/DaffneyUnger Lucy Furr]], Shelly Martinez, Trenesha Biggers, Mickie Knuckles, ODB, Radiant Rain, Shantelle Taylor and more—came to work for TNA! The company which was already doing Russo's ideas was feeding him as much talent as [[Wrestling/RingOfHonor ROH!]]

** TNA: There was some speculation as to ''why'' his rehiring was kept a secret: The obvious one was that Wrestle-1's front office didn't trust Russo to use [[Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling New Japan's]] talent wisely (not without merit). Keiji Mutoh also nearly pulled the plug on ''Bound for Glory'' in Japan in 2014 when he found out Russo was still involved with the company. TNA execs had to guarantee that Russo would have zero input in any aspect of the show, or he was calling it off. [[Wrestling/TheWrestlingObserverNewsletter Dave Meltzer]], on the other had, reported that Creator/SpikeTV (who were renegotiating a TV deal for ''Impact!'' at the time) asked Dixie Carter not to rehire him. Spike has denied this, but the announcement that they wouldn't be renewing the deal came shortly after Russo's rehiring. John Gaburick (head of TNA creative) fired Russo days later, likely in a vain attempt to save the deal, and Russo himself later confirmed this. In addition, Spike has tried for a while now to not seem quite so misogynistic and brash. Russo is known to be exactly that: misogynistic and brash. (And they were already dealing with plenty of {{Wrestling/ECW}} alums who were the same.) So it wouldn't be surprising if they told Dixie not to put him anywhere near creative.

** Time Warner employee Matt Williams gave up on WCW after personally polling fans to prove they didn't like Russo's "more storyline, less wrestling" direction, only to be ignored. At the time, WCW was so low in the ratings that they were ready to try anything.
** The only reason he landed a job in TNA was because of Wrestling/JeffJarrett (against his father's protests). Jeff, to his credit, did a lot of vetting of his ideas alongside Dutch Mantell. Unfortunately, some of the weirder stuff filtered through because Russo proceeded to endear himself to Dixie Carter (then-president of TNA), which led to his rehiring in 2013-14.

** "They kind of fell into that [[Wrestling/NewWorldOrder nWo]] thing. I mean, they really did. You had two top stars from the WWE jump ship and go to their organization, then for the first time Wrestling/HulkHogan turns heel after 25 years or whatever it was. They fell into something." It's the typical response from WWE to anything in WCW that got fans interested and stopped them showing an interest in their competition. Oh, it was just happenstance, they lucked their way into that. Not surprising Russo would fall into that line of thinking.

** When asked once what angle he wished he wouldn't have done, Russo answered that he regretted the angle in which he had Ed Ferrara dress up as "Oklahoma", the Wrestling/JimRoss impersonator.

-->'''Bill Apter''': (''WCW Magazine'') Critics have said {{Wrestling/WCW}} has started to resemble a lower-quality version of the [[{{Wrestling/WWE}} WWF]]. How do you avoid that perception?\\
'''Wrestling/EricBischoff''': I think that's being kind. I think it started to resemble backyard wrestling.

** While criticizing WWE for putting the Universal Championship belt on Wrestling/KevinOwens, he claimed that David Arquette "was more over than Wrestling/KevinOwens will ever be", since in his mind Owens doesn't look like a wrestler. His logic is circular and it's so easily rebuked (see: Wrestling/DustyRhodes) it's not even funny.

** In the first week of the "Second Monday Night War", ''Raw'' got a 3.6 rating. ''Impact'' got a 1.5, leading to Russo including the following in his blog: "The bottom line is, TNA WON—period."