Forgiven: One Man's Journey from Self-Glorification to Sanctification (29 page)

The thoughts going through my head?

I’m done! He’s mad about last night’s mess and he’s going to make an
example out of me. I didn’t write the show — Prichard and Cornette
did. They’re sitting right over there with their melons bowed in shame.

It’s their heads you want, not mine!

Vince slams the magazine down on the table.

More thoughts. . . .

Screw it, I’ll call my buddy Steve. I’ll be back on that sales floor
tomorrow.

“This is what
Raw
needs to be like!” Vince screamed.

Come again?

“Last night’s show was a joke!
Raw
needs to be like this magazine!” I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. First the laughter part

— so much for politics. With one statement, I rose above all the creative brass sitting in that room. With one statement, Vince finally decided the days of mediocrity were over and it was time to shake 204

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Forgiven

things up. With one statement, Vince said, “You’re out — he’s in.” The crying part — this was a dream. Never had I expected things to wash out like this, in such a public display. Vince couldn’t have stuck it to them any better. I had won — I had freaking
won
. All I’d wanted was a chance — and here it was. Man, I looked in the eyes of Prichard, Ross and Cornette that day, and never had I seen such hatred. They had to be thinking, “How did this guy pull this off?” I’ll tell you how — by being honest, by not playing anybody to get there, by my own merit. . . . By just plain playing the game smarter.

I was on top of the world. I was going to be working
with
Vince McMahon, just like I had envisioned almost five years ago while sitting in Will the Thrill’s.

Think and Grow Rich?

I had done it.

At that moment I never took the opportunity to reflect on the journey: where it all began, what I had to endure and where I wound up. In retrospect, it was a thrill ride. But that’s me — I never take the time to live any moment to its fullest. Instead of stopping to smell the roses, I trample over them on my way to my next goal. I don’t know, sometimes I just wish I could be different. I wish I could enjoy things more. Man, I’d pulled off a major feat, but the minute I accomplished it, I was already looking to what was next.

I guess that just comes with never being satisfied. Amy always tells me that. Sometimes I wonder if there is ever going to be a moment when I’m 100 percent satisfied and at peace. Why must there always be that next test immediately in front of me? Man, this is getting old

— but I don’t change. After wcw was sold to McMahon, I wanted to go back into business for myself and just be successful. Well, cd Warehouse has been open for less than six months and it is successful — so now what?

Okay, I want to get this book published. But once I do — and I will

— then what? Damn it! Why am I this way? I just want to be normal.

Could I have asked for God’s help any more blatantly? Could I have been 205

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

crying out any louder? Reaching out? Pleading? Begging? It’s just amazing that I can see it so clearly right now — but back then, I was a blind man walking in the darkness of the world.

In retrospect —
what if
Eric Bischoff had called me back?
What if
Eric Bischoff had offered me a job?
What if
I had taken it?

There is no question in my mind that the landscape of sports entertainment would be completely different. wcw would have become stronger, while the wwf got weaker. What would Vince have done?

Would he have continued to go with the same hand? If not, who would he have turned to? Or today, some five years later, would Vince be the proud owner of wcw and everything associated with it?

I’m not so sure.

The wwf was about to crash and burn back then. Nobody had the answers, not even Vince himself. So he took a gamble — on me.

Vince had nothing to lose. Let’s face it, his current creative team wasn’t working. He was rolling the dice, and in the end, he came up with a seven.

Bischoff? Regardless of how he feels about me today (and that
is
another story, for another time), he has to be wishing now he did call me back. If it didn’t accomplish anything else, at least it would have taken me away from Vince. But Bischoff didn’t need me. He didn’t need anybody — not until it was too late.

One return phone call could have forever changed the face of sports entertainment. One return call could have led all parties involved down a much different path — penning a much different story, with perhaps a very different ending.

One return phone call . . . but we’ll never know.

206

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Chapter 37

PUT ME IN A BOX, RUN ME OVER,

TORCH ME, THEN THROW ME OVER A CLIFF

So this is how it broke down. Prichard was taken off the creative team and put back in his office, where he was to run talent relations, and myself, Vince and Jim Cornette began to write tv.

So there I was, back at Vince’s dining room table — somewhere I thought I’d never be again. Man, Vince’s house was phenomenal.

Everything that you could ever ask for: a pool, complete gym, room after room and the CiCi Brothers manicuring the grounds 24/7. Man that was like a scene right out of Pacino’s
Scarface
. What in God’s name were those guys doing every day? But that’s just the thing —

when you have money like that, you have no idea where it’s going. But heck, take nothing away from Vince, the guy worked for everything he has. Nothing was handed to him. Up until the day I left, Vince’s car was
always
the last one to leave the office. I don’t think there’s another human being alive who has his work ethic.

Yup, I was living the dream . . . but there was one small problem.

207

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

I wasn’t just working with Vince McMahon, I was working with Vince McMahon and James E. Cornette.

Man, was this a mistake. You see, at the time Jim Cornette and I went together like Ludacris and nascar. I wanted “attitude,” he wanted Bullet Bob Armstrong (a legendary wrestler from the South).

Jim was from the old school that said heels could only act one way —

cheat, steal, spit, snarl — while babyfaces had to act another — smile, kiss babies and wink at teenage girls. Unfortunately, thanks to today’s society, in the sports-entertainment game the heels are perceived as babyfaces, while the babyfaces are seen as heels. In other words — it’s cool to be bad. The faces were perceived as phony, while the heels were looked upon as real. To give an example of Cornette’s mindset, he actually used to travel around with a gun under the driver’s seat of his car, in case he was attacked by fans —
because he was a heel!
We’re talking 1997 here folks, not 1977. Man, it was ugly. We argued like Tom and Roseanne Arnold before, during and after the divorce. I’ll never forget Vince’s face during those meetings. He was getting so fed up with the both of us, he looked like his head was going to pop.

Personally, I had nothing against Jim — I just felt his way of thinking, in 1997, was wrong. In my opinion, you can’t book now like you did 20 years ago, because the fans are smart — they know it’s a work (fake). Today’s fans react to the product in a negative way if they feel their intelligence is being insulted. Old-school booking is based on one simple axiom — the fans are stupid, and they’ll eat whatever you serve up because they don’t know enough to question why you’re booking what you’re booking. In their minds, no one is “booking” anything — it’s all happening for real. Years ago, you could get away with all kinds of corny and phony garbage, because the fans didn’t know any better. Jim just didn’t see that. The business was changing on a daily basis, and you were either riding the runaway train, or taking the third rail in a painful place! But I remained persistent. Even though we were driving McMahon nuts, I stuck to my guns, because I knew I was right. As a company, I knew where we had to go.

Some people mistakenly believe that my style and many of my 208

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Forgiven

ideas came from watching ecw (I actually watched that show only a few times); my advantage actually came from studying my son Will, who was about 11. I used to make a point of seeing what was hip to him. What was he watching? What was he listening to? Yeah, he was a bit younger than our demographic, but he was the next generation —

he was the future. Cornette, Vince, Prichard, Ross — none of them had that advantage. They were solely looking at the wrestling business through their eyes — what
they
knew. We’re talking the Tom Green era here — it was cool to put poop at the end of a microphone and then stick it in an unsuspecting face for an interview. tv was becoming rude, crude, sexy and obnoxious. And that’s what
Raw
was when it came down to it — a tv show competing with other tv shows. We had to be
Seinfeld
, not the 1970s National Wrestling Alliance. After a few weeks, I could see Vince was coming around more and more to my way of thinking. And then Cornette came up with the angle that would forever seal his fate on the booking committee.

Let me preface this by saying the following: when he isn’t blowing a gasket, I like Jim Cornette. In his day, he was by far one of the best personalities in the business. The guy has a great mind — he comes up with things off the cuff that others couldn’t come up with in a lifetime. He’s a comedic genius — I once wanted to write a book on the thousands of sayings he would come up with on a daily basis.

In my opinion — and keep in mind, this is only my opinion — if Jim Cornette made the radical decision to adapt his way of thinking to the 21st century, he could be the man to take the wwf out of its current slump. For whatever reasons, however, Jim refuses to do that.

Jim has chosen to live in the heyday of the late ’70s and early ’80s and that’s his choice. Part of me respects him for sticking to his guns —

the other part just doesn’t get it.

Jim wanted to bring wrestling legend Terry Funk back to the wwf.

I had no problem with this — I was, and still am, a huge fan of Funk.

However, how Jim wanted to do this was a whole other story. . . .

Jim’s idea was to have Cactus Jack, a.k.a. Mick Foley, wheel a huge box down to ringside. Week after week we would see this box, until 209

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

finally Terry Funk emerged. When asked why, Jim answered,

“Anybody who comes out of a box is instantly over.” To this day, that’s the greatest line I’ve ever heard. I’ve even considered using it for the title of this book. I thought Vince was going to die when he heard it.

To appease Jim, Vince came up with the character of Chainsaw Charlie, who would chainsaw his way out of the box
immediately
upon his arrival in the wwf.

Man, it just wasn’t going to work — Cornette and Russo. One of us had to go. All that arguing — all we were doing was wasting Vince’s time and the company’s money. I had a meeting with Vince and told him exactly that. I said one of us had to go, and if it was me, I totally understood. The next week, Cornette was off the booking committee.

210

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Chapter 38

LAST CHANCE POLITICS

Also off the booking committee, Bruce Prichard was running talent relations. It was only a matter of months before Vince realized Bruce may have been in over his head. Understand, that’s not a knock on Bruce. The job in itself is just so demanding — and thankless, I might add. So Vince soon replaced Prichard with Jim Ross, who even took over Bruce’s office. Suddenly Bruce is a man without an island, so it was only human nature that he tried to get his old spot back — the one I was currently holding. One day, Bruce calls me into his office and tells me, “People in the office don’t want to work with you —

nobody!” He even went as far as to name names. Again, not believing a word of this ploy, I questioned everyone Bruce had fingered. Everyone flat-out denied the allegations. Who was lying and who was telling the truth? I really didn’t care, I just didn’t want to play this trivial game. So this time I took my case to Vince. What he said and 211

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

how he said it to Prichard, I have no idea. But the Brother showed nothing but
love
towards me from that point on. (Yes, Bruce portrayed the old wwf character, Brother Love, at a much earlier time, in a much different place. . . .)

212

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Chapter 39

SURVIVOR SERIES

I experienced many trials and tribulations during my tenure as head writer for the wwf,
all
of which we will get into a little later. However, in an attempt to keep things chronological, I’m going to turn to the infamous 1997 Survivor Series, because it was one of the last episodes in which Jim Cornette was involved as a member of the booking committee.

Believe me, the Survivor Series experience could be a book in itself. There are many aspects of that unforgettable day that very few people know about — including Bret Hart himself. Well, I was there every step of the way — besides Vince, nobody was more involved in the circumstances leading up to the event than yours truly.

To this day, many fans still have the misconception that behind the curtain, the good guys really have to hate the bad guys. C’mon, we all know it’s a work — but there’s got to be some animosity. A missed 213

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

spot (move), somebody lands a potato (a real punch), there’s got to be some “real” heat between the competitors? But the truth? There rarely is. When push comes to shove, these guys are professionals and act accordingly, even if they do have “real” heat with their opponent.