He tried to make WCW like WWE.

 

Some say he was a mole but it's unproven.

 

No Vince McMahon.

 

This is the answer.

Russo had some great ideas, but McMahon knew which ones would work.

McMahon understands the business better than anyone, so him and Russo were actually a great team while together.

 

Cause he didn't understand wrestling. I am convinced that he didn't contribute jack even during his WWF/E days.

 

He was trying to be too much different

 

In fairness to Russo, the wheels were falling off of WCW an entire year before he got there. The ratings undergoing a major downtrend and fans started giving up, so whoever came in to clean that mess was dealt a really shitty hand.

He actually did increase the ratings in the 3 months where he was head of creative. He was no longer the head of creative when he returned and was made an on-air character. Russo was thrown on a Booking Committee. It wasn't a good fit. WCW was too political, and Russo didn't have a McMahon to protect him from the sharks backstage. He didn't have the freedom to write the show on his own.

That's not to say that he didn't have shitty ideas. He did, but to say that he was a complete failure in WCW given the circumstances is a bit of a stretch. Nash and Sullivan under Busch failed a whole lot harder in 1999 because they took a show that was doing regular 5.0s and lowered it to 3.0 in less than a year.

 

I think it's safe to say that his importance in both places is overstated. Certainly WWE. He didn't make the Attitude era, and he didn't kill WCW.

 

Who says that he made the AE?

All I ever hear is that he pushed McMahon into a different direction and wrote the show.

It obviously takes more than the writer to make it all work. He was a big factor in it's success though.

 

I bet if he remained on the same course for WWE it would've been trash too.

 

For those that claim Vince was this great filter, it was very soon after Russo left that we got Mae Young giving birth to a hand.

 

The McMahon kinks really went into overdrive when Russo left.

Kiss My Ass Club. Stink Face. Trish barking like a dog. Bathroom humor. Katie Vick....ect.

 

In hindsight, much of the wcw stuff was bad.
But... I will give him credit for trying something new that was actually ahead of its time.

Russo was well aware of the emerging internet culture, and how inside knowledge of the business was getting exposed.

So he tried writing a show with meta references and worked shoots to throw off the internet fanboys nad create a new kind of kayfabe.

It ended up being a confused, messy show, especially for the casuals. But it was an ambitious idea that was probably a decade ahead of its time.

 

WWE had the structure. Guys like Vince, JR, Pat, Michael Hayes, and Bruce Prichard probably oversaw and filtered Russo’s insanity quite a bit.

In WCW, there really was no structure. The wrestlers were running the locker room. Bischoff was in and out of power. The booking team changed every other month. The higher ups there didn’t care much for wrestling. Russo had no oversight and just kinda ran unfiltered.

 

WWE had the structure. Guys like Vince, JR, Pat, Michael Hayes, and Bruce Prichard probably oversaw and filtered Russo’s insanity quite a bit.

I doubt the guy that came up with brilliant concepts like Mantaur, TL Hopper and The Goon was ready to filter anyone's creative insanity.

 

Russo had lots of good and bad ideas, but he didn't know the difference. He needed a filter, and he didn't have that in WCW.

Russo shouldn't be seen as a joke.

 

He's properly hated for his WCW run, but I do think people are really stretching to try to not give him any credit for the attitude era.

Like, he certainly had filters and a great roster, but he WAS the head writer and very specific things were his brainchild, such as the whole storyline for the Survivor Series 98 Tournament, which is a very nuanced and well-done long-term storyline when you look at the months proceeding up to it.

He had a great run in WWF imo. It was terrible after that, but I will always give the guy credit for contributing to must see television from 1997-1999.

 

such as the whole storyline for the Survivor Series 98 Tournament

I did like this storyline and tournament so credits to Russo for that I suppose.

I'm lukewarm on the guy but leaning a little more on the negative. He was a character and had some alright ideas here and there but to me he was instrumental in turning wrestling into a joke and I never liked that and the business never seemed to recover from that. I'm not putting it all on him though. I know he was responsible for fast title changes and treating titles like "props" and lowering the prestige of pretty much every belt and that soured me on him also.

I DID like how he gave storylines to midcarders and even jobbers and everyone had a place even if most of their storylines and characters were stupid. There were some that were mildly entertaining though like Ralphus, Screamin' Norman Smiley, Mike Awesome the fat chick thriller, and some others here and there.

 

In some weird way I think Vince R and Vince M together sort of balanced each other out and somehow made some gold when they were together.

When they split up they both tended to run off the rails for awhile. Vince M and WWE more or less recovered. Vince R and WCW never did.

 

While I give him some credit for Austin and Rock I think there was a luck factor involved with both. One or both could have been fired before they ever became anything. But if you strike gold by luck one place it's unlikely you'll repeat the same in a new place. They didn't have any wrestlers that were the next Austin or Rock, and by trying to make every wrestler important he made none of them important. He also came up with a lot of dumb gimmicks. The attitude era was known for it's main event scene but honestly the midcard left a lot to be desired at least IMO. Trying to put a wrestler as small and boring as Kidman over Hulk freaking Hogan was one of the worst ideas in wrestling history.

 

In WCW he is the boss and has the power to do anything that he wants to, but in WWE his creative idea is still under McMahon's control, he can't do a bunch of crazy idiot ideas by himself.

 

Russo had far better talent in WWF than he had in WCW.

He was never going to create Rock, Austin, Foley, Angle, HHH, Undertaker level talent there

 

Russo borrowed heavily from the Jerry Springer/soap opera/trash TV elements he laid out on RAW in 97-98, then applied it ten fold to Nitro in 2000. Prior to the time Russo took over anyway, the company was already going in that direction. He wanted to make it all fast paced and allow nothing to breathe.
For instance on Nitro, a duo would win the tag team titles in a four minute match… and then eight seconds after the pin, straight to next segment. No explanation, just go go go. Then another segment twenty seconds later. Then another. Eight backstage segments later, we’re left with so much to digest in a short space of time, we don’t even know where the fuck we are. Carry that on for two hours. Too much worked shoot bullshit - literally second Russo episode in, they’re already doing a ‘I’m here to do the job’ nudge nudge wink wink story with Buff Bagwell. Utter nonsense.
New concepts were conjured up, and for every good idea, there were twenty disastrous ones.
Another amusing moment was when somebody (I think Mike Awesome) was attacked and taken away in an ambulance…half an hour later, there’s a huge brawl between two guys, and members of the roster - including Mr. Awesome - are there trying to break them up. Classic.

Plus I found it funny that nearly everybody just could NOT finish a promo without saying the word ‘bullshit’ or whatever. You think the potty mouths of AEW are bad now? Hooo boy.

 

NOBODY was going to turn around WCW, it was inevitably going to fail. Russo was an outsider in the new company and was never gonna have the political power he had in WWF. He was meeting with McMahon at his house every week for godsake. He was Triple H before Triple H.

 

He didn’t have filters like Bruce Pritchard, Jim Cornette, Vince, and Patterson around to question his bad booking ideas.

 

Exactly. Vinnie Mac was running the show with Russo as his chief writer, but without Patterson, Cornette, JR, Michael Hayes, Pritchard, Fink, and a multitude of other experienced backstage hands, the company would have been fucked.

 

Russo was given too much credit for turning the WWE around in the Attitude Era. He did have good ideas, but they were often filtered by McMahon and others on the creative team. When Russo left for WCW, he was hyped up as the man who was going to turn the company around, and was given far too much power to do so.

As a result, he was exposed for what he was. A good wing man, who had no business being the head of creative.

 

I'm not sure if 'was given too much credit' is the right way to put it. It seems like with all the big signings and the politics backstage, they've seen it as some kind of bargain, not expecting it to worsen the problem. Remember back then it was huge, the competition the crowd was hot as fire, guess there was nothing much they could do

 

In WWF, Russo wasn't the sole creative voice. It was a melting pots of ideas and opinions.

Russo was a big part of it, but he wasn't the be all end all. In WCW, he was, and they were desperate, so he got the keys to the kingdom and it all crumbled.

 

I think the AE was 50% amazing / 50% terrible

 

So basically 25 fillers 25 common help a dude out? (don't mind me just blurting it out)

 

he didnt have the rock , austin and so many other talented wrestlers carrying his ass in wcw

 

WWE Attitude and Vince Russo’s characters and angles worked because they had never been seen before, or had been seen only on a much smaller scale (ECW). By the time he went to WCW, both had been exposed at a main stream level for close to two years. To compete, Russo was faced with the impossible task of making angles and characters that were as fresh in late 1999 as they would have been in late 1997.

The only narrow pathway that might have allowed for this was to go more extreme than WWE. However this was an AOL/Time Warner company. There was no way Russo could exceed WWE’s programming, let along even match it. What was produced was more of a lukewarm copy of WWE Attitude Era. One cannot also discount the whipsaw effect of replacing Russo in January and going to Sullivan, then going back to Russo in April. It destroyed continuity - suddenly Hogan was back to being a 1995 babyface - and made the product hard to follow.

 

WWE Attitude and Vince Russo’s characters and angles worked because they had never been seen before, or had been seen only on a much smaller scale (ECW). By the time he went to WCW, both had been exposed at a main stream level for close to two years. To compete, Russo was faced with the impossible task of making angles and characters that were as fresh in late 1999 as they would have been in late 1997.

This is unture. If this were the case, then both WCW and WWE would have seen their ratings decrease substantially after 1999. By then, the WWE had done the adult-themed story lines for 3 years. However, what happened is that the WWE continued to remain white hot for a full year after Russo left, and once Russo took charge of WCW, ratings and buy rates for WCW just accelerated the companies downward spiral.

It can be argued that if Stephanie McMahon had not been put in charge of the creative department in the fall of 2000, the WWE could have continued to thrive for another two years or more. Russo was good for adding edgy ideas to the product, but he was exposed as a horrible head writer, when WCW tried to give him full creative control of the company.

The only narrow pathway that might have allowed for this was to go more extreme than WWE. However this was an AOL/Time Warner company. There was no way Russo could exceed WWE’s programming, let along even match it.

This is what Russo apologists always bring up, and time and time again, it has been proven false. The angles that Time Warner's standards and practices nixed, was things like Lenni & Lodi's "ambiguously gay" tag team, the "Oklahoma" skits with him mocking JR's balls palsy, and other lower mid-card characters, that did not affect the main event scene. In fairness, Bischoff also blames Time Warner's standards and practices for not being able to compete with WWE, but it is simply not true.

What was produced was more of a lukewarm copy of WWE Attitude Era. One cannot also discount the whipsaw effect of replacing Russo in January and going to Sullivan, then going back to Russo in April. It destroyed continuity - suddenly Hogan was back to being a 1995 babyface - and made the product hard to follow.

Russo had done so much damage in just over 3 months to the company, that changing to Kevin Sullivan really did not accelerate the bleeding that WCW was incurring financially. It may have prevented Benoit, Malenko, and Guerrero from leaving, but that would be all. WCW continued on their downward spiral once Russo was brought back into the fold in April 2000. The irony of the situation, is that many people who stuck around to the bitter end, claimed that WCW was finally delivering some quality TV in their last three months of existence.