7 Wrestlers Who Got Fired RIDICULOUSLY Fast
5. Vince Russo (2 Days)
Everything happened in 2002 WWE.
Between January 1st and December 31st, Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall returned to the company, sporting the nWo colours no less. Within a month, and following a WrestleMania match with The Rock, 'The Hulkster' was back in the red and yellow and a month after that he was Champion once again.
Unrelated (mostly) to all of that, Stone Cold Steve Austin had enough and walked out. Twice.
Unrelated to that, Vince McMahon signed Eric Bischoff, out of the blue, and made him an authority figure on Monday Night Raw. Unrelated to that, Shawn Michaels returned to the ring after a four year absence, and just upped and had the one of the company's best matches of the decade with Triple H. Unrelated to...well, everything, 'The Game' himself was simply awarded a brand new World Heavyweight Championship, then dressed up as Kane and had sex with a mannequin that was supposed to be a corpse. He "screwed her brains out", remember?
The company didn't have the same name it started with by New Year's Eve - the World Wrestling Federation was forced to "Get The F Out" in May after losing a lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund. This was entertainment, but the creative hazards were real.
Hopefully, that provides some context to how and why Vince Russo made a shocking return to WWE around the same time, all of three years after he'd left the company to lead WCW's creative process, and two after his vision expedited the end of the company as wrestling fans knew it. At the time, McMahon was so desperate for something - anything - to rapidly reheat a freezing territory that he turned to the man who used his stage for Crash TV excess and briefly made magic.
The story went that Russo got hired, turned up, pitched a wild do-over of the invasion storyline that involved logistics wildly beyond any realistic possibilities or interest, alienated people in the room and left, before being promptly relieved of his duties the next day. Russo, for his part, recalled being brought in for his first meeting, seeing "Michael Hayes, Paul Heyman, and four kids that had to be between 25 and 28 years old", thinking that there was "no way in the world that this thing would work out", adding that "I felt there were layers upon layers of people to go through to get my ideas accepted". The relationship quickly broke down and both sides moved in different directions.
As it happened, Jeff Jarrett had just recently launched NWA-TNA, and was happy to collaborate again with his former pal, even if much of Russo's involvement in the product was initially shrouded in confused secrecy. The brief WWE gig did remove any guardrails that might have been remaining from his old WCW deal though, for whatever that was worth.