10 Most Damaging Figures In The History Of Wrestling
2. Vince Russo
I try to give Vince Russo credit where credit is due. He provided much entertainment in my formative years. The problem is that his audience evolved, and his style devolved without Vince McMahon's strict filter.
Russo did attempt to foreshadow and build the silver nWo faction crippled by real-life injuries and departures. Efforts were made to draft up one long term storyline. He also correctly guessed that Chris Benoit was a star on the rise.
Elsewhere, his stint with the pencil was counterproductive in the extreme. He created the Oklahoma character (played by hanger-on Ed Ferrara) - a disgusting parody of Jim Ross that more or less proved Russo was primarily interested in popping himself. Russo's WCW was WWF lite, an impossible-to-follow procession of gimmicks, swerves and turns, when WCW fans wanted an alternative to it. What they received was an unregulated imitation, devoid of stars and sense.
It was somehow worse during his second stint. It was more baffling that he got the job a second time, at which point he repackaged Booker T, essentially the only homegrown star with actual headliner potential, back to the dumb caricature gimmick he experimented with early in his career. It was akin to reverting Stone Cold Steve Austin back to the Ringmaster.
Russo also scuppered a second massively-financed wrestling organisation in TNA. His run there was legendarily awful; Reverse Battle Royals, Electrified Cages and Last Rites matches alone support what is more fact than theory.
He hit upon (or was hit by) a winner in the Samoa Joe Vs. Kurt Angle feud. He rushed through it in three pay-per-views rather than massage the buzz-generating anticipation. But then, that is the only mode Russo ever knew.