Steve Carrier on April 13, 2018
Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host, Jeff Lane.
Lane opens today’s show by playing a clip of Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer & Bryan Alvarez, who were trying to defend the A.J. Styles/Nakamura WrestleMania match. Alvarez pointed out that a few people were chanting “boring” during this match, and Meltzer was astonished by this information. Meltzer said he wouldn’t want to threaten violence, but that was his first instinct when he heard this information.
Russo thinks it’s hilarious that Meltzer is threatening violence over trying to defend a wrestling match. Russo jokes that the fans who were chanting “boring” during that match were definitely Brand members, so Meltzer is basically threatening Brand members with violence. He jokes that he might have to take the Ryan Satin approach and go after Meltzer’s sponsors.
Lane informs that a professional journalist sent him and Russo an email this past week. In the email, the journalist said that wrestling’s dirt sheet writers can’t consider themselves journalists because they don’t follow several professional guidelines. A couple of these guidelines include providing relevant sources and minimizing harm with your work.
Russo points out that this is the facts straight from a professional, and she’s saying exactly what Russo’s been saying for a long time. He adds that these dirt sheet writers won’t provide their sources because when they’re wrong the source will look incredibly stupid, so there seems to be an element of protection happening. In any event, these guys can’t consider themselves professional journalists.
Alvarez went on to tweet out several things about Tanahashi’s hair throughout WrestleMania week. Russo points out that this is a grown man with a kid and a wife, and this is completely abnormal behaviour. He’d love to have Alvarez or any other one of these guys sit down with a psychiatrist.
Russo points out that he watched some NXT programming this past week and he was embarrassed by the way the fans reacted. He thinks WWE should set up a “mark camera” that’d be used to capture the fans ridiculous reactions during the show, because he thinks that’d be a much more entertaining show.
Lane plays a clip of Wade Keller from this past week in which he spoke about the main event 6-man tag match from RAW. Keller said that WWE probably wanted viewers to see all the important stuff early in the show knowing full well that they’d lose some viewership in the third hour. Keller also said he doesn’t need RAW to end with a big angle or storyline every week. Sometimes a nice 6-man tag match with a happy ending is fine.
Russo laughs hysterically, pointing out that Keller basically admitted to giving himself a happy ending after watching RAW’s 6-man tag team match. In all seriousness, Russo points out that the notion of “throwing in the towel” in the last hour because the viewership dwindles is ridiculous. Television time is a valuable commodity and WWE should be doing important things in the third hour of RAW such as setting up cliffhangers to bring viewers back the following week.
On one of his audio shows that aired prior to WrestleMania, Dave Meltzer pointed out that there’ll probably be indie shows in New Orleans that’ll be better than the WrestleMania show. Russo says that’s like saying the Yankees and Mets are having a baseball game but the Single “A” ball game next door is going to be way better. He thinks that was a ridiculous statement by Meltzer, pointing out that Charlotte’s robe probably cost more than it took to put together some of those indie shows.
Russo thought the Andre the Giant HBO documentary was great and it gave fans a fascinating look into that time in the wrestling business. Speaking about the main event of WrestleMania 3, Andre screwed with Hogan all day long regarding the finish of the match but when the time came he did the right thing by putting Hogan over strong. In Russo’s opinion, this set the table for the next 15-20 years in the wrestling business.
When a fan tweeted Meltzer to ask if Hogan really didn’t know what the finish was going to be when he walked to the ring that night, Meltzer claimed to know about this finish in January of that year. Russo doesn’t understand why Meltzer would even make a claim like that when it’s clear from the documentary that Hogan didn’t know and Vince McMahon barely knew either given the unpredictable nature of Andre.
PWInsider’s Dave Shearer spoke out this week about Shane McMahon’s role in the tag match at WrestleMania. He said that Shane didn’t screw the match up which he certainly could of, and he took a beating which is rare for McMahon. Russo and Lane question whether Shearer has ever seen a Shane McMahon match because he often gets beaten up in his matches.
Lane plays another clip of Keller, who claimed to be texting back and forth with a WWE wrestler about the Charlotte/Asuka WrestleMania match. Keller said that there was concern backstage over Asuka’s streak ending, implying that they were worried about how that impacts their character’s eventual ability to succeed in the company. Russo says that is ridiculous, and it’s clear to him that Keller and these other guys aren’t living in the real world.
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!
April 13, 2018 1:47 pm
Disqus Comments Loading...
