Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host, Jeff Lane.
Speaking about the current steroid allegations facing Roman Reigns, Russo says he doesn’t consider this to be a big deal at all. He actually has no issue with grown men choosing to use steroids, and he compares it to some people choosing to smoke cigarettes. If you’re an adult and you’re aware of what you’re doing, why is this a big deal? He points out that actors like Sylvester Stallone have used steroids to prepare for movie roles in the past, so he doesn’t see why professional wrestling is so against this.
Lane mentions that PWTorch’s Wade Keller spoke about Johnny Gargano this past week, saying he’s a star who could really help turn 205 Live’s dropping viewership numbers around. Along with other stars such as Finn Balor and Hideo Itami, Gargano could make 205 Live entertaining programming according to Keller. Russo doesn’t agree with that statement at all, but he does give Keller credit for finally realizing that Balor needs to be moved from RAW to 205 Live.
In another audio clip, Keller said that Elias is only going to rise up and meet his potential when he stops playing his guitar in the ring eery week. Russo points out that if Keller had his way, he’d strip every character of their gimmicks. In this case, RAW’s roster would consist of 100 identical wrestlers with no character development or interesting gimmicks, and that’s not good.
Continuing with his thoughts on Elias, Russo thinks WWE’s booking of him has been brutal as of late. He can’t understand why they’d book Elias to be the opening act for The Miztourage every week when there are millions of other creative things they could be doing with him.
Lane plays an audio clio of Pro Wrestling Sheet’s Ryan Satin, who said that Vince McMahon would probably love Senor Benjamin, especially when he finds out that Benjamin is actually Hardy’s father in law in real life. Russo says that this is nothing more than a conversation for 12-year olds. He adds that McMahon couldn’t care less about Senor Benjamin’s family tree.
Next, Lane plays a clip of Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer pointing out that while Braun Strowman tipped over a truck on RAW this week, later in the show he couldn’t even lift up Michael Cole. Meltzer claims that he could have lifted Cole if he was in that spot.
Russo thinks it’s hilarious that Meltzer is basically claiming to be stronger than Strowman. He also points out that Cole was fighting for his life in this segment, and this shouldn’t have looked flawless. Strowman was also lifting Cole by the seat of his pants as Cole’s pants were falling down.
Lane mentions that at another point this week, Wade Keller said that it’s hard to boo Chad Gable, and he has a similar look as Daniel Bryan in the sense that you just want to pinch his cheeks. Russo says that Keller couldn’t be more wrong about this because nobody is cheering Gable. Russo also would like to know who’d want to pinch Bryan’s cheeks because he looks like a “goat” and his hair hasn’t been washed in weeks.
A couple of days ago Ryan Satin tweeted out that the guys from The New Day are all eventually going to be part of WWE’s creative team and they’re going to be great at it. Russo wonders if The New Day will bring their pancakes to the creative meetings. He says that there’s a huge difference between acting in the show and actually writing a show. He says this is an asinine statement from Satin.
Wade Keller stated this week that he believes Enzo Amore would be out of a job if he wasn’t such a unique personality. Russo says if you take Amore out of 205 Live you’d be left with 12 wrestlers people don’t give a ‘s**t’ about.
Lastly, Lane plays an audio clip of Wrestling Observer’s Bryan Alvarez explaining why RAW needs to have long matches each week. Alvarez stated that RAW is 3 hours, and they need to have long matches to fill time. Russo says that big, long matches need to be saved for the finish of programs, often at PPVs. If you have these matches every week on RAW they start to mean nothing, and comments like this prove that Alvarez has no business commenting on the wrestling business in Russo’s opinion.
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!
