10 Uncredited Architects Behind WWE’s Gigantic Success
6. Chris Kreski
Vince Russo grabs the headlines, and is all too often quick to take sole credit for the WWF's Attitude Era success. Chris Kreski - the man who overtook his role as Head Writer in late 1999 - was, until his death in 2005, antithetically modest.
Many cite 2000 (post-WrestleMania and excepting the aberration that was the King Of The Ring) as the epitome of the WWF's critical acclaim. His mastery of the episodic television format has not been surpassed since his departure over a decade and a half ago. Kreski was scorned at for using storyboards to map out and keep track of storylines, ensuring the onscreen product was coherent. That it was; the McMahon-Helmsley regime was absorbing shared universe storytelling, and Kreski's studied awareness of the wider TV landscape created an awesome whodunnit angle after Steve Austin was run over at Survivor Series 1999. The ending was atrocious, but then, more lauded showrunners than Kreski have failed at the last.
Russo often brags about having a storyline in place for every member of the roster. That many were beyond awful has escaped his memory. Kreski, meanwhile, implemented the Hardcore Title 24/7 ruling - a ludicrously entertaining platform on which for even the pure filler jobber acts to do something fun and memorable.
If it weren't for the absolute disaster that was the XFL, the year 2000 would have been the most financially successful in company history. Kreski's attention to the minutiae - without micromanagement of promos - is a lost art, sadly.