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Post by BrodietheSlayer on Dec 16, 2018 16:56:57 GMT -5
Well, he denies the fact that Vince McMahon was an editor for him, but that's exactly what he was. Plus, there was JR, Prichard, and others that could help ixnay a particular idea, or at the very least turn it into something better for the sake of the product. That's exactly what an editor does. Granted, I don't think Russo liked that, which is one of the reasons he went to WCW. The difference there was that there was no person that could or would (that's an important point too, as unlike WWE, the people that could have performed the roles JR, Prichard, and others did in WWE were too busy trying to protect their spots and sabotaging any threat to those spots to do what needed to be done to make the product better) do that, which is why we got what we got. In TNA, I think Jarrett, Cornette, and others tried to do their best to reign Russo in, but Dixie Carter was no Vince McMahon. Plus, like a lot of the people in charge of WCW in their dying days, Dixie had no clue what worked or didn't, so, she wasn't going to be that editor Russo needed to have. And then it got worse when Hogan and Bischoff came in, as they had their own ideas about things, which made the Hogan era such a mess. Plus, like in WCW, they were worried more about being in charge than actually helping to make the product as good as it could be. McMahon was able to rein him in because he didn’t tolerated bullshit. If Russo threw a temper tantrum then he would’ve been fired. Now in wcw, he pretty much did everything he wanted because the place was a mess and there was no clear boss, he just went to Bill Busch and overruled Sullivan and Taylor. In tna he then became the head of creative by constantly kissing up to Dixie and getting Jarrett and his allies fired. That’s why Jeff never hired Russo for GFW. Yeah, I know Jim Cornette's views on Russo, and he's right on some of it, but then again, I think he let's his personal hatred of the man shade any kind of objective opinions on him. I think Prichard's thoughts on Russo were closer to the truth; not as great as He thinks he is, but better than his toughest critics give him credit for. However, thank you for the intelligent discussion on Russo, rather than just trolling shit on here like some do.
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Post by BrodietheSlayer on Dec 16, 2018 17:04:03 GMT -5
Oh, once again, I'm not going to deny the fact that Russo's ideas about things aren't exactly fitting with how things are in 2018. That's kind of the sad fact that in many ways, he's become permanently stuck in 1997 and that Jerry Springer/Howard Stern menrality, which is why he's found himself irrelevant in today's wrestling business. At the same time, though, I try not to let my disagreements with his opinions on things completely control my opinions on him as a writer. After all, if you start to look at people who were/are in positions of power in the wrestling business, you're not going to find very many people who are/would have been bastions of progressive values. Hell, there are some that make Russo look like Bernie Sanders. The ironic thing is that both Springer and Stern evolved and upgraded, Russo should learn from them and then he probably could be employed by a big company again. Russo actually booked a lingerie match in tna in 2014 hahaha. Well, Springer was actually quite Liberal, even back in 97, but he knew the public wanted that type of product then, so, that's what he gave them. Stern seemed more middle of the road, but he was smart enough to know he had to change with the times and reinvent himself. Unfortunately for Russo, he never got that.
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Dec 16, 2018 17:22:33 GMT -5
Unlike other people in wrestling, Russo spews his bigotry in a regular basis, he equates being a wrestling fan to being gay and he also makes creepy comments about women. While other people in wrestling actually shut the f*** up about their hatred, Russo wears it proudly, that’s why it’s ok to take him up to task. Regarding the editor part you’re correct. Raven explained it the best. Russo is a writer not a booker. Russo can help guys with their promos but he can’t come up with angles that last six months and have an ending. Russo writes a kidnapping angle but he doesn’t know how to finish it. Oh, I'm not denying the fact that Russo is any of those things. It just gets annoying when any actual intelligent discussion about the guy gets derailed by that lame crap, especially given the source. But the only thing derailing the thread was having to take issue with someone calling Russo racist; someone did it last page too, it didn't derail conversation at all, people remained pretty focused on the talk of him as a booker. Empty whataboutism does more to hurt intelligent discussion than someone sharing their view on the matter, which is pretty valid with the subtext of "I dismiss the man offhand for his openly bigoted and hateful views", which I think are actually pretty relevant to trying to defend his booking given the fact that he will so often write demeaning stories riddled with stereotypes and bigotry. Saying Vince Russo is a dumb, out of touch racist and also a sexist homophobe holds infinitely more value in this conversation than "But so are other people".
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Post by honsou on Dec 16, 2018 17:49:08 GMT -5
I personally love really crazy wrestling. DDT is one of my favorite promotions and all their crazy gimmicks and story lines are totally my jam. You can do really crazy stuff in wrestling and make it compelling...if you're actually trying to tell a story. The problem with Russo is that its always clear hes not trying to actually tell a story, hes going in a room every week and asking only one question "how do we increase ratings this week".
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Post by Kevin Hamilton on Dec 16, 2018 17:49:42 GMT -5
Pavlovian or not, saying "Dude booked garbage that made people turn the channel too" is valid discussion. If anything, I think he probably gets too much credit in many circles. The only time he had anything any good was when had truly transcendent performers like Austin and The Rock. They elevated his material, not the other way round.
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Dec 16, 2018 17:51:42 GMT -5
The OP made a thread in a defense of Russo people were pretty shaky on in the first place, but where did chaz's comments derail anything aside from people calling out his comments specifically? Immediately after his post, Repressed Nerd and Madlibs both disagree with the point before the topic of conversation turns in any way toward that. And even since then, blackoutcreature and JR Smith both addressed your points on the matter of "Russo with an editor" and all that; chaz's comments were not a blockade to this thread, the people throwing their hands up and decrying his post for being bad because of why/how/that he's calling this specific person who this thread is about and nobody elser racist are. And no shit people are complainig about Russo; OP tried to drum up a positive people disagreed with. Gee it's almost like overall opinion of Vince Russo's body of work is not particularly positive and people express that.
And yeah no you're right nobody has ever brought up WWE's checky past with race, and Bill Watts? Oh yeah nobody ever talks about Bill Watts's racism at all. Whataboutism is never a valid conversational point because a) context exists and this Vince Russo thread of course is going to bring up Vince Russo b) any time people bring up examples of people who never get called out on their own failings, they are invariably cases where those things are brought up in threads about them, making the whole point look foolish, petty, and like the tired discussion ender that you decried Chaz's post as being.
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Dec 16, 2018 18:12:59 GMT -5
I don't buy Vince Mcmahon as an editor for Russo, given that the WWF's output got worse when he and Ferrara were in place. Mae young giving birth to a hand? Katie Vick? All McMahon. I'm more inclined to believe the balance for Russo were JR and Corny, and the product got worse as his influence grew and theirs shrank on the booking side of things.
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Post by romanstylesiii on Dec 16, 2018 18:15:59 GMT -5
Some of 2010 TNA wasn't very interesting at goddamn all. Bad, baffling, 'unpredictable', but it wasn't always interesting at all *makes a tongue in cheek post* Someone on here
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Post by OVO 40 hunched over like he 80 on Dec 16, 2018 18:51:40 GMT -5
Pavlovian or not, saying "Dude booked garbage that made people turn the channel too" is valid discussion. If anything, I think he probably gets too much credit in many circles. The only time he had anything any good was when had truly transcendent performers like Austin and The Rock. They elevated his material, not the other way round. This. If the material was great then why only Austin and Rock succeeded but Sid, Jarrett, and the rest of the wcw main card failed?
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Post by eJm on Dec 16, 2018 19:35:50 GMT -5
Honestly, Russo should take the blame for a lot of the problems with modern WWE booking.
Titles that don’t mean much, 50/50 booking, match endings that make those same matches a waste of time, long drawn out talking segments, comedy that misses more than hits, the idiotic blurring the lines in promos.
Like, the only differences between the Attitude Era and WWE 2018 is the fact they can’t swear as much, the matches are longer and there’s no Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock. That’s it.
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Post by bmfjules on Dec 16, 2018 19:47:48 GMT -5
Russo always had really good "re-branding" and/or "first week" shows - and then about a month's worth of decent follow ups before his ideas quickly went off the rails without Vince to filter him. Long term booking, Russo is a proven cancer to any show he touches. He comes in - hotshots everything, forgets where he was going, improvises, attempts more hotshotting, forgets what he was doing again, and then everyone has turned on everyone 12 times in two months (with so many gimmick changes that they may have even turned on themselves) and all the matches are the wrestling equivalent of ten cent beer night at the baseball games.
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Post by OVO 40 hunched over like he 80 on Dec 16, 2018 20:03:16 GMT -5
Honestly, Russo should take the blame for a lot of the problems with modern WWE booking. Titles that don’t mean much, 50/50 booking, match endings that make those same matches a waste of time, long drawn out talking segments, comedy that misses more than hits, the idiotic blurring the lines in promos. Like, the only differences between the Attitude Era and WWE 2018 is the fact they can’t swear as much, the matches are longer and there’s no Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock. That’s it. I disagree with the titles not meaning much, in the attitude era they were very important. The wwf belt was the holy grail and the intercontinental belt also mattered. The belts not mattering started in my opinion when the part time performers became prominent and they got belts.
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Post by eJm on Dec 16, 2018 20:17:37 GMT -5
Honestly, Russo should take the blame for a lot of the problems with modern WWE booking. Titles that don’t mean much, 50/50 booking, match endings that make those same matches a waste of time, long drawn out talking segments, comedy that misses more than hits, the idiotic blurring the lines in promos. Like, the only differences between the Attitude Era and WWE 2018 is the fact they can’t swear as much, the matches are longer and there’s no Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock. That’s it. I disagree with the titles not meaning much, in the attitude era they were very important. The wwf belt was the holy grail and the intercontinental belt also mattered. The belts not mattering started in my opinion when the part time performers became prominent and they got belts. WWF title? Absolutely. IC title, though? That belt hardly was a thing during the main Attitude Era after Rock/HHH fought over it. It only started mattering again after the InVasion ended.
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Post by OVO 40 hunched over like he 80 on Dec 16, 2018 20:31:17 GMT -5
I disagree with the titles not meaning much, in the attitude era they were very important. The wwf belt was the holy grail and the intercontinental belt also mattered. The belts not mattering started in my opinion when the part time performers became prominent and they got belts. WWF title? Absolutely. IC title, though? That belt hardly was a thing during the main Attitude Era after Rock/HHH fought over it. It only started mattering again after the InVasion ended. After Rock and Triple H it still mattered with Jarrett and Owen, all the way to Kurt Angle, Jericho and the Radicalz. It still was the workers belt. Even during the invasion it still meant something and helped elevate Edge as a singles guy.
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Post by Cry Me a Wiggle on Dec 17, 2018 2:26:58 GMT -5
Russo always had really good "re-branding" and/or "first week" shows - and then about a month's worth of decent follow ups before his ideas quickly went off the rails without Vince to filter him. Long term booking, Russo is a proven cancer to any show he touches. He comes in - hotshots everything, forgets where he was going, improvises, attempts more hotshotting, forgets what he was doing again, and then everyone has turned on everyone 12 times in two months (with so many gimmick changes that they may have even turned on themselves) and all the matches are the wrestling equivalent of ten cent beer night at the baseball games. Yeah, agreed. Russo could write some exciting stuff, but eventually the follow-through, build, and conclusion would be abandoned for the next even crazier idea. I defended Russo for years, and will still say he contributed more than his critics give him credit for. His ethos of character building and giving the lower card stories, for example. But I can now see his lack of focus and inflexibility in evolving his style and way-of-thinking with the times ultimately proves his detractors right.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Dec 17, 2018 4:02:12 GMT -5
...I would have loved a striptease from Daffney... I won't lie, so would I. The problem was that Daffney was told to play it like she was being forced to and really really didn't want to, or she insisted on playing it that way. So instead of being excited that we're gonna see a hot girl naked, you just feel awkward and uncomfortable that you're being complicit in an act that could be considered a form of sexual assault. Not to mention it wasn't just the striptease part that was insulting. The entire match was insulting. the 4 women standing around with the cases... Tara winning the match and losing her title... but being happy about it because she won her pet spider... Velvet Skye getting a match whenever she wants that was stated to be a title match... and well she cashes in on some stupid gimmick non title match... The entire Daphne has to strip tease... and the awkwardness with that... only to have Lacey Von erich come out and beat her up and then want to strip... and then... she doesn't for some reason... all this happening on Television so everyone knows they aren't going to show anything.
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Post by OVO 40 hunched over like he 80 on Dec 17, 2018 4:02:44 GMT -5
According to Bischoff, if you want to see Russo have a mental breakdown and an existencial crisis, wait until he pitches a storyline and then ask him, “that’s great Vince where do we go from there? Where are we gonna be in six months?”
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Dec 17, 2018 4:08:50 GMT -5
I've seen enough of Russo's booked things to say... that this thread title is false. putting things on poles... and swerves for the sake of swerves are unbelievably uninteresting and just flat out bad television. and waiting for the swerve or run in that we know is going to come because those are Russo's main writing crutches is damned boring. The only time he had anything any good was when had truly transcendent performers like Austin and The Rock. They elevated his material, not the other way round. and when you get down to it with Austin and Rock it was more... hey these guys are charismatic... maybe we should let them be themselves...
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Post by OVO 40 hunched over like he 80 on Dec 17, 2018 4:32:16 GMT -5
Here’s the thing, it’s not that Russo had great ideas, most of his ideas sucked. He was lucky to be working with two of the greatest stars in wrestling’s history in Austin and Rock. He had the greatest announcer ever at his disposal in Jim Ross. He also had the best agent ever in Pat Patterson to translate his crazy shit into matches. If that wasn’t enough he had the best wrestling promoter ever that knew what to do and how to edit and film Russo’s ideas.
He went from the structured and professional wwf environment to the chaos ridden wcw. Instead of Rock and Austin, he had a Bill Goldberg who was barely trained and didn’t know what the f*** he was doing by his own admission. He had a lazy Kevin Nash and problematic Scott Hall. Instead of Jim Ross he had a Tony Schiavone who recently admitted that he stopped trying during those years. Instead of Pat Patterson he had Kevin Sullivan, who despite being a good storyteller, he alienated the locker room and a Terry Taylor who was a joke and nobody respected him. Finally instead of Vince McMahon he had a clueless Eric Bischoff who despite being creative, he was a shitty businessman and wasted their money.
In wcw Russo was left to his own devices and without an editor we got shit like Judy Bagwell, a first blood dna test match, the fat chick thriller, Ric Flair being buried on the desert, Oklahoma, and Vince Russo on a popemobile. That wasn’t interesting or compelling tv, that stuff didn’t raise a dime, that shit killed their ratings and ppv business. That shit is part of the reason why the wwe is the only game in town.
Then in tna we got Russo on a budget.
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Post by doinkmark on Dec 17, 2018 21:02:08 GMT -5
By entertaining you mean killing the ppv buys in wcw? Or how entertaining it was when David Arquette won the belt? Or the abortion angles? Or booking a show so bad for the tna Monday experiment that the extra million people who tuned in never returned? Vince Russo debates are always a hot button issue, and I certainly don't want to make that worse by getting political, but I feel an important distinction needs to be made here in order to be as fair as possible to Vinny Ru. He never booked an abortion angle. He booked a couple miscarriage angles, which one could certainly argue are just as bad in terms of taste and storytelling, but no wrestling booker, writer, promoter, etc. has touched the abortion issue for obvious reasons. At least not as far as I'm aware. Russo has written enough questionable content during his career, including angles involving other big issues such as guns, that we don't need to add something he honestly didn't do to the pile. That's all I'm going to say on that.
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