Former WWE, WCW and TNA Head Writer Vince Russo was the most recent guest on the ‘Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast’ which you can listen to the entire interview at this link. Below are a few of the highlights from the podcast:
On the ‘Castrating the Marks’ Backlash:
You know Sam, want to know the funniest thing to me is? The most entertaining thing is, let’s face it Sam, wrestling is fake fighting, it’s a television show, it’s entertainment. I know you are a really entertaining guy, I’m an entertaining guy, you do an entertaining show, I try to do an entertaining show. The funny thing to me is just how seriously this group of people take fake fighting. They literally forgotten these matches are not real, there are no belts on the line, it’s a television show and it’s entertainment. Now, if we’re talking about 12, 13-year-old kids okay, but Sam, we’re talking about guys our age that literally have shows about wrestling that they take so seriously they kind of become a parody of themselves. I just thought, hey man, listen, these guys are going to supply the content for me and I’m just going to try to expose them to show them just how ridiculous they look to somebody else. There are two things that really bother me, first of all how seriously these guys take something that isn’t supposed to be taken seriously, wrestling is a television show, here’s the second thing that really gets to me, now I know that you have a relationship with the WWE. A lot of times bro, I see you posting pictures of yourself and WWE talent that tells me Sam is on Sirius XM, he has a popular show, which tells me he has a relationship with the WWE. Backstage he is in a locker room. You have the credentials bro, you’re a professional so I respect that. These guys that charge people for money have never been in the wrestling business, have no credentials, have no press passes and only talk to the talent behind Vince McMahon’s back and a lot of times that talent has an ax to grind, but the bottom line is these people have no credentials and somewhere down the line these guys label themselves ‘experts’ and charge people money to listen to them so I just don’t understand how you can be an ‘expert’ if you never legitimately spent one second working in the wrestling business.
On Whether People Who Have Never Worked in Wrestling Or Other Sports Like Joe Buck, Be Experts When They’ve Never Been in the Ring or on the Baseball Field:
They can because people like Joe Buck have access to the locker room and he has access to the players and access to management so absolutely. I mean, my gosh Sam, if you have access to Vince McMahon and you have access to a Triple H or John Cena and you literally have the right and credentials to literally talk to these people you are going to get an education on wrestling. Listen man, I started a Baseball podcast but the reality of it is, I know I’m a Baseball fan, I know I don’t have the credentials to be an expert on the field so I did a Baseball podcast and it was for free, but I made it clear that I was a fan like everyone else and I just don’t know how you are an expert when you don’t have any access to the company you are talking about.
When Bill Goldberg is in your face and literally he is about three seconds from killing you, bro, now you have been there and done that, but experiencing that and just talking about the business are two different things. Maybe if these yahoos didn’t charge people I wouldn’t have a problem, but to charge people and call yourself an expert it’s a sham and someone had to expose these people.
On Why Bill Goldberg Wanted to ‘Kill’ Him:
Honestly, bro, because we needed him to do a ‘job’ and needed him to do a ‘job’ to Scott Steiner and Goldberg looked me in the eye; I asked him why he had an issue with this because he said if this were real Scott Steiner would not beat me. Listen, bro, I know Scott Steiner and I don’t know about that so when Bill said that to me I said to him nonchalantly, why don’t you tell Scott that? Then when it came to that night when he had to do the ‘job’ it was me and him alone in a room, he pulled a chair about a foot from my face and he was huffing and puffing and rocking back and forth and all I can say to him and maybe I was nuts to say it, but I said, Bill if you are going to hit me, just hit me and get it over with because you are not going to intimidate me and that may have kind of deflated him because from that point forward we were able to do business, but my point is unless you have been in that kind of experiences, unless you are around the talent and spent time with the talent, you are not an expert, you have no idea what is happening behind the scenes.
On Why Goldberg Took it Personally to Lose a Fake Fight:
Sam, there are guys that take the business way too seriously and there are some guys, guys themselves and you have been in the business long enough to know that they are marks for themselves. I think there are a lot of guys today on the WWE roster that somehow, someway, they have convinced themselves that wrestling is actually real to the point of going out in that ring and performing some very dangerous moves where they could find themselves paralyzed for life all in an effort for what? To convince people that a fake fight is real? You do have wrestlers that become marks for themselves, but that is too far and few between Sam, a majority of the guys understand it is a show and entertainment television.
On Whether Guys Have to Be More Violence to in Order to Convince the Audience That it is a Legit Fight:
When I officially started the business it was 1991 and literally around that time, I remember we did our first chat with AOL. I remember it back in like 1993, and around that time it got exposed to the world that wrestling is a work, it’s a television show, none of this is real but like I said, bro, I don’t know what happened in the last 5 years, but you have a crew of young talent that have somehow convinced themselves that it is all about the match and we have to go out there and have to do crazy stuff and put ourselves at risk to get the crowd to chant, ‘this is awesome.’ It is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard in my life. Here is what any wrestlers’ agenda should be and Sam you can appreciate this: these wrestlers have a shelf life, from a business standpoint they are only going to be able to make money for so long, so what they want to do is they want to try and extend that wrestling life and shelf life as long as they can, because the time is going to come where they are not going to be able to perform anymore in the ring, but yet you have guys in their 20’s and early 30’s that are performing these ridiculous moves that require no psychology and in an instant somebody can break a neck, and I am telling you right now, somebody is going to get paralyzed in the ring doing one of these crazy, unnecessary things where somebody is going to be saying, wait a minute, hold on, we better look at the way these guys are wrestling nowadays. They did the same thing with concussions—dozens and dozens and dozens of concussions until finally they realized they maybe they need to stop hitting people over the head with chairs. It is going to be the same thing.
