The WCW Conspiracy Iceberg EXPLAINED!
17. Vince Russo Was A Mole
This is the oldest WCW conspiracy there is. It makes about as much sense as a typical WCW storyline, but to this day, whenever the topic of conspiracy theories crops up on Reddit - and it does so quite frequently - people are still very prepared to believe it. The gist is that Vince McMahon sent Vince Russo to WCW in October 1999 as a mole to kill it from within, using terrible storylines as the murder weapon.
Vince Russo was Vince McMahon’s lead writer throughout the first half of WWE’s most popular period. They enjoyed an incredibly successful collaborative partnership during the Attitude Era, with Russo as the ideas man and McMahon as the quality control filter. The skyscraper ratings and monster pay-per-view buy numbers were evidence of that; moreover, they were so in sync tonally, and Russo was so effective at pitching what McMahon wanted, that it’s a wonder McMahon took so long to abandon the WWF’s family-friendly facade. McMahon was born to promote sleaze, and Russo was born to consume and regurgitate it.
It therefore makes zero sense that McMahon would willingly part ways with Russo. The argument in favour of the theory is that McMahon never rated Russo that much, and had heard enough of his worst ideas to know that WCW would soon become a mess, were he to go there with full editorial control. That doesn’t make sense; Vince was practically defined by running ideas and wrestlers into the ground, and Russo was still effective in September 1999.
You could argue that McMahon, with pressure bearing down from the Parent Television Council, was willing to let Russo go; that way, his controversy bait was WCW’s problem. The timeline does not work, though; the media hit-pieces and Coca Cola’s subsequent sponsorship pull did not happen until December.
Ultimately, WCW did not need to be killed off by October 1999; the promotion was doing a fabulous job of that all by itself. Did McMahon even get briefed on the Nitro ratings at that point? That was probably a waste of time.