Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host, Jeff Lane, and Glenn Gilbertti (Disco Inferno).
Russo says that for a company as smart as WWE, they make some awfully stupid decisions sometimes. Just a week after they went to Saudi Arabia, leaving their female employees and competitors behind, Stephanie McMahon has launched a “She Is” movement. In the eyes of a lot of people this is a very hypocritical move from the company.
Gilbertti points out that WWE has never really cared about this type of thing, and he doesn’t think they give a crap whether people call them hypocrites for this move. He also doesn’t think WWE’s Board of Directors care, because if they cared WWE wouldn’t have went to Saudi Arabia in the first place.
Lane thinks WWE received more backlash about going to Saudi Arabia than they were expecting, and they wanted to do something now to reverse this negative press. Russo understands all that, but he just thinks the timing of this makes WWE look like severe hypocrites.
Lane points out that there are rumours circulating that Corey Graves has backstage heat stemming from some of his comments on the Greatest Royal Rumble. Some people are speculating that Graves is more replaceable as RAW’s colour commentator than he thinks he is. Gilbertti says that Graves is completely replaceable, noting that Graves hasn’t had a great commentary “moment” on RAW in forever.
Russo points out that the difference between rookies and veterans is that WWE would never have to tell Jim Ross not to tweet about the controversy surrounding the Greatest Royal Rumble. Unfortunately, Graves decided to go on social media and tweet about this in an attempt to get himself over, and it’s no surprise that he has heat with WWE because of this.
Lane informs that Sami Zayn was apparently left off the Greatest Royal Rumble event because of his Syrian heritage. Gilbertti points out that WWE is a global company, and they need to respect the rules of the countries they perform in. If that means that some performers need to stay home, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
Lane points out that PWTorch’s Wade Keller suggested that Triple H, John Cena and The Undertaker should have paid the women who were unable to perform at the event. Gilbertti says that’s crazy, and he wonders why the women should get paid if they didn’t perform.
Some people have asked Triple H about the fact that there was no promotion for his match versus John Cena. Triple H responded by saying that this was a marquee match that didn’t really need promotion. Gilbertti has no issue with that at all. He points out that Triple H and John Cena are two huge names who went out for the first match and felt the crowd out. This was a smart move for WWE and he thinks people tuned into this show for The Rumble’s main event; the rest was just a bonus.
Lane points out that Batista did an interview recently, in which he revealed that after speaking with WWE for 3 weeks about potentially appearing at WrestleMania the company stopped replying to him. Lane points out that Batista is a bonafide movie star now, and he probably would have been a bigger attraction for the mixed tag team match than Kurt Angle.
Russo points out that Angle had to jump through hoops for years to return to WWE, and if Batista wants to return to WWE to close his career he’ll probably have to go through the same process. He does admit that it was pretty crappy on WWE’s part to not text Batista back.
During an interview recently, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat spoke about his WrestleMania 3 match against Randy Savage. He mentioned that there were 21 false finishes in that match, and he recalled how difficult it was trying to memorize all of that. Gilbertti points out that both men put on an incredible cardio display in that match, and Russo thinks it’s unbelievable that they were able to memorize every single spot. He says he’d never be able to do that.
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!
