Repost: Netcop v. Vince Russo
By Scott Keith on 20 June 2024
(Another one by reader request. At least I was using Word by mid-2000 so the formatting is fixed this time. Also, man was I angry back then. Surprised my blood pressure didn’t start spiking much sooner than it did, to be honest.).
Netcop v. Vince Russo
Week after week, Vince Russo continues to show why he’s the biggest dipshit in booking history, surpassing Ole Anderson by a close margin this week. By the way, in case anyone wants to write me in support of Unibrow, here’s a pre-emptive “Kiss my ass” and/or “Fuck you” right now because you’re completely out to lunch if you think this jerk has anything left in the creativity guns to launch AT ALL. Long-term plans MY ASS, they can’t even decide who to put the World title on for more than a day.
Case in point: Jeff Jarrett, who (ooo, ooo, spoiler alert for the 3 or 4 people who are going to watch Thunder this week) had his 3rd World title reign cut short after a whopping 24 hours, losing it in a three-way to Big Poochie (with Scott Steiner the other participant), at the Thunder tapings last night. And they practically BROADCAST another title change as a three-way with Jarrett v. Flair v. Nash is already announced for Nitro, which is probably gonna result in it going to either Flair or Jarrett. And STILL they think that Nash v. Jarrett is gonna draw despite the manic title switching. And wasn’t DDP a contender just TWO WEEKS AGO? What the hell happened to him all of a sudden? Since Spring Stampede, if you can believe a word that comes out of WCW’s financial department at this point, did the best buyrate WCW has done since November (at a HUGE 0.25 or so), you’d think maybe keeping DDP in the title mix would at least make SOME sort of speciously reasoned sense. I mean, yeah, sure, it’s still a dumbfuck move, but at least researchers could point to the blind shit-throwing monkeys booking the hellhole that is WCW and say “Look, they attempted to use logical means to book the next PPV, based on improved numbers from the previous PPV…that shows basic signs of intelligence!” and then give Eric Bischoff a nice banana for his troubles, but now we’re just playing mix-n-match with the title picture based on guys (ie Nash) who keep saying that they’re a draw to the upper management until someone stupid enough to believe them (ie. Russo) comes along with the power to put them back in the main events again.
And wasn’t that EXACTLY what Russo was bitching about the first time around? That guys like Nash were manipulating him behind the scenes and forcing him out of power? And yet here he is, back on top of the throne again for a week because he’s been behaving like a good boy. And meanwhile Booker T is gonna get “repackaged” as GI Bro next week and join the Misfits in Action. So now Vince Russo and all his chattering little trained monkeys are supposed to be telling me that Nash, and only Nash, was over enough to fulfil the exciting role of doing a walk-in during a few matches, throwing some punches, and then ending up with the World title a few weeks later? I mean, hell, wasn’t he feuding with Mike Awesome up until Slamboree? Were we not denied a finish to that great Kanyon-Awesome match because they wanted to build Awesome up further? I mean, it would seem LOGICAL and SENSICAL that if you’re gonna toss Kanyon off the TOP OF A CAGE and proclaim his career dead and his neck broken, then PERHAPS one job to Mike Awesome earlier in the show wouldn’t have killed the guy. Of course, tossing Kanyon off the top of a cage might have, but that sort of consideration rarely enters into the mind of an artiste like Vince Russo.
You have to get the people talking, you know. Buzz is everything. Once the people (who these mysterious people who are talking about WCW without ending every sentence with “…sucks” are, I don’t know, but Bob Ryder claims they exist, so who am I to argue?) are talking about WCW, the ratings will follow. Never mind that buyrates are the lowest in the history of the company, house shows are so bad that they’re having to run smaller buildings to keep from embarrassing themselves with 1/8th full arenas, and merchandise is limited to making your own signs that say “I’d Rather Be At [WWF Show]”, it’s the RATINGS that are key. Unless the ratings are down, then it’s advertisers.
Case in point: Nitro was moved an hour earlier this week, and the first hour dropped to a horrific 1.4. What does this say? First of all, that people aren’t particularly INTERESTED in the show, they’re just creatures of habit who watch from 8-10 EST every week because that’s what they’ve always done. The people who actually CARED enough to follow the time change, who are roughly the size of a really good week for ECW, make up the 1.4 that Nitro’s first hour got, and I’d be willing to bet money that a good chunk of THOSE people were just channel-changing and happened to stumble upon it. And I mean, my god, I actually watched that Nitro tonight just to see if it could really be as bad as they said…and it WAS. Hell, we’re not even two months into the Russo/Bischoff regime and ALREADY Uncle Eric is caught lying through his teeth, as he told a caller on his Meltzer appearance that there wouldn’t be anymore women holding the Cruiserweight title, cross his heart and hope to die. And yet here’s Daffney holding the belt.
It’s like that giant eyebrow is a huge protective shield preventing logic and reason to penetrate Russo’s Cro-Magnon skull ridges and sink into his few remaining brain cells. Gee, let’s see, I’ve got Chris Candido and Devon Storm at my disposal, so I’ll have Daffney Unger and Tammy Sytch fight for the title! Remember, T&A = RATINGS. From God’s mouth to Russo’s. Except in Tammy’s case, it’s T & A & A & A, but that’s splitting hairs. And hey, I’ve got promising talents in Chavo Guerrero and Lash LeRoux, but wrestling doesn’t sell, so I’ll use the combined power of the two greatest forces in sportz entertainment (dick jokes and drug references), and combine them together with the never-tired military theme to form the Misfits in Action! And here’s the brilliant part…I’ll NEVER HAVE THEM WRESTLE AGAIN, just so I can prove my own point with circular logic. Oh yeah, and I’ve got the most over champ in the past two years in Kidman, but we want to (wink wink) elevate him (nudge nudge), so we’ll have him bump all over the place for Hulk Hogan for two months and take away his hot girlfriend, then give Hogan the title shot at the next PPV as a reward for lowering himself to being in the ring with Kidman. Oh yeah, this is TOTALLY a company on the rebound who’s gonna catch the WWF any day now.
And people wonder why Goldberg is so unwilling to come back.
And how about those storylines, huh? The basic premise of everything Russo writes seems to come down to “Everything you see is a work because it’s all sportz entertainment…except what you’re seeing RIGHT NOW, because that’s a shoot.” You know what it reminds me of? One of those brain-teaser cards you get that reads “The statement on the other side of this card is true” on one side, and “The statement on the other side of this card is false” on the other. The brain-teaser is: Which statement is actually true? Or in WCW’s case: Which segment is actually true? Or more to the point: If a promotion fell apart in Atlanta and no one was watching, did it really fall apart? Because I mean, I ASSUME that the ultimate intention of the bookers here is to get people to buy a pay-per-view, because they seem to mention it a lot, but really there’s not much going on to encourage that sort of activity. At this point, why would anyone even want to subject themselves to that sort of punishment?
And hey, what’s the title match gonna be by the time the show rolls around? Fuck if I know, or Russo for that matter. And yet I’m expected to shell out $30 of my hard-earned money to see something that he admittedly booked on a table napkin two hours before the show? And what the fuck is Eric Bischoff’s purpose at this point? Wasn’t he hired to PREVENT exactly this sort of shit from happening? I know it’s probably boundering on (gasp) censorship to maybe ask the monkey-boy NOT TO PUT THE FUCKING CRUISERWEIGHT TITLE ON ANY MORE CHICKS, but PERHAPS someone backstage should grow a set of balls for once in their life and set Russo straight on exactly what he’s booking here, what he’s getting paid to do it, and how much more stable the titles were under Kevin Sullivan. Do you REALIZE how fucked up the situation has gotten when we, as wrestling fans who are hopefully within the clinical definition of sanity, are YEARNING for the days of Sid Eudy’s stable title reign? I mean, hell, we thought Hulk Hogan pinning Kevin Nash with one finger was bad, but that wasn’t even the stupidest thing to happen THAT YEAR. That takes some serious talent, kids.
The person most completely in denial about the whole situation is of course Kevin Nash himself, because if you want to go back in time and pinpoint the exact SECOND that WCW went right down the sportz entertainment commode, I can do so for you. It was the Nitro where Nash pinned Wrath clean with the powerbomb in November of 1998. That was it, right there. Game over. In that exact moment, you knew that from there Nash was going to put himself over Goldberg and end that streak, and absolutely no one wanted to see that finish, and when you end your biggest show of the year with a finish that no one wants to see, you’re usually in trouble. I say usually, because Vince McMahon (who has a very simple solution for anyone trying to manipulate him – he fires them and probably has them beaten up in the back for good measure) pulled off that trick with HHH at Wrestlemania this year and came out of it all right. You know why? Because he has characters that people care about, and if one of them loses then they usually get the win back on the next show. Sadly, Russo still has to overcome the first problem: Finding characters that people care about.
I’d also suggest facial waxing and getting laid once in a while as temporary fixes for his ailments as well, but then I’m probably just on the WWF payroll anyway.