Vince Russo
“Bro.”
Vincent Kennedy McRusso (born January 24, 1961), or Vince as he likes to be called instead of Shitstain or The Archbishop of Talentbury (what Jim Cornette calls him), is an infamous legend amongst the wide world of professional wrestling (Florida). Many people today believe Vince rewrote the world of professional wrestling and changed it into something that everyone could enjoy, and not just a bunch of hillbilly rednecks who couldn't get tickets to the next NASCAR show in town. Others however refer to Vince as "living proof that the word 'Bro' should be illegal".
Vince invented pro wrestling and ruled the world of wrestling until 1980 when Vince McMahon stole the idea from him and launched the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). WWF has been the world leader in sports entertainment for over 40 years, except when WCW was kicking their ass in the ratings for nearly three years, and that time when they changed their name to WWE and had to stop allowing pandas to be struck down with chair shots to the back of the head due to animal cruelty laws.
Vince invents wrestling[edit]
On the 8th day of 1979, after Vince invented the Earth, the Sun, the trees, the pandas, Jesus, those umbrellas you put in cocktails, low-carb steroids, and viagra on a pole, he decided he would invent the greatest sport known to man (when he got around to inventing man) and thus, wrestling was born. Vince and his partner Johnny Rodz lined up as many beefed-up, steroid-injected specimens as they could, and made them dance cuddle spoon wrestle each other in a Brooklyn Gold Gym, under a promotion which they called Vicious Vinnie's Vorld vof Vrestling. For over a quarter of a billion years Russo was the god of wrestling, and the world, until Vince "Satan" McMahon came along and revolutionized the sport (snicker) into what it is today.
Vince and Vince tag up[edit]
McMahon started buying shares and stocks in many of the small territorial wrestling companies, and soon had taken over the world and called it the World Wildlife Federation. A company where man could battle beasts...and pandas. This pissed off rival Eric Bischoff so much, he decided he had to invent a company too, but all he could find was talentless WWF rejects and crappy independent stars that he had to convince his name was McMahon to get them to sign to his company, which he later would call We Can't Wrestle (WCW).
Russo begged McMahon to give him a job with the WWF, and McMahon accepted. Russo would be the genius behind such wrestling legends and household names as The Gobbledegooker, Paul Bearer, Jesus, The Rock and Carrot Top. To this day, those names are sin-ominous with WWF/E legends of wrestling. Vince and Vince would turn over such great wrestler gimmicks and storylines that the WCW owners needed to up their game to compete in what became the Monday Night Bores. For over six years the WWF and WCW would lock horns competing with each other, and the feud would escalate once WCW began to falter during the last two years of their unforgettable battles. Often WCW would challenge the WWF to a ratings war, and the two Vinces would showcase their master skills at making WWF legends into crowd favorites.
It was the dawning of the Raditude Era; to compete with the WWF, WCW had to invent characters of such great magnitude such as RoboCop and The Shockmaster to compete. But the Gobbledegooker would triumph over the WCW champions, winning the world's hearts under his wings. The WWF then invented a character called Stone Cold Temple Pilot Steve Austin, who they invented out of $6 million dollars worth of cans of whoopass fueled by beer. WCW's reaction was to invent a similar-looking character made out of $16 million dollars worth of steroids and gold that they named Goldberg. Vince and Vince would have their asses kicked by WCW when they came up with a faction called the Nash Wrasslin' Order (NWO), so the pair came up with a faction reaction with three guys and a girl that they called D-Generation-X. The wars would rage on for centuries. Battles like these raged on for so long that something just had to change to rock the boat.
Russo would then decide the WWF should expand into other sports, so Vince pitched the idea to Vince to start up a professional football league to compete with the NFL. Soon the WWF launched the XFL and sooner then soon the XFL went under as one of the dumbest decisions in sports entertainment history since the Shockmaster. McMahon blamed Russo for the 18 dollars lost on inventing the XFL, and scolded Russo for coming up with such a dumb idea that even WCW could see it wasn't worth trying to come up with their own alternate sports league. It all came to a head in October of 1999 when Vince would challenge Vince to a match, pitting their best wrestlers against each other. The event was called Wrestlefakia. Vince brought out his champion, Hulk Hogan, to take on The Nature Boy Ric Flair in what became one of the greatest wastes of time in sports entertainment history, as Flair would go down to Hogan due to McMahon paying him a lot of money to buy-off Flair to take a dive. This made Russo feel like the smaller man and he would give in and bow at Mr. McMahon's feet. McMahon fired Russo and he left with his tail between his asscheeks, in his most shocking embarrassment to date. Russo was now out of the WWF, and looking for revenge.
Vince and Bischoff rule the sinking ship[edit]
Russo sucked up to Eric Bischoff begging for a job with WCW. Eric asked why they should employ him, and Russo laid claim to having been the man behind all of the WWF's best moments and ideas, such as the Gobbledegooker, Dork Doink the Clown, dropping a panda dressed as Captain America off the catwalk above the ring to his death, and of course making Shawn Micheals twist Bret Hart's screw in what was known as the most controversial moment in sports entertainment history, the Montreal Screwjob.
With that kind of genius ideas man, Eric instantly welcomed Vince to WCW to start helping out with new ideas to make WCW continue to win the ratings war. The first thing Vince did was get rid of every wrestler's name and gimmick and make them change it. He then invented a faction called the New Blood, then got the NWO to go invade a gay bar in Philadelphia to respond to the WWF attack of DX declaring war on the WCW headquarters. Russo then laid claim to inventing the WWF's screen which they called the Titantron, so he made a crappy ripoff for WCW called the Megatron. WWF had a white body-builder named Chyna, so Russo found a body-building tan woman and named her Aysa. WWF got rid of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, and WCW employed them, as well as any one else who was fired from the WWF for sucking. And so on and so forth; the copy wars went on and on and on.
Russo was just trying to reinvent things he had done, and he was not coming up with anything new. Thus it was soon found out that Vince was not the brilliant ideas man behind the WWF he once was, as he made one the dumbest decisions in history by deciding to compete with ECW to see who could put their company out of business first. WCW naturally lost to ECW, but after Russo's involvement in WCW storylines — having the same matches against the same opponents booked every week for every show, making Jeff Jarret the world champion, having Goldberg lose his undefeated streak to Aysa, and employing a 7-foot mummy/ninja/yeti/TellieCuddler to hug everyone for 20 minutes — he was fired in October 2000. Months later, Ted Turner was forced out of the newly-merged AOL Time Warner; Turner was one of the few fighting to keep WCW alive, and with him gone WCW was declared kaput by new executive Jamie Kellner. Bischoff had been planning on relaunching WCW with Fusient Media Ventures, but now had no choice but to sell WCW to Vince McMahon and WWF President Stuart Snyder for 50 cents (half of its original projected price). The Monday Night Bores were no more; WWF won the ratings war and changed their name to WWE shortly after.
What a jabroni[edit]
Russo had killed what he invented, so he had no choice now but to suck up to Stephanie McMahon and beg for another job with WWE. He stayed for a few weeks as a consultant, and was offered a full-time position, but declined it due to Stephanie throwing out all his good ideas. Russo said he had a better idea in mind: start from scratch and come up with another brilliant company that could compete with the WWE.
In 2002, Russo was asked to help form TNA (Tits N Ass Total Nonstop Action Wrestling) with Jeff Jarrett. Originally named the CRODG (Christian Ring of Divine Glory), TNA was an independent religion-based wrestling promotion, which helped satisfy the demand for Southern-style wrasslin' that WCW had left since its implosion. Vince booked the PPV event that featured such matchups as: Moses vs. The Virgin Mary, Goliath vs. King Tut, Jesus vs. Hitler, and the main event, Ultimate Warrior vs. Phil Collins. The event was going good until the Warrior showed and killed the event faster than Russo killed WCW's ratings. Russo left TNA in 2004.
In 2006, Vince returned to TNA, now employed as a story writer alongside his arch-nemesis Jim Cornette. Russo did his best to kill raise ratings for TNA, but showing signs of getting older, he was not living up to his old tricks. So he was let go from the promotion in 2012, allowing Hulk Hogan, Dixie Carter, and Eric Bischoff to sink the TNA into the ground once and for all.
Personal life[edit]
Vince has been married to his wife Amy since 1983. The couple have three children together. In 2003, Russo became a Born Again Christian. In 2004, he formed a short-lived online Christian ministry titled Forgiven, where fellow wrestling writers would confess their bad booking sins to Father Vinnie.