Russo says he couldn’t believe that WWE took the WWE Title off of Jinder Mahal after six months, without raising his stock or putting him in the main event spotlight where he should have been. Russo says he wishes he would have had the opportunity to write for Mahal, because he thought Mahal did a great job with his Title run in spite of some very lacklustre booking.
He says that if you’re a young performer who’s getting into the wrestling business, you need to know what you’re getting yourself into. Professional wrestling is a dangerous career and Russo thinks WWE could be doing a lot more to help protect their performers, especially the brain and head area.
He adds that a lot of today’s performers are working for the ‘pops’ and for Dave Meltzer’s 5-star ratings, when in reality Meltzer’s not going to pay their medical bills or support their family when they’re suffering from brain trauma at a young age.
Meltzer recently said that WWE has never defeated Monday Night Football in the ratings. Russo says for a long period of time Monday Night RAW and Monday Night Football were neck and neck in the ratings. Whether RAW ever actually defeated MNF in the ratings or not, at least the numbers were close enough that people were having a conversation about it. Nowadays the numbers aren’t even close.
There was a time when WWE was at its best, when Vince McMahon would look for and hire the absolute best people at their jobs. When Russo almost returned to WWE several years ago, Stephanie McMahon and Triple H blackballed him and convinced Vince McMahon that Russo was a poor choice because they wanted to control creative.
With Russo in WWE, they knew they’d never be able to do that so they made sure he wouldn’t be able to get fired. Russo points out that Triple H obviously forgot all the things Russo did for his career years ago, even writing him the promo which resulted in him being known as ‘The Game’. They don’t care about how good you are at your job, if you’re not a ‘yes man’ you’ll never survive there.
Russo says he has a major bone to pick with Corey Graves. At the end of the day, he says Graves is the commentator with the bad haircut and the neck tattoo, and he’s nothing more than a body sitting in a chair. If you want to hear real commentators he urges fans to go back and listen to Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler and Vince McMahon. Russo says he did more in WWE in one week than Graves will do in his entire career.
Graves got into a Twitter argument with Piers Morgan last week, and Russo was bothered by one line that Graves said. At one point Graves said to Morgan, “Welcome to relevancy”. Russo says he’s not a huge Morgan fan, but there’s no denying that he’s had a great career and he’s a multi-millionaire. The fact that this ‘jackass’ (Corey Graves) thinks he’s more relevant than Piers Morgan is hilarious in Russo’s opinion.
He says that professional wrestling is not relevant, it’s not popular, and nobody watches it. So this remark by Graves was stupid, uninformed and laughable.
That sums up today’s episode of Vince Russo’s The Brand. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya tomorrow for another recap!
