10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE In 2002
4. Vince Russo Returned
In June 2002 - a month after Vince McMahon had already grown bored with his talk of 'Ruthless Aggression', the same month Steve Austin walked, a time when Hulk Hogan nostalgia had waned to an extent that was borderline unfathomable - Vince scrambled.
The biggest stars from the present and yesteryear were unavailable or ineffective, and shockingly enough, his developmental prospects didn't spark a boom period overnight. There was only one thing for it: rehire Vince Russo!
After all, Raw never did the numbers he did when leading creative, and while Russo had exposed himself so horrifically in WCW that he might as well have been wearing a trench coat, under McMahon, it might be different. It might be like old times.
It lasted a fortnight if that.
Trialled insidiously as a consultant, like a Premier League club taking a punt on a fading work-shy maverick who'd long ago given up, Russo allegedly stunned everybody in the room with a criminal ignorance about the current product.
According to former writer Brian Gewirtz, Vince was so stunned by Russo's idiocy, and alleged "Let's do the invasion angle that you hated, again, even though the toothpaste is out of the tube" pitch that, for the only time Gewirtz could recall, McMahon actually apologised for "bringing that a**hole back".