Hot Wrestling Takes So BAD They'll MELT Your Brain

6. Vince Russo Is Very Prescient

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VICE

Swerve!

He did just as piss-poor a job as predicting the future as he did booking wrestling. Vince Russo is either directly responsible for or played a significant role in the death of two major promotions.

That is because he knew one trick, one that didn't work without the generational drawing power of Steve Austin, and he repeated it for about a decade and a half. Stubbornly arrogant to the point of delusion, he could not accept that trends had shifted.

While he did conduct this infamous interview with Mike Tenay in character, it's important to point out that Russo often used crucial TV time to vent and put himself over and try to convince you that you were stupid and he was a genius. Basically, everything he did amounted to "I am so smart! S-M-R-T!"

In said interview, Russo, attacking his fanbase and their demands with his big brain, remarked ""If you want lucha libres, go to Japan".

This was typical Russo, who also stated in 1999 "You will never, ever, ever, ever, ever see the Japanese wrestlers or the Mexican wrestlers over in American mainstream wrestling".

AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door, in both 2022 and 2023, slaughtered the buy amount of Vince Russo's most successful TNA pay-per-view. The latter edition was headlined by Kazichuka Okada, and karma is real: that dinosaur Russo had packaged Okada, when on excursion in TNA, as a comedy joke inspired by the 1960s TV show 'The Green Hornet'.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!