Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Trump Involved in McMahon’s Re-launched XFL? Enzo Amore Released, Thoughts on RAW 25, More!

Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane, and Glenn Gilbertti.

Russo begins today’s show by speaking about Vince McMahon’s newly re-launched XFL. He says there’s no doubt in his mind that Donal Trump is a part of this. He points out that the McMahon family are very close with Trump, and Trump has had a long-standing rivalry with Roger Goodell and the NFL. In addition, Trump likely won’t be President when the league kicks off in 2020.

Gilbertti doesn’t disagree with that point, but he also mentions that it’s going to be tough for McMahon to find quality football players. All the great players are going to go to the NFL for bigger money, and the XFL will always be left with the scraps. He’s just not sure how this is going to work, because everything that’s ever competed with the NFL in the past has failed.

Russo mentions that there were a lot of upset fans who attended RAW25 at The Manhattan Center this past Monday. Apparently there were only 25 minutes of live action at The Manhattan Center, and this made a lot of fans feel like they didn’t get their money’s worth, especially since a lot of them paid upwards of $800 to attend that event.

Gilberti points out that it’s stupid to pay $800 to watch professional wrestling in any era, and those fans shouldn’t be upset that the show sucked, because the shows have sucked for the last several years.

Russo thinks airing the show from two different venues was complete greed on the part of WWE. He believes that they knew they were taking advantage of the audience in order to sell out two different venues, but they could have at least attempted to make it look even and tried to give the fans their money’s worth.

There was a photo circulating online which appeared to show Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler asleep during the broadcast. Russo thinks it’s unfortunate that one person with a cell phone can make these types of claims and then it’s seen by people all over the world. Russo points out that Ross and Lawler certainly looked bored, but he would have been bored too because they barely worked.

Lane mentions that Bruce Prichard, dressed in his Brother Love gear received a huge ovation when he appeared. Russo was not surprised by that, even though he’s not the biggest fan of Prichard these days. Gilbertti says he couldn’t care less about which returning legend received the biggest ovation.

WWE’s former music composer, Jim Johnson spoke out this past week about his release from the company. He mentioned that he doesn’t have credits on most, if not all of the music he composed for WWE, and that’s making it hard for him to get more work now. Gilbertti doesn’t think credits are necessary, and he also thinks Johnson’s work speaks for itself so he shouldn’t have trouble getting work.

Russo points out that Johnson made it sound like he had a very cold exit from WWE, failing to receive a goodbye or thank-you from McMahon. Russo says that Johnson is the nicest guy in the world, and he doesn’t understand why WWE would handle his exit like that.

Russo goes on to say that he thought it was weird that we didn’t see Vicki Guerrero or Lita on RAW25. He believes they deserved to be invited to the show. Gilbertti says he has no idea why they weren’t invited, but he also doesn’t know where WWE should have drawn the line, because you could make the argument that WWE should have invited everyone back.

Speaking about Enzo Amore’s WWE release, Gilbertti says that he heard from his sources that this has been a long time coming for Amore. Amore has been drunk in airports, wearing his Title Belt in clubs, and missing busses. Gilbertti says Amore is not going to be missed around WWE.

He goes on to say that Amore has consistently shown poor judgement since arriving in WWE, and he continued to put himself in bad positions where these types of things could happen. Although his accuser’s story has been inconsistent, Amore’s past decisions and lifestyle have put him in a position where it’s easy to judge him.

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 next week for another recap!