WWE: 7 Innovations Vince Russo Did That Changed Wrestling

2. He Pushed The Envelope

Russo's a New Yorker that has never been afraid to speak his mind. Sometimes that attitude has gotten him into trouble and made him make stupid decisions (like a lot of things he did in WCW), but it's also a part of his personality that made him become a star from a writing perspective. As most lifelong WWE fans know, the company's product was really boring in the mid 1990s. There just wasn't anything to really bring in new fans. Guys like Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart were great in the ring, but the storylines were pretty boring. By the time Russo became a part of the writing team, suddenly WWE became more interesting. There are people that will say that Russo was never that original because he was doing things that Paul Heyman did in ECW. There's a lot of truth in that and most people would say that Heyman is a brighter mind than Russo. I certainly would. However, Russo deserves praise for doing those things on a grander stage. It's not like it was a copy of everything Heyman did either. Russo was smart enough to present the idea that WWE needed to become a product that was different from the norm. Some people may not have liked the strong language, violence and sexual tone of WWE programming, but it worked. It may never return either.